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Informatics as a school subject has been virtually absent from bilingual education programs in German secondary schools. Most bilingual programs in German secondary education started out by focusing on subjects from the field of social sciences. Teachers and bilingual curriculum experts alike have been regarding those as the most suitable subjects for bilingual instruction – largely due to the intercultural perspective that a bilingual approach provides. And though one cannot deny the gain that ensues from an intercultural perspective on subjects such as history or geography, this benefit is certainly not limited to social science subjects. In consequence, bilingual curriculum designers have already begun to include other subjects such as physics or chemistry in bilingual school programs. It only seems a small step to extend this to informatics. This paper will start out by addressing potential benefits of adding informatics to the range of subjects taught as part of English-language bilingual programs in German secondary education. In a second step it will sketch out a methodological (= didactical) model for teaching informatics to German learners through English. It will then provide two items of hands-on and tested teaching material in accordance with this model. The discussion will conclude with a brief outlook on the chances and prerequisites of firmly establishing informatics as part of bilingual school curricula in Germany.
The process of introducing compulsory ICT education at primary school level in the Czech Republic should be completed next year. Programming and Information, two topics from the basics of computer science have been included in a new textbook. The question is whether the new chapters of the textbook are comprehensible for primary school teachers, who have undergone no training in computer science. The paper reports on a pilot verification project in which pre-service primary school teachers were trained to teach these informatics topics.
.NET Gadgeteer Workshop
(2013)
We launched an original large-scale experiment concerning informatics learning in French high schools. We are using the France-IOI platform to federate resources and share observation for research. The first step is the implementation of an adaptive hypermedia based on very fine grain epistemic modules for Python programming learning. We define the necessary traces to be built in order to study the trajectories of navigation the pupils will draw across this hypermedia. It may be browsed by pupils either as a course support, or an extra help to solve the list of exercises (mainly for algorithmics discovery). By leaving the locus of control to the learner, we want to observe the different trajectories they finally draw through our system. These trajectories may be abstracted and interpreted as strategies and then compared for their relative efficiency. Our hypothesis is that learners have different profiles and may use the appropriate strategy accordingly. This paper presents the research questions, the method and the expected results.
Problem solving is one of the central activities performed by computer scientists as well as by computer science learners. Whereas the teaching of algorithms and programming languages is usually well structured within a curriculum, the development of learners’ problem-solving skills is largely implicit and less structured. Students at all levels often face difficulties in problem analysis and solution construction. The basic assumption of the workshop is that without some formal instruction on effective strategies, even the most inventive learner may resort to unproductive trial-and-error problemsolving processes. Hence, it is important to teach problem-solving strategies and to guide teachers on how to teach their pupils this cognitive tool. Computer science educators should be aware of the difficulties and acquire appropriate pedagogical tools to help their learners gain and experience problem-solving skills.
We present a concept of better integration of practical teaching in student teacher education in Computer Science. As an introduction to the workshop different possible scenarios are discussed on the basis of examples. Afterwards workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss the application of the aconcepts in other settings.
Japan launched the new Course of Study in April 2012, which has been carried out in elementary schools and junior high schools. It will also be implemented in senior high schools from April 2013. This article presents an overview of the information studies education in the new Course of Study for K-12. Besides, the authors point out what role experts of informatics and information studies education should play in the general education centered around information studies that is meant to help people of the nation to lead an active, powerful, and flexible life until the satisfying end.
Development of competence-oriented curricula is still an important theme in informatics education. Unfortunately informatics curricula, which include the domain of logic programming, are still input-orientated or lack detailed competence descriptions. Therefore, the development of competence model and of learning outcomes' descriptions is essential for the learning process in this domain. A prior research developed both. The next research step is to formulate test items to measure the described learning outcomes. This article describes this procedure and exemplifies test items. It also relates a test in school to the items and shows which misconceptions and typical errors are important to discuss in class. The test result can also confirm or disprove the competence model. Therefore, this school test is important for theoretical research as well as for the concrete planning of lessons. Quantitative analysis in school is important for evaluation and improvement of informatics education.
The traditional purpose of algorithm in education is to prepare students for programming. In our effort to introduce the practically missing computing science into Czech general secondary education, we have revisited this purpose.We propose an approach, which is in better accordance with the goals of general secondary education in Czechia. The importance of programming is diminishing, while recognition of algorithmic procedures and precise (yet concise) communication of algorithms is gaining importance. This includes expressing algorithms in natural language, which is more useful for most of the students than programming. We propose criteria to evaluate such descriptions. Finally, an idea about the limitations is required (inefficient algorithms, unsolvable problems, Turing’s test). We describe these adjusted educational goals and an outline of the resulting course. Our experience with carrying out the proposed intentions is satisfactory, although we did not accomplish all the defined goals.
In this paper, we show how the theory of NP completeness can be introduced to students in secondary schools. The motivation of this research is that although there are difficult issues that require technical backgrounds, students are already familiar with demanding computational problems through games such as Sudoku or Tetris. Our intention is to bring together important concepts in the theory of NP completeness in such a way that students in secondary schools can easily understand them. This is part of our ongoing research about how to teach fundamental issues in Computer Science in secondary schools. We discuss what needs to be taught in which sequence in order to introduce ideas behind NP completeness to students without technical backgrounds.