In this paper, we introduce the ChIP project, which aims at teaching coding in primary schools by using a series of educational games and hands-on activities. The overall idea is to determine the benefits and costs of this activity and to explore the meaning and the potential impact of learning to code for younger students. We describe the lessons learned from two 60 hours courses that took place in two different primary schools thus detailing the pros and cons of this experience.
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHItaly ’17, September 18-20, 2017, Cagliari, Italy.
Nowadays, technologies are acquiring more and more
relevance for young students. We find several examples
and demonstrations of how these new technologies help
learners in extremely different fields [
In the last years, the debate on when and how starting to teach computer science is becoming increasingly relevant. There are many programming platforms such as Scratch 1, Alice 2, Blockly 3, and Kodu 4 that can be used to teach students coding/programming and Computer Science in general. There are several educational games that exploit these platforms and some of them are oriented to the robotic programming.
Learning and playing are two strictly related aspects, and
they are natural components of children’s everyday lives.
Playing is fun for children, but at the same time, it
represents one of the ways they actually learn [
The project set as a learning outcome for the students the understanding of the main programming principles: simple statements, program state management (variables), conditional and iterative statements, simple functions. The project took place in two different primary schools in Cagliari, from March to June. For each lesson were present three coding tutors and one teacher. During the lessons, the tutors actively supported students in their tasks by giving them suggestions and little hints in order to help them in reaching the goal. In some cases, students were allowed to work in pairs.
1http://scratch.mit.edu 2http://www.alice.org 3http://blockly-games.appspot.com 4http://www.kodugamelab.com
The first classroom (C1) included 29 pupils, 12 boys and 17 girls aged between 9 and 11. The second one (C2) included 25 pupils, 14 boys and 11 girls aged between 6 and 11. In the former, we were able to create a single group since the children’s age was homogeneous. In the latter, we created three groups: (a) 3 girls and 5 boys aged between 6 and 7, (b) 5 girls and 3 boys aged between 8 and 9, (c) 3 girls and 6 boys aged between 10 and 11. In both classrooms were present pupils with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and the role of teachers was crucial to foster and manage their participation during course activities.
During the lesson, tutors used informal assessment techniques, such as asking questions or simply watching the students’ current performance on a task. They walked around while students were working on an activity, and observed the progress made by each pupil. This way allowed tutors to monitor each child’s progress on a specific task thus taking notes of the child’s current understanding and any areas in which the pupil may need assistance. If the students appeared confused or not interested in the lesson, the tutors adjusted their activities accordingly before reaching the end. In particular, due to the fact that some lessons lasted from two up to four hours (split into two main sessions), we allowed pupils to play videogames or to draw by using MS Paint during the last 20 minutes of the lesson. A short break between the main sessions helped tutors to keep a high attention level of pupils during the activities. Specifically, we followed three methodologies during the entire course: proper lesson, learning-by-doing, and hands-on laboratory. These methodologies have been applied by using different tools: coding with paper, educational games at increasing difficulty on Code.org, assessment games of our developed ChIP platform, robotic programming.
Since it was the first coding course for the majority of the pupils, they needed the introduction to Computer Science fundamentals before starting the activities. These fundamentals were taught by using everyday life examples, letting pupils understand what is a computer, how it works and how it is possible to program it in order to reach a specific goal. We had a short discussion on what an algorithm was, i.e. a set of steps or instructions that they would create and that they would then execute. This has been done as a group discussion and, lesson by lesson, they were able to understand the meaning of instructions, operators, iterators, conditional statements, functions and more.
During the explanations, tutors used informal assessment techniques, such as asking questions, in order to get the children’s current understanding. The learning-by-doing methodology has been largely used during the entire course. It consists in solving educational games by using a laptop. These games were proposed with increasing difficulty. In some cases, pupils were assisted by tutors to reach the problem solution or to produce a better one. During the hands-on sessions, pupils were supported in solving a problem in small groups. At the beginning of the course, they built a robot named Chip (Makeblock mBot5) under the supervision of a tutor.
A video report is available at https://youtu.be/wF4Lztzp9Ic.
We used different tools and techniques for introducing programming concepts to young students in fun and interactive ways. One was coding with paper that was useful for them in learning programming fundamentals at the beginning of the course since the medium did not constrain them and did not added the difficulty of using the desktop computer. We printed and cut a set of simple instructions on paper tags: turn left, turn right, turn on leds and more where the young programmers had to find their right order to achieve a task. The created algorithm was then executed to see if the solution was the correct one. During these sessions, we formed groups of two pupils. One was the programmer, while the the other one was the robot. We also adopted pixel-art techniques to let pupils draw by using a sort of algorithm made up by a list of direction to follow.
The use of educational games by using a laptop was a crucial activity during the lesson. First, they used a subset of Blockly games, then they started to use the Code.org6 games that are based on Blockly too (see Fig. 2). Blockly is a visual programming language, where users drag and drop blocks together in order to generate code. Code.org offers the opportunity for students to learn computer science by using this approach. At the same time, it offers several statistics and tools to educators.
In Code.org, the students of the first classroom (C1) worked on course 2, 3, and 4. Course 2 is dedicated to students who can read and have no prior programming experience. In this course, students will create programs to solve problems and develop interactive games or stories they can share (recommended for grades 2-5). In course 3 students are lead into programming topics introduced in previous courses to create flexible solutions to more complex problems (recommended for grades 4-5). In course 4 students will learn how to solve puzzles with increased complexity as they learn how to combine several concepts (including loops and functions with parameters) when solving each challenge (recommended for grades 4-8). In C2 it has been 5http://www.makeblock.com 6https://code.org necessary for some pupils (those aged between 6 and 7) to start with the course 1 that is designed for early readers. In combination with these games, pupils used a customised version of the Blockly platform that was developed by our group where the main character is the robot Chip and it has to collect bags of garbage while finding the maze exit (see Fig. 1). This web game 7 has been made real by using an mBot robot. It has been programmed by the pupils with the support of tutors. The device mBot is a cheap Arduinobased robotics kit that allows students to assemble it with motors and sensors without requiring students to know anything about electronics. Both sensors and motors are easy to plug with cables. Due to the fact that it is equipped with an Arduino board, it is possible to programming it with the Arduino programming language or by using the Scratch environment mBlock. The device can be remotely controlled by Bluetooth (or WiFi, it depends on the version). We built a small-size maze where the posts and pegs were 3D printed and the rest of the construction was 4mm wooden board and black masking tape.
As shown in Fig. 3 and 4, it has been reached a really good
result in term comprehension of the proposed topics in both
C1 and C2 classrooms. Specifically, T2.1 corresponds to
information representation, T2.2 to simple instructions, T2.3
to conditional instructions, T2.4 to iterative instructions and
T2.5 to functions and procedures. In both classrooms, a
critical topic was the T2.5, due to the fact that it requires
a good ability of abstraction that is not yet developed
during primary school age. In fact, in the concrete operational
stage (from age 7 to 11), they begin to think more logically
and they tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical
7http://spano.sc.unica.it/chip/appengine/index.html?lang=it
concepts [
The authors are grateful to the children, teachers and the class presidents of both Istituto Comprensivo n. 4 in Quartu Sant’Elena (CA) and Primo Circolo Didattico Selargius (CA) who participated in our study.