Abstract:

In the 21st century, among other important problem solving skills needed is together with computational thinking skills. The paper presents a methodology for educating students-future primary school teachers to use digital storytelling with block-based programming environment for achieving learning outcomes of different school subjects as well as for the development of their computational thinking skills.

Introduction:
Programming is becoming an increasingly important skill as technology becomes more predominant in our society. Young teachers are faced with rapidly changing requirements, which impose a new, broader and more complex set of competencies.
Teachers are expected to make greater use of digital technologies in teaching, work to integrate students with special educational needs, teach in a multicultural environment, participate in the development of new curricula, and involve parents in school activities.
In the last few years there has been a growing interest in teaching Programming in primary schools in Bulgaria. In the academic year 2018/2019, a new compulsory course in Computer Modelling is introduced in the third grade, and in 2019/2020 in the fourth grade. Primary school children begin by learning to write simple programs using a variety of approaches: basic visual programming environments, games, physical devices and unplugged activities.

Digital Storytelling:
Digital storytelling has become an increasingly popular and effective way for teachers to meet a range of learning goals in the classroom. It involves combining digital media (images, voice narration, music, text, or motion) to tell a story.
Digital storytelling allows students to become creative storytellers through the processes of selecting a topic, conducting a research, writing a script, and developing an interesting story. Teachers who are able to create their own digital stories may find that they can be particularly helpful not only in engaging students in the content but also in facilitating discussion about the topics presented in a story and helping make abstract or conceptual content more understandable [Bernard Robin].

Computational thinking:
In the 21st century, among other important problem solving skills needed is together with computational thinking skills. Seymour Papert introduces the term computational thinking (CT) in his book “Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas”. He referred to CT primarily as the relationship between programming and thinking skills.
Computational thinking has been declared as fundamental skills for solving complex problems we encounter every day (Wing, 2006). She stated in her definition of computational thinking (Wing, 2008), that it involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science. Later, Wing updated the definition, stating “Computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be effectively carried out by an information-processing agent”.

Methodology for development of students’ computational thinking:
Visual programming language Scratch has been chosen for creating designed digital stories. Students can transform their ideas into actions by creating projects which includes programmable media like videos, images, games, stories and animations and share it on Scratch online community.

Keywords:

Computational thinking, digital storytelling, block-based programming.