Abstract:

This paper presents a workshop experience designed for pre-service primary school teachers for the Degree Course on Primary Education Sciences (Scienze della Formazione Primaria), at the Università degli Studi Link, Città di Castello, Italy, aimed to exploring the potential of coding as a vehicle for mathematical learning, with a specific focus on geometry.

A total of 100 fourth year students participated in a workshop around Octostudio, a block based mobile coding app developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab. Octostudio is designed to work on smartphones and tablets, in a low-connectivity environment using the device sensors and amplifying interactivity with the physical world.

Driven by open-ended and creative prompts, participants engaged in a hands-on activity, rooted in the constructionist paradigm, in which they designed and coded interactive projects to explore and represent geometric concepts such as symmetry or shape properties, covering all components of mathematics learning. The workshop integrates self-expression into computational thinking, guiding participants from the composition of portraits, with objects available, to their digital animation and the subsequent sharing of the artifacts on a collective platform.

Qualitative data were collected through reflective journals and the projects. Findings suggest that the coding environment fostered an active engagement with geometric thinking and prompted participants to reconsider how they learn mathematics.

The difficulties encountered, such fine manual and coding skills, experienced by the participants were recognized as learning opportunities and led to a strong sense of pride and satisfaction for their own projects.

Keywords:

Pre-service Teachers, Computational Thinking, Geometry, Creative Learning, Constructionism.