Visioning the teaching of computing in elementary schools in Brazil, the initiative Computação na Escola is training Young Tutors (elementary students) and Voluntary Mentors (IT professionals) to program mobile applications. These young tutors and volunteer mentors will be supporting elementary school teachers in teaching computing in public schools with the objective to reach a larger number of students. The project also contributes to the education of young tutors in the area of computing, providing learning and contact with professionals in the area, bringing practical experience to the young people and children involved.
The project is being coordinated by the initiative Computação na Escola/INCoD/INE/UFSC dedicated to provide to all elementary school students the opportunity to learn computing. Currently the pilot of the project is being held at the public elementary school Prof.ª Herondina Medeiros Zeferino in Florianópolis.
This project is being sponsored by Involves Tecnologia e Inovação, a software company based in Florianópolis/SC that develops systems aimed at increasing the visibility and availability of products at sale points and improving the execution of field teams in retail.
Beginning this project, 25 students from the elementary school Prof.ª Herondina Medeiros Zeferino visited the headquarters of the sponsoring company Involves and got to know a bit about the day-to-day of a technology company, visiting each of the sectors and talking to a representative each function.
During this project young tutors, volunteers and school students will learn how to make applications with App Inventor. App Inventor 2 is an open-source web application originally developed by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). To create your app, you only need a browser (eg. Chrome , Firefox, Safari , etc. – not Internet Explorer), a free Google account and an internet connection to download your apps to an Android device (phone or tablet) using a wireless network. You can share your app in the gallery for free or upload to Google Play (in this case there is a fee to register as a developer).
Companies/organizations interested in sponsoring other Young Tutor projects may contact the initiative:
Telefone: +55 (48) 3721-7380 /+55 (48) 3721-4715 or via email: computacaonaescola@incod.ufsc.br
Workshop teaching the programming of a game app with App Inventor to undergraduate and graduate students from the Design course of the Department of Graphic Expression (CCE-UFSC).
The workshop was given by the students Nathalia da Cruz Alves and Raul Missfeldt Filho under the supervision of Prof. Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim within the cooperation of the GQS/INCoD/INE/UFSC and the Hiperlab/CCE/UFSC under the coordenation of Prof. Berenice Santos Gonçalves.
More information …
Sorry, this entry is only available in Brazilian Portuguese.
The article Ensino de Computação de Forma Multidisciplinar em Disciplinas de História no Ensino Fundamental – Um Estudo de Caso presents our instructional unit UNIfICA – UNidade Instrucional Interdisciplinar de Computação e HistóriA for teaching the programming of games with Scratch/Snap! in History classes. The article also reports our experiences and results from applying the unit in 4 classes in an elementary school in Florianópolis/SC.
Reference:
ALVES, N. d. C. , GRESSE VON WANGENHEIM, C., RODRIGUES, P. E., HAUCK, J. C. R., BORGATTO, A. F. Ensino de Computação de Forma Multidisciplinar em Disciplinas de História no Ensino Fundamental – Um Estudo de Caso. Revista Brasileira de Informática na Educação, 24(3), 2016. (pdf)
Learning computing with SCRATCH developing an interactive story with the 1. Year at the School Autonomia
Here are the first examples of projects programmed by the students. To run the interactive stories you must first click on the green flag on the images to start the programs. You can interact using the right/left arrow keys to make little red riding hood walk, the wolf eat or the scene change etc. You can also view the SCRATCH code programmed by the student, clicking on the project name to access the project and the code programmed at the SCRATCH site.
Project A
Project B
Project C
Access here all projects.
Read more: GRESSE VON WANGENHEIM, C.; NUNES, V. R.; DOS SANTOS, G. D. Ensino de Computação com SCRATCH no Ensino Fundamental – Um Estudo de Caso. Revista Brasileira de Informática na Educação, 22(03), 2014. (pdf)
Students of the 6th grade at the public elementary school E.B.M. Prefeito Reinaldo Weingartner in Palhoça/SC learned to program a game with Scratch. In an interdisciplinary way, the students created games related to content previously discussed in history classes about pre-historic topics . In 12 lessons the students learned basic computing concepts, programming, computational thinking and collaboration.
