Abstract:

In the future, programming logic teaching will be indispensable for students who are beginning their cycle in the educational environment. It is possible to realize that there will be an increasingly lack of qualified professionals to take up positions related to technology development. In addition, the new generation of students will suffer direct impact of technological growth and they must be prepared for it. Because of this, the purpose of this work is to approach and transmit many concepts of programming in a simple and playful way, through a didactic system aimed at children who are starting their education cycle.

The developed project, here called Blocky Coding, is composed of three main topics: the manual material (blocks and parts), the educational application, and the web monitoring interface. The blocks and parts are 3D printed, and their hardware is developed based on the ATMEGA328P microcontroller. The application for tablets or smartphones is developed using the Unity 3D professional games development tool. The monitoring web interface is developed using Angular 5 and the web storage is based on the cloud service Azure and SQL Server.

The set of blocks and pieces are handled by the students, and the goal is to fit and connect them to solve a logical problem that the child is watching in the app. When the coupling of the blocks is finished by the child, the application communicates with the blocks via bluetooth, and shows, like a game, the result. Programming concepts such as algorithms, functions, and repetition are taught in a simple and interactive way through four modules and sixteen levels throughout the game. Finally, every student statistics are sent and stored in a database and may be monitored through graphs and metrics by teachers or parents in the web interface.

The use of the Blocky Coding for the programming study may become a highly useful study tool in student learning and development. As soon as modules are concluded, the student’s cognitive ability and logical thinking may increase throughout the steps and challenges. From these results, the developed project may be used as a basis for future research and analysis in the educational environment.

Keywords:

Programming, Interactive Teaching, Algorithms, Educational App, Interactive Blocks, Monitoring System.