Maria Knobelsdorf, University of Dortmund, Germany - Didaktik der ...

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InfoSphere with their whole class as part of their school activity, school students can take part in additional workshops on their own. For this purpose we frequently offer special workshops which allow an individual registration. Thus, we can first reach all students of a class and try to raise an interest in CS topics and then continue to support especially interested kids. InfoSphere is integrated into our educational concept for CS teacher training, which makes up our second target group. Teacher students register for three consecutive courses in CS didactics over three semesters. After learning the basics of CS didactics during the first course, they create an InfoSphere workshop in groups of two to three students during the second course. By designing and preparing the learning materials and then moderating InfoSphere workshops with school students they gain practical experience about the didactical reduction of CS topics, didactical design, utilizing different innovative learning methodologies, and acting in front of a group of school students. To merge the specialized knowledge of CS at university on the one hand and the school students’ prior knowledge and skills on the other hand is a challenging task when designing a workshop. Especially the different challenges for different age groups are addressed during the second semester course. The third course in CS didactics is used to reflect the previous experiences under consideration of various pedagogical approaches which can be used to teach CS in school and in the InfoSphere. In addition to students from school and university, professional CS teachers are our third target group. The main value of InfoSphere for this group consists of the extracurricular learning units to various and novel CS topics. They can visit InfoSphere with their class to give their students an enthusing insight into CS. During the workshop the teachers experience their students from a neutral and observing perspective, which is almost impossible during regular lessons. Thereby they get to know much about the students’ learning methods and social skills. Apart from this, the teachers can download many additional learning materials for use in their own school lessons from our website 2 for free. 3.2 Basic Conditions In the following section we present the basic conditions of our extracurricular learning environment. These specifications comprise our public relations, the room concept, the available technologies and the applied learning materials. Public Relations We have designed a website 2 , flyers and several posters. We present InfoSphere at several conferences across Europe and we regularly exhibit on events such as the science night of RWTH Aachen University or the local forum for STEM education. In addition, we present posters and spread out flyers at many different activities for school students, e.g. the information day at the RWTH Aachen University, Girl’s day, or go4IT!-workshops. Our website helps us to get in contact with CS teachers, interested school students and their parents. On the website you can find information about all provided workshops. Teachers, parents or older students can find out what the workshops are about, what are the target groups, the duration of the workshops and the expected prior knowledge. Accordingly, they can choose and register to the best fitting workshop for their classes, their children 2 http://schuelerlabor.informatik.rwth-aachen.de or http://www.schuelerlabor-informatik.de 28 or themselves. Two different monthly newsletters inform school students and adults about current events. In the download area especially teachers find a lot of material to enhance their regular school lessons. For example we provide materials for self-study, which allows teachers to promote their students’ talent without neglecting the remaining class. The equipment of an extracurricular learning environment also plays an important role for its success; starting with the layout of the rooms, the technological equipment up to the specifically designed hands-on materials for the workshops. Room Concept The building consists of several separated rooms which are placed on two different floors. The biggest one holds the “experimental area” and is located in the center of the building over both floors. The “teaching room” is located on level 2 and can be used for microteaching units. The further rooms are a contest area, an office and storerooms for all materials (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Room concept The students spend most of the time in the huge experimental area, which also contains five big tables for six to eight students. The specific designed furnishings support working in groups and utilizing technology, which are both typical for CS and especially software development. This room is ideal for all active parts of the workshops, because the students are able to talk with each other about problems and encouraged to experiment with possible solutions and realize them in groups. During microteaching phases or students’ presentations we use the teaching room. The tables and chairs are flexible, so we can arrange them in rows of chairs, a circle of chairs or small group tables for four students. One big advantage of changing the location is that the students stop to work on their tasks and thus listen to the tutors or their classmates. During a workshop the
participants change between the rooms depending on the didactical concept of a phase. The contest area can be used by small groups of students to discuss or test their work or to prepare presentations. Finally, the storerooms are very important for us because we use a lot of selfdesigned hands-on materials for the workshops (see section 4.2 Didactic Concept) which has to be stored. Additionally to the available seating in the different rooms there is a lot open space, which can be used to experiment with the handson-materials. The overall idea is to encourage the students to move around the building to find classmates to discuss their questions. Technologies The collection of technologies available in InfoSphere also makes a big difference to regular school classes. In brief, we can work with laptops, interactive whiteboards, smartphones, tablets, microcontrollers, multi-touch-tables, digital cameras, and several more specialized devices such as barcode-scanners or traffic light models. We have 32 laptops with Wi-Fi connection. Although it is theoretically possible to give each student one laptop we only do so during the evaluation phase at the end of the workshops (see section 5). During the workshops the participants share one laptop by two or three students because we want them to work in groups. This supports creative thinking and also counteracts the prejudice that computer scientists always work alone. We prefer mobile computers like laptops, tablets, or smartphones instead of desktop computers so that participants are able to move around and cooperate in flexible teams and working with varying technology or learning materials. Besides several flipcharts there are two interactive whiteboards, one in the experimental area and one in the micro-teaching room. They are height-adjustable and therefore also usable for smaller