Abstract:

According to the 2010 National Research Council in the United States, everyone should be taught Computational Thinking (CT) in future education systems. Originally targeting higher secondary and college students, CT has found its way into many primary and lower secondary school curricula in dozens of countries in the last years. So especially for younger students it is an advantage to combine IT with everyday life, considering that not each student is familiar with the computer, depending on factors like family background or personal interests. Consequently, in addition to computer-supported lessons, alternative approaches for introducing informatics concepts are necessary. A creative approach in this direction could be to join the STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) to STEAM (extended with an A for Arts) movement. Especially with the art of magic nearly everyone comes in contact as a child. Magic tricks arise curiosity and intrinsic motivation of students as well as the desire to see and understand what happens behind. In terms of computer science the process behind is an algorithm that solves a problem (the trick). By choosing appropriate magic tricks not only algorithmic thinking but also other computational thinking competencies like abstraction, decomposition or pattern recognition can be trained. This paper explains why magic art is not only a funny but also brain-based teaching approach and presents the most important characteristics of useful magic tricks linking them to computational thinking concepts. Furthermore, it gives some concrete examples and best practices for introducing computational thinking through magic art in lower secondary education.

Keywords:

Computational thinking, magic art, STEM, neurodidactics, problem-based learning.