Abstract:

Many workshops for children to do programming on computers are held, with the aim of fostering the general purpose abilities required in society. In addition, breaking a final goal into small steps is important for programming on a computer. With small steps, children can figure out what functions should be created in what order for the target program. However, from our experience of conducting programming workshops, we can say that not many children can do programming while organizing small steps.

In the programming workshops, based on Constructionism[1], we let participant use Scratch[2] to work on projects. The creative thinking is acquired by repeating the five stages of "imagine", "create", "play", "share", and "reflect"[3]. In addition, to encourage collaborative learning, it is necessary to create opportunities for children to communicate and share ideas. In this study, we aim to support children to complete their work by introducing an idea of rotating projects in small steps in a group. We can expect children to move to a “share” and “reflect” stage by rotate the project and touching projects created by other children. By considering the continuation of projects created by others, children become more conscious of each step.

Twenty-eight children (8-12 years old) participated in the workshop and divided into groups of three or four. They all worked on a project with a common theme, which means three or four projects were created in one group. Participants passed their project to the person next to him or her after a 5-minute creation time and received a project from the other side. Then they started to work on the project they received. From the recorded video during the workshop, the questionnaire conducted after the workshop, and the completed projects, we observed the children were able to think what they could create in each rotation, and they completed the step. In addition, about 90% of participants answered that it was interesting to rotate the projects. It was also found that children thought that there was not enough time between the rotations as they need to understand the projects created by others at each rotation.

As a result, children seemed to be thinking what kind of project to make before a rotation and what kind of function to be added within the given time. The effects of collaborative learning were also observed when students looked at the ideas of other children. We conclude that the presented small steps oriented collaborative programming workshop has a positive impact for cultivating a skill to organize small steps.

Keywords:

Programming education, small steps, rotation, workshop.