Computational Thinking in K-9 Education

Transcription

1 Computational Thinking in K-9 Education Linda Mannila Åbo Akademi University Turku, Finland Natasa Grgurina University of Groningen Groningen, Netherlands Valentina Dagiene Vilnius University Vilnius, Lithuania Claudio Mirolo University of Udine Udine, Italy Amber Settle DePaul University Chicago, USA Barbara Demo University of Turin Turin, Italy Lennart Rolandsson KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden ABSTRACT In this report we consider the current status of the coverage of computer science in education at the lowest levels of education in multiple countries. Our focus is on computational thinking (CT), a term meant to encompass a set of concepts and thought processes that aid in formulating problems and their solutions in different fields in a way that could involve computers [130]. The main goal of this report is to help teachers, those involved in teacher education, and decision makers to make informed decisions about how and when CT can be included in their local institutions. We begin by defining CT and then discuss the current state of CT in K-9 education in multiple countries in Europe as well as the United States. Since many students are exposed to CT outside of school, we also discuss the current state of informal educational initiatives in the same set of countries. An important contribution of the report is a survey distributed to K-9 teachers, aiming at revealing to what extent different aspects of CT are already part of teachers classroom practice and how this is done. The survey data suggest that some teachers are already involved in activities that have strong potential for introducing some aspects of CT. In addition to the examples given by teachers participating in the survey, we present some additional sample activities and lesson plans for working with aspects of CT in different subjects. We also discuss ways in which teacher training can be coordinated as well as the issue of repositories. We conclude with future directions for research in CT at school. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ITiCSE-WGR 14, June 23-25, 2014, Uppsala, Sweden Copyright 2014 ACM /14/06...$ INTRODUCTION Lately we have witnessed an increasingly active conversation as to whether programming should be made an integral part of school curricula at different levels. Initiatives such as Code.org [23], Hour of Code [69] and European Code Week [50] suggest that both educators and students should give programming a try. These efforts have a particular emphasis on reaching a broad population. People from political leaders to designers and engineers give official statements on the importance of programming and computer science (CS) for everyone [1, 87, 59, 60, 82, 112]. The conversation is inspired by the realization that CS is no longer only important for those who want to become computer scientists but for everyone: [c]omputer science develops students computational and critical thinking skills and shows them how to create, not simply use, new technologies. This fundamental knowledge is needed to prepare students for the 21st century, regardless of their ultimate field of study or occupation [27]. In addition, there is a need for fix[ing] computing science s image, since we need to propagate informatics explicitly as a field for people who think about the properties and structures of the information world we live in and join in discovering how this world can be mastered [126]. Currently, CS is not reaching the broadest audience possible, as the proportion of women and ethnic minorities remains low [103]. Further complicating matters is a tendency to emphasize digital literacy and consuming technology at school, over dealing with the underlying principles, learning to understand, and create technology. There are examples of countries around the world where programming or CS has been or will be introduced into early childhood education. For instance, in Europe, the European Schoolnet recently (October 2014) published a report surveying the current situation in 20 European countries [51]. In 13 of these countries, programming is already or about to be introduced in K-9 education. In seven of these, for instance, Estonia, England and Greece, programming is included as a compulsory part of the curriculum. This common approach to computing is focused on products rather than processes and, as a consequence, the actual 1

2 treatments of data can neither be clearly conceptualized nor verbalized [55]. As Bruillard (2004) points out, a careful investigation reveals the lot of information known by pupils without framework to organize them. More specifically, the notion of processing was most of the times absent, only the visible part of computers being recognized. [...] To summarize, many users learn by approximation not by understanding [15]. The step from making a decision on including CS in the curriculum to actually having educators teaching it is long and riddled with questions. What should be taught? Should it be integrated in other subjects or included as a subject of its own? How will educators learn to teach it? What material should be used? The first of these questions would probably be the first one to answer. What do we want to teach? CS in general? Programming? Whereas CS may be considered too broad a topic, programming (or coding) can be seen as too narrow. In addition, both programming and CS are still associated with many stereotypical misconceptions [20], which do not help to make the topic interesting and motivating to a larger audience. In this paper, we focus on computational thinking (CT) and different aspects of introducing it in the K-9 curriculum. CT is a term encompassing a set of concepts and thought processes from CS that aid in formulating problems and their solutions in different fields. We focus on K-9 for several reasons, the main one being that most of the previous work on CT in education has been done at high school (upper secondary school) or university level. We want to focus more on general education, which provides a different context. First, it is compulsory and should provide opportunities to all students, and second, teachers work with several or all subjects for a given student group rather than being subject teachers. The requirements at K-9 level are hence to make CT accessible and motivating to a broad population, including both teachers and their students, in a variety of subjects. Our goal is to contribute to the discussion around early education by 1) exploring the situation of CT in K-9 education from different countries, 2) collecting current practices on how CT is used in education using a survey instrument, 3) preparing ideas and guidelines for introducing and enhancing CT in education, including teacher professional development, and 4) discussing the research opportunities that arise from the introduction of CT in the classroom. 