In education, we have noticed a significant gap between the ability of students to program in an educational visual programming environment and the ability to write code in a professional programming environment. The aim of our research was to verify the methodology of transition from visual programming of mobile applications in MIT App Inventor 2…

Background/purpose: At the beginning of the 21st century, Computational Thinking (CT) and coding were typically considered part of secondary education programs, focusing on programming and algorithm development. The early childhood classroom was not expected to find students who developed coding skills. Nevertheless, as has been the case lately,…

The Thunkable online platform is an easy-to-use resource for creating apps for mobile devices. Computational thinking is at the heart of problem solving in computer science, and research suggests students' computational thinking improves when they use simple block coding systems similar to the format used for Thunkable.

With a growing number of ScratchJr usage, over 19 million users worldwide, we examined the use in the United States of the free ScratchJr programming language, explicitly designed for young children ages 5-7, to learn how to code. Our objective was to explore children's usage of the ScratchJr tablet app at home and school settings. We analyzed…

This paper presents the Screencast-Based Assessment Technique (SBAT) for a mobile app development curriculum in the information systems discipline. SBAT was implemented as a midterm take-home exam in which students design and develop an app project based on their own interests, passions, or ambitions. In addition to coding, students must create…

This paper shares reflections and stories from a collaborative design process between the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and a global network of community-based educators to develop a creative coding app called OctoStudio, which supports children and families to create and share interactive projects on mobile devices. The app…

We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and how it impacted on a focus group of 3 and 4-year-old children's creativity. The questions that guided the design experimental method were: (1) how do young children develop and demonstrate creativity when learning through play with digital coding…

This book brings together a collection of work from around the world in order to consider effective STEM, robotics, mobile apps education from a range of perspectives. It presents valuable perspectives--both practical and theoretical--that enrich the current STEM, robotics, mobile apps education agenda. As such, the book makes a substantial…

Research Findings: Digital play is now commonplace in many young children's lives, but not in preschool settings. This situation is likely due to the fact that the existent literature seldom highlights what digital play looks like, the various ways it can be situated, and what young children do when they play together with digital devices in the…

The use of mobile devices in the language classroom can help accomplish innumerable learning objectives, yet many teachers regard smartphones and tablets as obstacles to lesson goals. However, as portable technology continues to infiltrate classroom boundaries, it is becoming increasingly clear that educators should find ways to take advantage of…

Mobile application development is currently an important component of CS/IS education. Because of the rapid rate of change in the mobile application field, there are many websites that provide instructional material in tutorial format, but it is difficult to find a textbook that includes mobile application programming assignments and exercises.…

As a nation of immigrants with diverse cultures and nationalities, one of the most striking occurrences in the United States educational system is the rapidly increasing enrollment of English Language Learners (ELLs). In view of their multicultural backgrounds, the multiliteracies education of ELLs is intertwined with their diverse socioeconomic,…

EtiquetAR is an authoring tool for supporting the design and enactment of situated learning experiences based on QR tags. Practitioners use etiquetAR for creating, managing and personalizing collections of QR codes with special properties: (1) codes can have more than one link pointing at different multimedia resources, (2) codes can be updated…

Background: College students experience weight gain that can contribute to serious health issues. Health education efforts with college students are increasingly utilizing new technologies. Smartphone applications (apps) in particular are growing in popularity and use in all young adults. Purpose: Formative research was conducted to describe how…

New technology devices such as iPads and iPods have become very popular and widely used in special education settings to teach students with disabilities. The 20 selected single-case design studies published by November 2015 were comprehensively reviewed to examine the effects of using iPads and iPods on academic performance and engagement of…