004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik
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Regardless of what is intended by government curriculum
specifications and advised by educational experts, the competencies
taught and learned in and out of classrooms can vary considerably.
In this paper, we discuss in particular how we can investigate the
perceptions that individual teachers have of competencies in ICT,
and how these and other factors may influence students’ learning. We
report case study research which identifies contradictions within the
teaching of ICT competencies as an activity system, highlighting issues
concerning the object of the curriculum, the roles of the participants and
the school cultures. In a particular case, contradictions in the learning
objectives between higher order skills and the use of application tools
have been resolved by a change in the teacher’s perceptions which
have not led to changes in other aspects of the activity system. We look
forward to further investigation of the effects of these contradictions in
other case studies and on forthcoming curriculum change.
Es wird ein Informatik-Wettbewerb für Schülerinnen und Schüler der Sekundarstufe II beschrieben, der über mehrere Wochen möglichst realitätsnah die Arbeitswelt eines Informatikers vorstellt. Im Wettbewerb erarbeiten die Schülerteams eine Android-App und organisieren ihre Entwicklung durch Projektmanagementmethoden, die sich an professionellen, agilen Prozessen orientieren. Im Beitrag werden der theoretische Hintergrund zu Wettbewerben, die organisatorischen und didaktischen Entscheidung, eine erste Evaluation sowie Reflexion und Ausblick dargestellt.
Computational Thinking
(2015)
Digital technology has radically changed the way people
work in industry, finance, services, media and commerce. Informatics
has contributed to the scientific and technological development of our
society in general and to the digital revolution in particular. Computational
thinking is the term indicating the key ideas of this discipline that
might be included in the key competencies underlying the curriculum
of compulsory education. The educational potential of informatics has
a history dating back to the sixties. In this article, we briefly revisit this
history looking for lessons learned. In particular, we focus on experiences
of teaching and learning programming. However, computational
thinking is more than coding. It is a way of thinking and practicing interactive
dynamic modeling with computers. We advocate that learners
can practice computational thinking in playful contexts where they can
develop personal projects, for example building videogames and/or robots,
share and discuss their construction with others. In our view, this
approach allows an integration of computational thinking in the K-12
curriculum across disciplines.
The paper presents two approaches to the development of
a Computer Science Competence Model for the needs of curriculum
development and evaluation in Higher Education. A normativetheoretical
approach is based on the AKT and ACM/IEEE curriculum
and will be used within the recommendations of the German
Informatics Society (GI) for the design of CS curricula. An empirically
oriented approach refines the categories of the first one with regard to
specific subject areas by conducting content analysis on CS curricula of
important universities from several countries. The refined model will be
used for the needs of students’ e-assessment and subsequent affirmative
action of the CS departments.
The Technology Proficiency Self-Assessment (TPSA) questionnaire
has been used for 15 years in the USA and other nations as a
self-efficacy measure for proficiencies fundamental to effective technology
integration in the classroom learning environment. Internal consistency
reliabilities for each of the five-item scales have typically ranged
from .73 to .88 for preservice or inservice technology-using teachers.
Due to changing technologies used in education, researchers sought to
renovate partially obsolete items and extend self-efficacy assessment to
new areas, such as social media and mobile learning. Analysis of 2014
data gathered on a new, 34 item version of the TPSA indicates that the
four established areas of email, World Wide Web (WWW), integrated
applications, and teaching with technology continue to form consistent
scales with reliabilities ranging from .81 to .93, while the 14 new items
gathered to represent emerging technologies and media separate into
two scales, each with internal consistency reliabilities greater than .9.
The renovated TPSA is deemed to be worthy of continued use in the
teaching with technology context.
Computational thinking is a fundamental skill set that is learned
by studying Informatics and ICT. We argue that its core ideas can
be introduced in an inspiring and integrated way to both teachers and
students using fun and contextually rich cs4fn ‘Computer Science for
Fun’ stories combined with ‘unplugged’ activities including games and
magic tricks. We also argue that understanding people is an important
part of computational thinking. Computational thinking can be fun for
everyone when taught in kinaesthetic ways away from technology.
The paper discusses the issue of supporting informatics
(computer science) education through competitions for lower and
upper secondary school students (8–19 years old). Competitions play
an important role for learners as a source of inspiration, innovation,
and attraction. Running contests in informatics for school students
for many years, we have noticed that the students consider the contest
experience very engaging and exciting as well as a learning experience.
A contest is an excellent instrument to involve students in problem
solving activities. An overview of infrastructure and development
of an informatics contest from international level to the national one
(the Bebras contest on informatics and computer fluency, originated
in Lithuania) is presented. The performance of Bebras contests in 23
countries during the last 10 years showed an unexpected and unusually
high acceptance by school students and teachers. Many thousands of
students participated and got a valuable input in addition to their regular
informatics lectures at school. In the paper, the main attention is paid
to the developed tasks and analysis of students’ task solving results in
Lithuania.
A lot has been published about the competencies needed by
students in the 21st century (Ravenscroft et al., 2012). However, equally
important are the competencies needed by educators in the new era
of digital education. We review the key competencies for educators in
light of the new methods of teaching and learning proposed by Massive
Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and their on-campus counterparts,
Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs).
Let’s talk about CS!
(2015)
To communicate about a science is the most important key
competence in education for any science. Without communication we
cannot teach, so teachers should reflect about the language they use in
class properly. But the language students and teachers use to communicate
about their CS courses is very heterogeneous, inconsistent and
deeply influenced by tool names. There is a big lack of research and
discussion in CS education regarding the terminology and the role of
concepts and tools in our science. We don’t have a consistent set of
terminology that we agree on to be helpful for learning our science.
This makes it nearly impossible to do research on CS competencies as
long as we have not agreed on the names we use to describe these. This
workshop intends to provide room to fill with discussion and first ideas
for future research in this field.