2. DEFINITIONS OF CT The most recent use of the phrase CT began in 1996 when Simon Papert mentioned the term in an article on mathematics education [105]. Papert discussed using a computer to solve problems in ways that forge ideas and that allow people to better analyze and explain problems, solutions, and the connections between them. A closely related concept is found in computational literacy, by Vee [127]. In an historical comparison Vee states that a modern approach corresponding to the textual approach invented during the medieval time is found in the analytical part of programming. According to her computational literacy is the ability to break a complex process down into small procedures and then express or write those procedures using the technology of code that may be read by a non-human entity such as a computer [127, p.47]. Whether or not programming will be a mass literacy remains to be seen. The term CT gained traction in 2006 when Jeannette Wing suggested that it is a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientist, would be eager to learn and use [129]. She later gave a more concrete definition, stating that CT can be understood as the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be carried out by an information-processing agent [130]. Crucial for this latter definition is the idea that there are layers of abstraction of both data and processes involved in CT. Wing also elaborates on the definition of CT and distinguishes between what CT means for everyone and what it means for scientists, engineers and professionals [130]. It is interesting to compare the definitions of CT as formulated by Papert and Wing. There are certainly similarities between the two definitions. Both Wing and Papert emphasize reasoning: Papert talks about forging ideas and Wing mentions thought processes. Both clearly indicate that CT is about more than blindly applying a tool: Papert discusses analyzing and explaining and Wing mentions the formulation of problems. In either definition a computer may not be involved in every step since Wing s information-processing agent may be something else than a computer. But computation is crucial at some point for both definitions. There is, however, a difference in the two definitions. For Wing the use of CT is unidirectional, with the fundamental question being what would I have to do to get a computer to implement an existing solution to the problem? Papert has a more bidirectional definition. For him CS is used in concert with other problem-solving approaches to develop new solution methods. This allows new ways of viewing a problem, expanding the intersection of CS and other disciplines. Finding a definition of CT that everyone agrees upon has proved difficult for the CS education community, and multiple people and organizations have made efforts in that direction [57, 56]. Among other contributions coming from educators, Lee et al. (2011) [86] suggest that we should start from practical examples of what we mean by CT, and identify the terms abstraction, automation, and analysis as being particularly useful to understand how young pupils can deal with novel problems.; they also propose the use modify create progression for the engagement with complex CS environments. Moreover, other definitions or approaches to infuse CT in early education in the light of learning theories are considered, for example, in [29, 70]. Interestingly, Lu and Fletcher (2009) propose to develop a CT language something different from a programming language endowed with suitable vocabulary and notation to describe CT-related ideas and processes in primary and secondary school [94]. The definition used as a basis for the report at hand has been developed by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE 1 ) and the American Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA 2 ), who have both worked to define CT and develop CT materials. The CSTA and ISTE have proposed a definition of CT suitable for use in K-12 education, identifying nine essential concepts: data collection, data analysis, data representation, problem decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, automation, parallelization and simulation. Skills related to 1 The ISTE is a global organization serving educators [73] 2 The CSTA is an organization that supports and promotes the teaching of CS and has existed since 2004 [31] 2

3 these concepts are not limited to CS or STEM 3 subjects, but can be practiced and developed within all disciplines, which is crucial for broadening participation. ISTE has also developed an operational definition for CT as a problem-solving process with, for example, the following characteristics [73]: Formulating problems in a way that enables us to use a computer and other tools to help solve them Logically organizing and analyzing data Representing data through abstractions such as models and simulations Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps) Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources Generalizing and transferring this problem solving process to a wide variety of problems These skills are supported and enhanced by a number of dispositions or attitudes that are essential dimensions of CT such as confidence in dealing with complexity, persistence in working with difficult problems, tolerance for ambiguity and ability to deal with open ended problems [31]. Members of the CSTA have also examined the ways that CT can be brought into K-12 education, the barriers that this process may face, and the ways that university educators can participate [4]. People outside of CS have also embraced CT. Their work has helped to further refine the definition of the term CT by providing examples from fields such as the sciences and humanities. An excellent example of such work is that done by the Shodor Foundation [117]. A non-profit organization founded in 1994, Shodor provides materials and instruction relating to computational science. Based in the U.S., the foundation offers workshops, internships, and apprenticeships for students interested in science, technology, and math. 3. CRITIQUE OF CT Although CT has been embraced by many educators, it is not uniformly accepted. One of the most vocal critics of CT is Peter Denning. In his article Beyond Computational Thinking he raises two major objections to CT [40]. He first points out that CT has a long history especially in the natural sciences, although it was described using other terms such as algorithmic thinking in previous decades. He argues that the new emphasis on CT is simply a repackaging of existing CS, and one that overly narrows the field. He believes that the term CT has been so widely used by people in the sciences that the term is not a valid way to characterize the unique contributions of CS. He argues that CT is a practice rather than a description of the principles underlying field. It should be noted though that Denning s Great Principles of Computing are not incompatible with CT, since at least one project focusing on CT uses the Great Principles of Computing as its theoretical framework [106]. 