SCRATCH is a visual programming language and an online community where children can program and share interactive media, such as stories , games and animations with people around the world. Creating with SCRATCH, they learn to think creatively, work collaboratively, and to think in a systematic and logical way. SCRATCH is a freely available open-source software, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. SCRATCH is a creative learning community present in more than 150 countries with more than 11 million users.
The workshop is the result of undergraduate thesis ” Development of an interdisciplinary instructional unit to teach computing in elementary school” of Nathalia Alves Cruz, a student of the Undergraduate
Computer Science course at the Department of Informatics and Statistics (INE ) of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC).
Soon we will be publishing the instructional material on our website.
A hands-on programming workshop, in which participants enter the world of computing by learning how to program an app for Android smartphones. Participants learn to program the game “Mosquito Hunt” with a mosquito flying around the screen and the player trying to catch the mosquito.
During the workshop, students learn step-by-step how to create an app using App Inventor 2, even if they never have programmed before. And, in addition to programming they will also learn fundamental computing concepts aligned with the K -12 curriculum guidelines (ACM/CSTA , 2011) , including creative thinking, collaboration, and logic reasoning.
Duration : 3 – 4 hours
Level: Beginner (primarily 8 – 14 years)
App Inventor 2 is an open-source web application originally developed by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). To create your app, you only need a browser (eg. Chrome , Firefox, Safari , etc. – not Internet Explorer), a free Google account and an internet connection to download your apps to an Android device (phone or tablet) using a wireless network. You can share your app in the gallery for free or upload to Google Play (in this case there is a fee to register as a developer).
Try it out now with our step by step online tutorial (in Brazilian Portuguese).
Teaching material. We are sharing the complete teaching material of the workshop for non-commercial applications (Creative Commons Atribuição-NãoComercial-CompartilhaIgual 4.0 Internacional). Currently the material is available only in Brazilian Portuguese:
Share your experiences in the classroom with us via email (computacaonaescola@incod.ufsc.br) or our facebook group.
References:
DANIEL, G. T.; GRESSE VON WANGENHEIM, C. ; MEDEIROS, G.; ALVES, N. d. C. Ensinando a Computação por meio de Programação com App Inventor. Computer on the Beach, Florianópolis/Brazil, 2017.
Guilherme Trilha Daniel. Design de Unidade Instrucional de Desenvolvimento de Aplicativos para o Ensino Fundamental. 2016. Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso. (Graduação em Ciência da Computação) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Atribuição-NãoComercial-CompartilhaIgual 4.0 Internacional.
Warranty disclaimer
In a new workshop of the initiative Computação na Escola, students of the elementary school Prof.ª Herondina Medeiros Zeferino in Florianópolis/Brazil learned to program a mobile app with App Inventor.
In this 3-hours workshop students learned to make the game Mosquito Hunting, in which the mosquito flies on the mobile screen and the player must eliminate the mosquito by tapping on it.
App Inventor 2 is a freely available open-source software that makes it easy for anyone to create mobile applications for Android (phones and tablet) devices.
Soon we will provide a tutorial on our website explaining step-by-step how to develop this game.
Sorry, this entry is only available in Brazilian Portuguese.
By experimenting to program our minion robot and games at our booth, you will see how easy and interesting it is to learn how to program with SCRATCH.
The Minion is controlled by an Arduino and programmed via SCRATCH – a visual programming language.
The Education, Research and Outreach Week (SEPEX) at the Federal University of Santa Catarina took place from 11 – 14th November 2015 in Florianópolis/Brazil.
About 4000 people visited our exhibit. Based on data collected via our opinionmeter the vast majority of visitors found our exhibit great.
Making of …
Experiment to program the little friend of our Minion-shaped robot.
More information:
C. Gresse von Wangenheim, A. von Wangenheim, F. S. Pacheco, M. N. Fortuna Ferreira. Physical Computing Outreach at Exhibitions. Technical Report INCoD/GQS.03.2015.E, Brazilian Institute for Digital Convergence, Informatics and Statistics Department, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis/Brazil, 2015.
C. Gresse von Wangenheim, A. von Wangenheim, F. S. Pacheco, M. N. Ferreira, J. C. R. Hauck. 5 Minutos de Programação em Exibições. 25° Workshop sobre Educação em Computação (CSBC/WEI). São Paulo, SP.