kids. These whiteboards are used for presentations or classroom discussions. A special advantage of InfoSphere over regular schools are 12 smartphones and 27 tablets (of different types), which run Android and can be programmed by the students. So far they are utilized in two different workshops; another one is currently in development. Furthermore, we are preparing two workshops based on microcontrollers. With this technological equipment we demonstrate that CS offers opportunities beyond the user-side of systems and allows students to create and design technology according to their own imagination. In addition, there are three multi-touch-tables available. The big advantage of these is the possibility to use them with up to eight students for collaborative learning. Currently, we have only used them for research prototypes with university students (see [13]) but not yet during InfoSphere workshops with school students due to technical problems with the tables. For more information about our current workshop offering (as of June 2012) see section 4. Materials Because of our goal to present many different facets of CS to primary and secondary school students of all ages it is fundamental to design a plethora of learning materials. Many of these are hands-on materials to address different senses. Because there are no ready-to-use learning materials to all the different CS topics most of them are especially designed for the corresponding workshops. These materials consist of videos, simulations, handson models, physical circuits or self-developed software programs. 29 Furthermore, we use the learning management system Moodle 3 for some workshops. This helps us to provide the digital materials in a well-organized form. Within the system it is possible to present texts, pictures, videos or simulations to the participants. Sometimes the students’ have to answer question or solve little tasks to proceed to the next section. As a result of this the learning takes place in a self-regulated manner and there is no need for a tutor to check the answers. Therefore the teacher has time to observe her or his school students and the student instructors have time to help participants with individual problems. 3.3 Workshop Organization All workshops take place in the InfoSphere environment with its special infrastructure and well prepared learning materials. It is also a positive effect that students come to new surroundings with a different atmosphere. The workshops are mentored by university students; who help the school students without assessing them. They are also close in their age. In this way InfoSphere also targets school students who are not yet interested in CS and allows them to experiment with different topics without being under the pressure to perform. The second significant difference from regular CS lessons in school is the flexibility in time. There is no structure of 45 or 90 minute slots. The workshops last from three hours up to three days. This is the reason why it is possible to use all kinds of different learning methods (see 4.2). 4. WORKSHOP CONCEPT 4.1 Overview over the workshops The current InfoSphere workshops with the corresponding target groups are displayed in Table 2. There is one workshop for primary school students, six workshops for middle school students and six for high school students. Accordingly, the topics differ from binary numbers to artificial intelligence. Table 2. Overview over the existing workshops Nr. Title Age of the target group (in years) 1 Magic of CS – A First Insight into CS [3, 7] 8-9 2 Easily Programming with Scratch 10-12 3 Tour into the PC 10-12 4 What’s about the Zebra Crossing? – EAN- & QR-Codes 5 Treasure Hunt with Cryptographic Methods [5] 10-12 11-13 6 Searching for the Shortest Path 13-16 7 Object-oriented Programming with Alice 15-17 8 Artificial Intelligence 16-18 9 Lego-Turing Machine 17-18 10 Calculating with DNA 17-19 11 GUI-Programming for Android 17-19 3 http://subprogra.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/moodle2/
Page 1 and 2: Fakultät für Mathematik, Informat
Page 3 and 4: Program Committee Michal Armoni Wei
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Promoting Computational Thinking wi
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algorithm or a product is viewed as
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Preparing Teachers for Teaching Inf
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However, even when such learning th
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Grand challenges for the UK: Upskil
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first two questions. We maintain th
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(Some) Grand Challenges of Computer
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ecoming more student-centered. Inde
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[13] OECD. (2006). Are students rea
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in the world, for example, as descr
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The aims of the case study were to
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The focus group girls were more con
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tool for teachers and students in t
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eledSQL - A New Web-Based Learning
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create and manage teacher accounts.
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ABSTRACT Bringing Contexts into the
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3.1.1 Greenfoot as a framework for
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Real-world context Views of Computi
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Real-world context GP Context Artif
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i. e. theories, models, frameworks,
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number P-156 in Lecture Notes in In
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1. Context-based education in compu
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grade 4, 5, 6 or 8, depending on ch
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the highest rate of implementation
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Information Theory on Czech Grammar
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of information in a message M, repr
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Data modeling and database systems
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the knowledge about ICT and CS (see
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The Mindstorm Effect: A Gender Anal
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Teachersʼ Perceptions Of The Value
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Technocamps: Bringing Computer Scie
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Abenteuer Informatik - Hands-on exh
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Gaming and Mathematics: A Cross Cur
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Turi: Chatbot software for schools
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ABSTRACT Learning Fields in Vocatio
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ABSTRACT This study examines the po
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