3 Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics Denning s critique can, however, be considered somewhat irrelevant to early elementary or middle school education, where a CT-oriented approach can be preferable to a separate CS subject precisely because of its inherently interdisciplinary nature that is particularly appropriate for young children and, for different reasons, also for adolescents see, for example, [28, 5, 47]. On one hand, since primary level teachers are usually general teachers, not specialized to teach some specific subject, it seems more viable to include CT as a means for solving problems in different contexts. On the other hand, children s learning and knowledge development does not necessarily completely fit into a subjectcentered approach. According to Wood (2010), for instance, children face difficulties in internalizing related information received over a period of time because of the differences in their cognitive development and diversity [132]. Moreover, from a cognitive perspective the primary concern of early education should be aimed at developing a suitable cognitive architecture rather than building specific knowledge, and in this perspective, the crucial achievements are not conceptual, but functional achievements [48]. Other critics of CT object to the name for different reasons than breadth or depth. David Hemmendinger argues that the term CT has an arrogant tone, suggesting that computer scientists are trying to tell people in other disciplines how they should be thinking [67]. He suggests that inclusive definitions of CT run the risk of seeming like territorial grabs on the part of computer scientists who wish to take approaches used widely in other disciplines and claim them as belonging to CS. According to Hemmendinger, teaching CT means to teach people how to think like an economist, a physicist, an artist, and to understand how to use computation to solve their problems, to create, and to discover new questions that can fruitfully be explored, whereas we, as computer scientists, we should perhaps talk less about computational thinking, and focus more on computational doing [67]. At least one critic of CT believes that the term is simply too broad to be useful. In an essay entitled The Trouble with Computational Thinking [74], Elizabeth Jones notes that Jeannette Wing fails to give a definition for CT, instead citing multiple examples in a wide range of areas to illustrate the term. For Jones this is problematic because it makes it difficult to see how it is that CT differs from other types of thinking, such as artistic thinking or scientific thinking, that require abstraction or massive amounts of data. She also correctly points out that there are problems that cannot be solved using computational methods, such as revising a story or solving an ethical problem. Jones does concede that if Wing s goal is to point out that problem solving is a process then she is supportive of that goal, at the same time as Jones is troubled by the lack of a concrete definition of CT. In a blog post from 2011, Mark Guzdial suggests that CT and human-computer interaction are ideological foes [66]. To support his point he discusses the goal of user-centered design, which is to allow the user to focus on his/her task and to make the computer invisible. In contrast CT involves understanding the power and limitations of digital representations, which requires that both of those things are visible. These goals are in obvious opposition to one another, which leads him to suggest that CT will not be embraced by the HCI community. 3

4 4. STATUS OF CT IN EDUCATION The K-12 Computer Science Standards report [114] refers to CT as a cross-disciplinary competence area for general school education, although it remarks that [d]eveloping an approach to computational thinking that is suitable for K- 12 students is especially challenging in light of the fact that there is, as yet, no widely agreed upon definition of computational thinking [114]. In this section we draw a picture of the status of CT in both formal and informal education. We first discuss the role of programming, since learning to program can help develop CT-related skills. In practice this means introducing programming as a means to an end ( use programming to learn X ), and not as an end in itself ( use programming as a way to learn CS principles ). We then provide the authors local perspectives through country specific reports. The purpose of these reports is to both discuss where and how CT is already integrated into the K-9 curriculum in several countries in Europe and in the U.S. and also to imagine how CT might be introduced more extensively. This section takes a broad view of CT which includes related computing topics and activities and also considers places in existing curricula where CT is not currently taught but could be taught. The section concludes by giving examples of different types of informal initiatives that are taking place internationally as well as more formal curricular initiatives that have been developed in Europe and the U.S. 4.1 The role of programming These days programming is re-packaged in all sorts of environments (e.g. board games and visual, block-based programming tools) and gadgets (e.g. robots and paper cards) useful when learning CT. The emphasis on programming or coding is strong in both local and international discussions. Many of the informal initiatives, such as clubs and curricular initiatives discussed in Section 4.3 below, seem to first and foremost focus on programming, rather than CT activities in general. Several educators agree that programming is crucial for appreciating a computational perspective, but the main objection is that it is unsuitable for lower levels of education, as pointed out in, for instance, [94]. As remarked by Lu and Fletcher, [p]erhaps the most confounding issue is the role of programming, and whether we can separate it from basic computer science [94]. To complicate matters further, it seems like the landscape of programming in education is changing. Besides being a general transferable skill, its uses have become broader than previously thought. In particular, programming can now be interpreted as a means of self-expression and social participation [75, 113]; as a component of an emerging new form of literacy [17, 127]; as a tool to conceive and create things, to develop creativity [109, 13]; as a way for children to widen their experience and experiment with their own ideas [12] (following, in a sense, Papert s Mindstorms perspective); or even as an instrument to foster children s metacognition [109]. In Schulte s words, the concept of programming itself is vague and can be implemented in many different ways [...]