Abstract:

Developing computational thinking (CT) or logical thinking skills is now being promoted from early childhood education. Enhancing the development of CT skills in early years goes further than just acquiring concepts of learning how to program computers. Instead, it focuses on promoting the acquisition of critical thinking skills that will allow them to cope with any problem in daily life. Starting activities to foster CT skills at these ages denotes an educational challenge. It requires guiding children to acquire spatial representation skills, organization of thought, visualizing problems from afar, and hypothesis elaboration. The study aimed to investigate the impact of computational thinking activities in Early Childhood Education on improving literacy and the acquisition of logical thinking. In this study, we wanted to answer the following questions: what degree of computational thinking skills do children acquire after the process, to what extent reading-writing skills have benefited from this methodology, and what difficulties a teacher faces when designing such strategies. The research was a quasi-experimental approach with a control group and pre-test and post-test measures. The process comprehended two steps; first, we designed unplugged activities with experimental groups to compare the results with the control group later. Second, we used the BeeBot robot once the children were initiated in logical thinking. Unplugged activities help to foster problem-solving, logical and critical thinking skills and the acquisition of spatial orientation skills without the need to use screens or computers. In the study, 52 children of 5 and 6 years of age taking the last year of early childhood education have participated. After several sessions working with unplugged activities, it is observed that the children are improving in the automation of movements; however, they show difficulty in visualizing the entire route, and it is difficult for them to understand the loops. After this first phase, when the BeeBot is introduced, children are initially allowed to experience its operation for themselves before the teacher intervenes. Several sessions were carried out with the BeeBot, and it is observed that they were acquiring more excellent dexterity in spatial capacity and were capable of making longer journeys. The students with difficulty in the reasoning area had problems visualizing the route and giving the Beebot precise instructions. Spatial location is difficult for these students, and therefore, it was necessary to go step by step. However, those students with language problems did not show any significant problem processing the robot's path. It is necessary to introduce activities prior to using robots that help the student develop logical reasoning processes to carry out learning experiences based on computational thinking. In this study, unplugging activities have been an essential instrument to work on this skill.

Keywords:

Computational thinking, kids, beebot.