Abstract:

In Mexico there are very few studies on the effect of educational programs in the area of computing at the basic and medium level. However, a study on the use of educational software in primary schools [Salinas, 1998] confirmed that the development of computational thinking skills through educational software programs is unsatisfactory in primary students at the public level, since the activities in the computing area are more focused on learning to acquire information, rather than developing their computational thinking, as it is almost non-existent the teaching of programming.

In 2014, the Institute of Innovation and Technology Transfer and the Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM) made an adaptation of the Scalable Game Design (SGD) from University of Colorado and the research group of Alex Reppening, to develop a pilot project in Nuevo León, which was applied in the Computer Science Education Week 2014. SGD contains a set of projects in simulation and games that allow the gradual increase in computational thinking skills to the participants.

In 2015, the Scalable Game Design Project was formally implemented: Chic @ s Code, an innovative project that develops logical thinking in a fun way, by integrating girls and boys from primary and secondary school, regardless of their origin or previous experience in activities of video game programming. The objective is to introduce methodology and systematic teaching of computer science, besides motivating the interest in science and technology, boosting participation of the students in other activities, such as the State and national Science Fairs and the Computer Science Education Week.

The metrics managed to measure the impact in girls and boys are based in the Number of Children Trained in Programming Tool (NCHP), one is the Short Term version (NCHP-CP), and other is the Long Term version (NCHP-LP). The NCHP-CP activities are carried out during the year at events such as Tec-Monterrey's Semana-i, the B-Tec event, "Hour of Code", in which students perform an activity of approximately four hours. design and programming of the Frogger game online or use the autonomous version AgentCubes 2.1 where schools were attended or received at ITESM facilities. The NCHP-LP activity takes place from August to November, directly presented by the teacher assigned to the group by the Ministry of Education, previously trained in the technological and pedagogical tools to implemente Chic@s code, and advised by an ITESM professor. By 2017, 17,017 students, 5,022 (NCHP-CP) and 11,995 (NCHP-LP) were trained under the program.

The contributions demonstrated by the project over 3 years of implementation are:
• Systematically develop computational thinking in a large number of children.
• Retention of children's attention when using the SGD program
• Evaluation with computational instruments of learning outcomes.
• Training for teachers using new methods of teaching computer science.

We will talk about these outcomes in the paper.

Keywords:

Computational thinking, scalable game design, computer training, systematic development.