. [A] more precise understanding of (possible) pedagogical or educational goals achievable by including programming into the classroom is needed [113]. Whereas traditional programming has been considered too technical and too tedious to teach and learn for students at school, here we discuss its role as a tool for addressing the nine aspects of CT. Can the inclusion of programming in teachers professional development and school curricula be enough to address the domain of CT? The answer to that question can be both yes and no, depending on what assumptions are made and what is read into the term programming (e.g. [12, 54]). If programming is seen as merely coding, a routine job of giving instructions to the computer in order to solve a set of traditional problems, we do not believe it is enough. Coding is a fraction of the programming process, and can be seen as a task that you do last in order to implement the solution that you have ended up with through other phases such as analysis, decomposition and design, which are all important parts of CT. Coding is also associated with several misconceptions and image problems, such as that of being an activity mainly suitable for male nerds sitting isolated by their computers doing nothing but hacking code and eating pizza. If, however, programming is seen as the broader and more multifaceted process that it is, we argue that it can be seen as a tool for developing all CT aspects. By switching the current discussions from coding to programming, and by being more detailed and explicit about what we mean, we believe that the image and conceptions of programming can be changed into that of a problem-solving activity, which can be used to address the different aspects of CT. In Section 6.1 we describe some general sample categories of CT-oriented activities, where several provide concrete ideas for how programming can be used. In the following section we discuss the current curricula in various European countries and the U.S. The aim of this discussion is to both highlight where CT is currently integrated and identify places where it could be integrated without a need for revising the curricula. It should be noted that explicit programming activities remain unusual in most countries discussed below, with some notable exceptions. In a later section we discuss informal outreach activities, and there it is much more common to see programming as a part of the activities. The lack of programming in formal curricula and the strong presence in informal outreach may be an artifact of the people and organizations who design and run the outreach programs as much as it is a side effect of a lack of consensus on how and when programming should be taught to children in K Country reports Finland In Finland, CS was part of the upper secondary curriculum (grades 10 12) until the early 2000s, but was then completely removed. Instead ICT was to be integrated in all subjects. Quite naturally, this resulted in a heavy focus on using computers and tools instead of CS aspects, as teachers were not used to or trained in the latter. In 2016, Finland will get a new national curriculum for general education (grades 1-9), where special attention has been paid to recognizing future competence needs. The current draft includes both ICT-related skills and other more general abilities connected to CT. The draft emphasizes the need for students to acquire basic knowledge about ICT and its development and effects on different areas of our society. More specifically, the following skills are mentioned: Understanding central concepts and principles of how 4

5 ICT works and is used and learn how to use ICT for creating artifacts of their own. Programming is explicitly included in mathematics education, starting with students giving instructions to each other in grades 1-2, gradually moving towards graphical programming environments in grades 3-6 and using programming languages in grades 7-9. Programming should, however, not only be limited to mathematics, but also be integrated in other subjects. Using ICT in responsible and safe ways Using ICT to look up information, which is clearly related to data collection and analysis. Using ICT for communication and networking In addition to these ICT-related skills, the draft also highlights several general and cross-curricular skills that can be related to CT abilities: Looking up, evaluating, modifying, producing and sharing information and ideas. Here exploratory and creative ways of working are considered important as they facilitate practice of these skills. Viewing and critically analyzing things from different perspectives. Being open to new solutions, using their imagination and combining different perspectives in order to find innovative solutions. Learning new things through, for example, play, games, physical activity and experiments. The upcoming introduction of programming in the core curriculum has resulted in different initiatives facilitating and supporting this reform. For instance, a teacher guide called Koodi2016 (Code 2016) was published in early June 2014 with both state and industry support [91]. The Ministry of Culture and Education supports STEM education for 6-16 year olds through a six-year long project (LUMA SUOMI), in which programming plays an important role. The National Board of Education, which is in charge of the curricula reform, provides funding for professional development aimed at in-service teachers as well as projects related to the use of programming environments and tools in schools. As for now, there is no particular focus on including CT aspects, computing, or programming in pre-service teacher training. Given the upcoming reform, this will have to be changed to make sure that newly graduated teachers have the knowledge and skill set needed to confidently teach the required curriculum Italy Between 2007 and 2012 the Italian school system underwent a broad reform process, all aspects of which remain to be finalized. The reform was meant to change both the educational approach and the curricular organization. The duration of compulsory education in Italy is now 10 years, usually corresponding to the age range 6 16, and is organized in three main levels: primary school (elementary school, grades 1 5), lower secondary school (middle school, grades 6 8) and first biennium of the upper secondary school (early high school, grades 9 10). In secondary schools different disciplinary areas are taught by different teachers with a related qualification. For the grades K-8 CS and digital technologies are not in the scope of a specific subject. According to the national curricular recommendations, such content pertains to two rather broad areas: A cross-disciplinary key citizenship digital competence area, 4 whose connections with CT are actually quite weak (proficiency and critical attitude in the use of ICTs for work, life, communication; use of computer to retrieve, assess, retain, produce, present, share information as well as to cooperate through the Internet). A general technology subject area, that includes the use of the most common ICT tools and, if possible, some computer and/or robot programming (proficiency and critical attitude toward the psychological, social, cultural impact of ICTs; if possible, introduction to programming with simple languages, to create and develop projects). The reference to programming and robots is an attempt to acknowledge some (seemingly) successful experiences promoted by enthusiastic, self-motivated (and self-taught) teachers. The cross-disciplinary digital competence area spans the whole period of compulsory education. However, either in the first year (grade 9) or in the first two years (grades 9 10) of the upper secondary level an independent informatics or ICT-related subject, to be taught by qualified teachers, is included in the curriculum of some types of schools. Along with basic use of and basic notions