Abstract:

This paper describes some tendencies in internet and computer usage of children. Especially the differences between male and female teens are shown and the results of our survey are compared with the results of international research. The tendencies are extracted from the figures of an survey conducted as a part of the project touch::tell::IT, which lasts until 2011 and is a research-project aimed at the improvement of motivation and self-esteem of young female students. On the long hand the researched measures shall be introduced in Austrian schools to enlarge the number of female enrollments at technical universities.
Like many technically oriented degree programs in Austria the degree program Information Management has had and has problems to motivate females to take up technical studies. Therefore a research program was introduced to find ways to help girls to start learning programming with new approaches. After several measurements at the degree course -like changes in the curriculum, the program’s advertising strategy and also in the didactic approaches- we are now evaluating new ways to introduce software development as early as in the 2nd or 3rd class BRG (13 years) with an explicitly constructionist didactic approach.
This paper describes the approach and the methods of these measurements. 11 courses with children at the age between 13 to 17 years are held / realized in the summer 2010 and will be evaluated until fall 2010. The preparing courses are already finished and together with the PreTests of the current courses there can be seen some interesting tendencies.
In the first part of the paper the problem and the known approaches for improving the motivation of female students for learning a programming language will be described and compared. The different didactic approaches will be shown and discussed. Especially the chosen constructionist approach will be described in detail.
The Project touch::tell::IT shall be introduced and the general requirements for the realization of the above mentioned courses described. Touch::tell::IT researches the introduction and usage of EPLs (Educational Programming Languages) like Scratch, StarLogo, Alice and many more.
The results of the pretests and prequestionaires will be described in detail and compared with international research and the consequences for the continuing courses will be discussed.

Keywords:

Constructivism, gender gap, Educational Programming Language.