Computer programming is regarded as an important skill for the future. However, many K-12 students face challenges and difficulties in learning traditional text-based programming. Block-based visual programming (BVP) can reduce the difficulty of learning programming and is seen as a potential programming education tool. Nevertheless, the effects…

Computational Thinking (CT) has emerged in recent years as a thematic trend in education in many countries and several initiatives have been developed for its inclusion in school curricula. There are many pedagogical strategies to promote the development of elementary school students' CT skills and knowledge. Unplugged learning tasks, block-based…

Today, in the era of robotics, different types of educational robots have been used extensively in school classrooms to facilitate teaching activities related to a variety of computer science concepts. Numerous studies have been performed that attempt to examine the effects of using tangible interfaces to enhance collaborative learning…

Research indicates that understanding levels of abstraction (LOA) and being able to move between the levels is essential to programming success. For K-5 contexts we rename the LOA levels: problem, design, code and running the code. In our qualitative exploratory study, we interviewed five K-5 teachers on their uses of LOA, particularly the design…

Abstraction is one of the most fundamental ideas in computer science (CS), and as such, according to Bruner, it should be taught spirally, starting as early as possible and revisited at every level of education. However, teaching CS abstraction to novices is a very challenging task, and CS educational research has often demonstrated students'…

This paper describes a unit designed to promote the development of narrative writing skills among 5th grade students through the use of LEGO robotics. Over the course of four, two and one-half hour sessions (one day per week for four consecutive weeks), the students learned how to construct and program robots, write and present a proposal to…

In this study, the effect of Scratch environment in teaching algorithm in elementary school 6th grade Information and Communication Technologies course was examined. The research method was experimental method. Control group, pretest-posttest design of experimental research method and a convenience sample consisting of 60 6th grade students were…

Media play an important role in young people's lives as an agent of socialization, both generally and with regard to mathematics. To understand the mathematics-related messages disseminated to young people via popular media, we analyzed portrayals of mathematics and mathematicians in over 40 media examples (television shows, movies, websites,…

Programming and the use of robotics present affordances for mathematics learning with application across a broad range of ages. However, realising these affordances in the classroom requires educators to recognise and build apron these potential opportunities for learning. This paper reports one component of a larger study, examining teacher…

The study investigated pre-service ICT teachers' perceptions of algorithm visualization (AV) with regard to appropriateness of teaching levels and contribution to learning and motivation. In order to achieve this aim, a qualitative case study was carried out. The participants consisted of 218 pre-service ICT teachers from four different…

One of the biggest problems in teaching Mathematics is the motivation of students (Kloosterman, 1997; Lambic, 2008). The core of this problem is insufficient comprehension of reasons by students, why they want to learn Mathematics and in which way they could apply acquired knowledge of Mathematics (Southwell, 1994; Musto, 2008). Since programming…

The introduction of computer programming in K-12 has become mainstream in the last years, as countries around the world are making coding part of their curriculum. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical studies that investigate how learning to program at an early age affects other school subjects. In this regard, this paper compares three…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whole classroom discourse during modeling-based learning in science, seeking to describe the discourse's characteristics, its relation to the micro-context in which it took place and to the student-constructed models, and to ascertain when it becomes productive. Additionally, we aimed to describe how…

In a context-aware ubiquitous learning environment, learning systems can detect students' learning behaviors in the real-world with the help of context-aware (sensor) technology; that is, students can be guided to observe or operate real-world objects with personalized support from the digital world. In this study, an optimization problem that…

The Second International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM2009) was held at the University of Cordoba, Spain, on July 1-3, 2009. EDM brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large data sets to answer educational research questions. The increase in instrumented…