about widespread platforms and IT tools, which are competencies common to all such syllabi, the students of applied sciences and of technical schools are expected to learn something about algorithms and computer programming. The only statement with a CT orientation in the official documents can be found in the guidelines of the applied science option of the scientific lyceum: The connection with the scientific disciplines, but also with philosophy and Italian, should prompt a reflection on the theoretical foundations of CS as well as on its relationships with logic, on its implications for scientific and technological methodologies, on its role on the emergence of new sciences [100]. The general framework of the education of pre-service teachers was drawn in 2010, but its implementation has only been completed for primary school. The programs for lower and upper secondary are still in transition. Based on such programs, however, prospective primary school teachers, as well as middle school teachers of mathematics and sciences 4 The Italian Ministry for Education has adopted the Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning (2006/962/EC): communication in the mother tongue; communication in foreign languages; mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology; digital competence; learning to learn; social and civic competences; sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; cultural awareness and expression. 5

6 and of technology, are likely to learn only some very basic digital literacy and are not prepared to deal with more interesting CS topics. In fact, the situation can be very different from school to school, depending on the impact of individual initiatives which exploit autonomy introduced by the reform. Indeed, the contributions and creativity of motivated teachers can give rise to interesting activities with their classes. Notable examples in this respect are the introduction of studentfriendly programming environments like Scratch and the development of educational robot laboratories Lithuania In Lithuania CS is referred to as informatics (informatika). Teaching informatics started in early 1980s with programming and machine coding. The goal of teaching programming is problem-solving transfer and also the idea that programming is the best way to communicate with a machine [25]. The Young Programmer s School by Correspondence established in 1981 was one of the first examples concerning programming for all and had a strong impact on many phenomena related to the teaching of informatics, such as the development of curricula and establishment of various contests and olympiads in informatics [37]. Many of the programming lessons were published in the biggest daily newspaper of Lithuania. Each took nearly half a page and were published a few times per month for a number of years ( ). In parallel there was also a program on national Lithuanian television for teaching algorithms and programming. In informatics was declared as a compulsory subject in high schools of the Soviet Union, including Lithuania. The first textbook The basics of Informatics and Computing Techniques was written by famous Russian informatics professors. The text was translated to Lithuanian and was extended by adding a chapter on Pascal programming language which had not been recognized at this time by the Russian scientists. Informatics curriculum at this period was aimed at the developing algorithms, thinking skills, abstraction, and automation of solving tasks, all tasks we now recognize CT. Hundreds of interesting and appealing programming tasks were developed for pupils. A selection of challenging tasks A hundred programming problems was published in Vilnius in 1986 and translated and published in Moscow in With regard to the changing role of ICT as well as with the needs of pupils and school communities, the curricula of all subjects in lower secondary schools (grades 5-10) were substantially revised in 2005, and Informatics was changed to information technologies. The new information technologies (IT) curriculum has been described in other publications[36]. Since 2005, the main focus in Lithuanian schools is in developing computer literacy. As a result, the teaching of the basics of informatics has become quite poor. Pupils become familiar with the basics of informatics in grade 5 or 6, when they have their first IT lessons: part of them should be focused on Logo or Scratch. However, very few lessons are provided for this, and the teaching process depends very closely on the knowledge and activeness of the teachers themselves. For lower secondary school, grades 9-10, there are 34 hours in an optional module on algorithm design and writing (programming) is recommended with the following basic topics: Conception of algorithms, ways of writing Programming languages, compilers Preparation of algorithms, coding, and running the program Dialog between program and user Input and output of data, printing formats Main actions of algorithms: assignment, loop Simple data types Stages of program development Control data and correctness of program Programming style and culture Simplest algorithms and their implementation Informatics in grades 9 10 introduces basic elements of the subject and serves as a starting point for the informatics education of all students in high schools and as a preorientation for those students who might be interested in choosing a high school which offers a specialization in CS topics, such as algorithms, networking, or databases. The IT subject in grades 5 10 is taught by IT teachers who have various types of training. Some of them have a CS or mathematics degree combined with education, while others are teachers of other subjects with little training in IT. New IT and informatics curricula will be developed during next year for grades 1-10 with special focus on the most important informatics concepts and skills Netherlands In the Netherlands, educational objectives are described in rather general terms, and schools have the discretion to independently implement the objectives in the classroom. Often there are guides containing detailed interpretation of the objectives, but it is not compulsory to comply with them. In practice, publishers interpret the core objectives and publish textbooks which are used as a basis for the teaching activities. The learning objectives for primary education (ages 4 12) are summarized in 58 general core objectives describing goals for the Dutch, Frisian, and English languages, arithmetic/math, world and personal orientation, arts and physical education [80]. Only 10 of these objectives contain aspects of CT, for example, as follows: Dutch language: 4. Students learn to find information in informative and instructive texts, including schemes, tables and digital resources 6. Students learn to order (rank, arrange) information and opinions when reading school and study texts and other instructive texts, and when reading other systematically ordered sources, among others digital sources Arithmetic/math: 24. The students learn to solve practical and formal mathematical problems and to clearly demonstrate their reasoning 6

