In the recent years, there has been a push to engage primary and secondary students in computer science to prepare them to live and work in a world influenced by computation. One of the efforts involves getting primary and secondary students to think computationally by introducing computational ideas such as, algorithms and abstraction. Majority…

As schools endeavor to provide all students with access to computational thinking and computer science, the hackathon emerges as a competitive and high-energy event that uses authentic problems to motivate learners to engage in the domain of computing. This article presents the design case of a hackathon for teenagers as enacted over five…

Researchers and educators have advocated computational thinking (CT) should be integrated into K-12 settings as early as elementary schools. However, there has been a lack of knowledge of how pre-service K-8 teachers would be engaged in the learning of CT and its integration in different subject areas. In this study, we taught a flipped learning…

In this paper, we propose that paper circuitry provides a productive space for exploring aspects of computational thinking, an increasingly critical 21st century skills for all students. We argue that the creation and operation of paper circuits involve learning about computational concepts such as rule-based constraints, operations, and defined…

Design involves solving complex, ill-structured problems. Design tasks are consequently, appropriate contexts for children to exercise higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills. Although creating engaging and authentic design contexts for young children is difficult within the confines of traditional schooling, recently, game-design has…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and results of an NSF funded Summer Academy from 2016 to 2018, which engaged, on an annual basis, 30 to 60 rising 10th and 11th grade high school science students in an innovative, technology-enriched Project Based Learning (PBL) environment. This Academy emphasized how tech gadgets work and the…