This paper is part of a wider action research project taking place at a secondary school in South Wales, UK. The overarching aim of the project is to examine the potential for aspects of literacy and computational thinking to be developed using extensible 'build your own block' programming activities. This paper examines classroom talk at an…

Coding, once considered an arcane craft practiced by solitary techies, is now recognized by educators and theorists as a crucial skill, even a new literacy, for all children. Programming is often promoted in K-12 schools as a way to encourage "computational thinking"--which has now become the umbrella term for understanding what computer…

This study examining the robotic codings and robotic tournaments from the perspectives of Information Technology (IT) teachers was carried out using the qualitative case study method. In the study, a total of 20 teachers from private schools and state schools were asked for their views. The research data collected from the IT teachers helped…

The popular press is rife with examples of how students in the United States and around the globe are learning to program, make, and tinker. The Hour of Code, maker-education, and similar efforts are advocating that more students be exposed to principles found within computer science. We propose an expansion beyond simply teaching computational…

For supporting the education of debugging skills, we propose a system for generating error correction questions of programs and checking the correctness. The system generates HTML files for answering questions and CGI programs for checking answers. Learners read and answer questions on Web browsers. For management of error injection, we have…

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts over 8 million job openings in IT and computing, including 1 million cybersecurity postings, over the current five-year period. This paper presents lessons learned in preparing middle-school students in rural Georgia for future careers in computer science/ IT by teaching computer programming in the free,…

Computer technologies and computer-mediated information and communication are increasingly parts of curriculum-making practices in education. These technologies are often taken to be simply tools to be used to enhance teaching and learning. However, in recent years, a range of cross-disciplinary studies have started to point to the work of code,…

Undergraduate computer science students need to learn analytical reasoning skills to develop high-quality software and to understand why the software they develop works as specified. To accomplish this central educational objective, this article describes a systematic process of introducing reasoning skills into the curriculum and assessing how…

Digital technology offers new possibilities for children to play, express themselves, learn, and communicate. A recent development in online practice is a shift toward youth engaged in computer programming online communities. Programming is argued to be the new literacy of the millennium. In this article, I examine the use of Scratch, an online…

Computational thinking is a component of the Science and Engineering Practices in the Next Generation Science Standards, which were adopted by some states. We describe the activities in a high school chemistry course that may develop students' computational thinking skills by primarily using Excel, a widely available spreadsheet software. These…

Perspectives of students on what constitutes source-code plagiarism may differ based on their educational background. Surveys have been conducted with home students undertaking computing and joint computing subject degrees at higher education institutions throughout the UK, China, and South Cyprus, and a total of 984 responses have been…

In this article, I describe a series of Five Core Competencies that gifted education specialists should consider integrating into their teaching to respond to the many changes that are taking place in technology, work, and career preparation. Although the focus of this theory is on high- level jobs usually pursued by college graduates and advanced…

Agile methods and approaches such as eXtreme programming (XP) have become the norm for successful organizations not only in the software industry but also for businesses seeking to improve internal software processes. Pair programming in some form is touted as a major functionality and productivity improvement. However, numerous studies show that…

Despite the growing popularity of teaching children to program games, little is known about the benefits for learning. In this article, the authors propose that game mechanics can be used as a window into how the children are thinking and describe a strategy for using them to analyze students' games. The study involved sixty 10-14 year old…

Purpose: This paper aims to argue that the process of making an original game develops digital literacy skills and provides an authentic learning experience as students create, publish and deploy interactive games. Teaching students to create computer games has become common in both K-12 and tertiary education to introducing programming concepts,…