7 World and personal orientation: Where possible, these learning objectives should be combined with other learning objectives. For example, consider [...], measuring and processing information in, among other things, tables, timeline and charts (arithmetics/math), [...], but in particular, (45.) students learn to develop, design, implement/execute and evaluate solutions to technical problems. The learning objectives for grades 7 9 are summarized in 58 general core objectives describing goals for the Dutch and English languages, arithmetic/math, man and nature, man and society, arts and culture and movement and sports [79]. Similarly to primary school, ten of these objectives contain some aspects of CT, for instance, as in the following: Dutch language: 4. Students learn to apply strategies to acquire information from spoken and written texts 5. Students learn to search for information in written and digital sources, to order it and to assess its value for themselves and others. The same objectives exist for the English language. Arithmetics and math 19. Students learn to use the appropriate mathematical language to organize their own thinking and for explanations to others, and learns to understand the mathematical language of others. 25. The students learn to use informal notation, schematic representations, tables, charts and formulas to grasp the relations among quantities and variables 27. The students learn to describe, order and visualize data systematically, and they learn to critically assess data, representations, and conclusion Man and nature: 33. Students learn to acquire knowledge, through research, about technical product and systems that are relevant to them, they learn to evaluate this knowledge and to systematically design and make a technical product. Informatics is an elective subject in grades of HAVO (senior general secondary education which spans grades 7 11 and prepares students for higher professional education), and VWO (pre-university education which spans grades 7 12 and is geared towards further education at a university) [64]. Prior to 2006, there was a dedicated course on IT mostly focusing on learning to use Office-like applications in grades 7-9. Since 2006 when the curriculum was revised, schools may continue to offer this course or choose to offer its contents integrated in other courses. No such course is provided for primary education. In elementary schools a teacher teaches all subjects, whereas in grades 7 9, a teacher usually teaches one subject or a cluster of related subjects. Regardless of which level they teach, teacher education is at the higher professional level. As there are no dedicated Informatics/ICT courses in K-9, there is no dedicated teacher education either. Teachers and students are, though, encouraged to make use of ICT tools and equipment in their everyday work. The use of ICT in education is quite widespread [120]. Only for the course of Informatics in the higher grades is there a dedicated teacher training in the form of an university master s degree [62]. In 2012, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences published the report Digital Literacy in Secondary Education - Skills and Attitudes for the 21st Century [82]. In it, a number of recommendations are made, among them: Introduce a new compulsory subject Information and Communication in the lower years of HAVO and VWO. This should be a broad and compact introductory subject, covering the essential facets of digital literacy. Encourage interaction between these subjects and other school subjects. Make it a priority to raise a new generation of teachers with new skills and attitudes. Furthermore, in that report CT is considered to be an integral part of digital literacy. The recommendations in the report resulted in two initiatives: 1) to completely overhaul the elective Informatics subject in the upper grades of HAVO and VWO, and 2) to explore what is meant by the notion of digital literacy, what aspects of it are desired in grades 7 9, and what place this should have in the curriculum. To answer these questions, the Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development is doing research into occurrences of 21st century skills and digital literacy, including CT, in K- 9 in learning objectives and teaching materials and teaching practices. Their preliminary findings indicate there is limited attention to digital literacy in learning objectives which are described in rather general terms. Teaching materials for K-6 scarcely include teaching these objectives and those for grades 7 through 9 pay more attention to these objectives. One instance of teaching CT was found in the textbooks [124]. Furthermore, there is a Dutch research project on CT focusing on finding an operational definition of the term, devising an assessment instrument, and developing curricular interventions [63] Sweden The current design of K-12 CS education in Swedish schools was established in the 1970s, and named informatics, later changed to information technology. The subject existed as a supplementary subject in vocational education, and later became obligatory for upper secondary students at natural science programmes [111]. For a couple of years it was offered at primary and lower secondary level, but was later removed as primary and secondary teachers did not qualify and specifically the programming part was hard for many teachers to teach. Programming and system development early on became an issue regarding teachers competencies. Today CS has transformed into a subject mainly focusing on digital literacy at primary and secondary level including application and tools (e.g. the Office suite) for problem solving in other subjects. However, there is no such subject in compulsory school as CS. Instead the content is offered in school subjects like Technology and Mathematics. At the upper secondary level, CS education varies depending on the programme you attend, focusing on natural sciences, technology, aesthetics or electricity. Teacher training in Sweden does not offer courses in CS, making it is unusual to find teachers offering the content in school. There are courses at upper secondary school in programming, multimedia, web design etc. that are offered to any student who wishes to take them. However, programming courses are mainly attended by students who attend one of the three programmes 7

8 in technology, natural sciences or electronics. Hence, only a minority of students take programming courses. The ICT content in the Swedish educational system is summarized as follows: In the preschool curricula only one ICT-related goal regarding desirable digital competence can be found: Multimedia and information technology can be used in creative processes as well as in application. Current compulsory school (grades one through nine) ICT training focuses on orienting the students in the flow of information, how to use digital technology, and to develop critical thinking about the information available on the Internet. Recently the government has proposed a change in curriculum which focuses more on digital competences. All youth in Sweden who have completed compulsory school are entitled to a three-year upper secondary school education (grades ten through twelve and thirteen). Currently, upper secondary school offers 18 programmes and 61 orientations; 12 programmes with preparation for vocational work and 6 programmes for further studies in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and technology. Year thirteen is offered only in technology programme, for specialisation in one of four orientations. In upper secondary school CS courses are elective for all students. IT-related courses are mandatory in few of the 18 programmes offered including the Technology Programme and the Electricity and Energy Programme. Optional programming courses are available in all programmes, but only a limited number of students take up computer programming in school. There are voluntary initiatives (see Section 4.3 below) and unofficial groups (e.g. TeacherHack, Framtidens Språk), which work on hacking current curricula, developing new programs, and inspiring teachers to include more CT in the classroom. Teacher communities use social media (Twitter and Facebook) to share material, ideas and spread the word of how the national curriculum could be extended with the help of things like programming. In addition, ideas from the maker movement inspire teachers to turn pupils into creators instead of mere consumers of ICT. Programming is used to integrate CT in subjects such as Carpentry (Swedish: Slöjd), Swedish language and Technology, with activities like the ones listed in Section 6.1. The Swedish National Agency of Education has approved this somewhat different interpretation of the curriculum, as long as it fulfills the learning objectives. In 2012, the Swedish government established the Committee for Digitization (Swedish: Digitaliseringskommisionen) to give some guidelines for future work on digitizing the Swedish society. The committee recently published a report [43], which pinpoints the need in school to embrace the concept of digital competency, in line with the recommendations from the EU. The report explicitly highlights the need for including programming in the curriculum as part of already existing subjects. The outcome of the committee s work will presumably serve as guidelines when developing future curricula, and is therefore of great interest to follow United States In the United States the control of and responsibility for education rests primarily with the state and local government, which means that the curriculum varies significantly across the country. A recent step in the direction of national standardization was the creation of the Common Core Standards, which were developed through a state-led process and launched in The standards have been adopted by 44 states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity. The Common Core has two sets of standards that extend throughout the entire K-12 curriculum, one for English language arts/literacy and one for mathematics. There are also a separate set of standards for grades six through twelve that cover literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects. The Common Core includes multiple standards for computer literacy, mostly in the English Language Arts area. For example, the following are some of the literacy topics found in the standard: Anchor standards for reading: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively Anchor standards for writing: Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others. Anchor standards for writing: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate the information while avoiding plagiarism There are also some topics in each of the areas that can be taught with a CT focus, although CT is not the main goal of the standard. For example, the following are some of the competencies that could be taught with a CT approach: Measurement and data: Represent and interpret data (grade two): Draw a picture graph and a bar graph (with single-unit scale) to represent a data set with up to four categories. Solve simple put-together, takeapart, and compare problems using information presented in a bar graph. Expressions and equations: Use properties of operations to generate equivalent expressions (grade seven): Understand that rewriting an expression in different forms in a problem context can shed light on the problem and how the quantities in it are related. There are few places in the U.S. where CS is required for students. At best, high school (grades nine twelve) students have the option of taking electives in technology or, in some places, taking the Advanced Placement Computer Science course which is currently a Java programming class. The CS AP course allows students to take a standardized test, which if they pass, provides them with college credit. Typically students only take CS if it counts for graduation, and there are (as of December 2014) only 25 states in which CS applies to graduation requirements. Which requirement CS counts for depends on the state, but the current areas are math, science, math and science, math or science, and math and other. Much of the push to have CS count for graduation has been led by the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and more recently Code.org. 8

9 Predating the push for CS to count for high school graduation, there was a significant effort made on the part of multiple organizations and individuals to provide CS options for high school students that take a broader approach to CS. An alternative AP course called Computer Science Principles has been developed, designed to appeal to students who may not be interested in programming, and it includes topics such as abstraction, big data and information, algorithms, and the Internet. The CS Principles AP exam is tentatively scheduled to be offered for the first time in May There is no evidence that any elementary or middle school requires CS courses for graduation. Code.org, the CSTA, and CS education researchers have been working to change the situation, both by developing curricular materials and by doing teacher training. Teachers in the U.S. must possess a bachelor s degree (a 4-year university degree) and must earn a state-issued certification or license. Some states also require elementary school teachers to major in a content area, such as math or science. They typically enroll in a university teacher preparation program and take classes in education and child psychology in addition to those required by their major. Note that teachers in private schools do not need to meet state requirements, such as certifications or licenses. In 2007 the CSTA gathered information about certifications and endorsements for CS teachers across the 50 states. Forty-seven states returned replies for a response rate of 88%. When asked if they grant a CS endorsement, only 53% of states indicated that they do. However, the responses indicated that 29% do require a CS endorsement at the secondary level, 27% require it at the middle school level, 13% require it at the elementary school level, and 13% require it overall in the K-12 level. Teachers in some states would be allowed to teach CS courses using other certifications, including math, educational technology, technology and design, and business/library media. The gap between the availability of teacher certifications or endorsements and the requirement that teachers possess certifications or endorsements to teach CS subjects is of great concern in the U.S. The National Science Foundation has for several years funded projects that focus on teacher development for CS under the CS 10K program, which is currently a part of the STEM-C Partnerships program. The goal of the program is to develop 10,000 CS teachers in the American school system Summary The overview of the situation in different countries above shows that the inclusion of CT aspects in the curriculum is relevant in all countries. In rare cases, programming-related outcomes are mentioned explicitly. By looking at the learning objectives through a CT-lens, one can also find objectives in various subjects which could be places where CT concepts would be taught. It is also interesting to compare the above picture with the state of CS education in other countries as described in the special issue of the Transactions on Computing Education: Perspectives and Visions of Computer Science Education in Primary and Secondary (K-12) Schools. In particular, as the monograph editors conclude, [d]espite the apparent differences, there are several topics that are addressed by the majority of [the] articles. First, proper teacher education in substantial extent and depth seems to be one of the most critical factors for the success of rigorous CS education on the one hand and also one of the hardest goals to achieve on the other. Second, there is a convergence towards CT as a core idea of the K-12 curricula. Third, programming in one form or another, seems to be absolutely necessary for a future oriented CSE [71] (added emphasis). 4.3 Introducing CT through informal initiatives In addition to the official and formal ways listed in the previous section, many children also encounter CT through events and activities that are not formally associated with their educational institutions. These include clubs, contests, outreach events, and activities organized by individual teachers and organizations. In some cases outside organizations develop activities or curricula designed to be used by teachers looking for activities to supplement what they do in the classroom. Here we discuss some of the informal activities that have been used to introduce CT to children in grades K-9 throughout the world. The list of activities should not be assumed to be comprehensive, since such a list is beyond the scope of this report. It is also worth pointing out that most of these focus on a given set of CT abilities (e.g. algorithms through programming), and do not necessarily provide students with the opportunity to learn the entire CT skill set to an equal extent Clubs Clubs are becoming increasingly popular, in particular those focusing on programming. Two club concepts that have spread to a large number of countries in a short time are CoderDojo [24] and Code Club [22]. Both clubs are offered free-of-charge to children and young people and are established, run and led by volunteers. As of July 2014, there were 443 CoderDojos in 46 countries worldwide and 2562 CodeClubs. The main goal of these clubs is to introduce children to programming in a friendly, motivating, and nostrings-attached way. Code Club also provides ready-made project material, which has been translated into several languages. Makerspaces [97] focus more on making aspects, but are still good examples of how working in creative ways can help introduce students to CT related skills and concepts. In addition to non-profit organisations, companies are also launching similar initiatives. As an example, Google started its Google CS First program [61] in early 2014, providing after-school material that can be used by volunteers. In June 2014, Google launched Made with code [95], a program aimed at getting girls and young women excited about coding and closing the gender gap in IT. In addition to these international large-scale initiatives, there are also equivalent local ones. For instance in Sweden, the non-profit organisation Kodcentrum (Code centre, [84]) aims at opening locations throughout the country where kids can come on a regular basis to learn about programming with the help of volunteers. Similarly, in addition to general clubs and programs in Sweden, there are several ones that are particularly aimed at underrepresented groups, for instance Geek Girl Mini for girls Contests Several types of programming contests are arranged for 9

10 students of different ages throughout the world. Whereas olympiads (such as the International Olympiads in Informatics [72]), are aimed at talented students, the goal of other contests is to introduce CS and CT in a motivating way to students at a larger scale. Some examples are RoboCup Junior [110], which is a project-based educational initiative aimed at introducing programming to children using robotics. The Italian Ministry of Education supports a problem-solving olympiad focusing on informatics and algorithmic thinking in compulsory education [104]. The aim of this contest is to promote a scientific perspective about informatics starting from the earliest school years, with a particular emphasis on methodology, helpful to formalize and solve problems arising in every field [19]. Students take part in the olympiads in teams, which have to have member of both genders. In addition to training activities, the olympiads involve a final test, followed by two rounds of competitive contests (both regional and national). Teachers are involved throughout the olympiads and get access to all solutions including comments after the contest, which makes it possible to go deeper into the concepts covered in the problems. A more general contest is Bebras, which was introduced in Lithuania in 2004, and has since spread to over 30 countries throughout the world [7]. In 2013, almost 0.8 million students aged 8-18 took part in the contest. The main goals of Bebras are to raise students awareness of CS and CT and evoke interest in the field through a set of inspiring tasks adapted to different age groups. The Bebras contest is arranged annually in local languages throughout the world. The tasks are developed collaboratively during an annual workshop, after which each country selects their own task set to translate and use in the local contest. Focus is put on problem-solving activities which do not require any previous knowledge, and each task is categorized as belonging to one or several of the following groups [35]: information comprehension; algorithmic thinking; computer system usage; structures, patterns and arrangements; puzzles and games; and ICT and society. All tasks are accompanied with an explanation for how a given task was to be solved and a part called It s informatics, which provides both teachers and students with some additional information on how a given task is related to CS or CT. Hence, teachers can use interesting tasks from previous contests to work with CT together with their students. Another similar contest, closely related to Bebras, is the Informatics Kangaroo in Italy [76], which is aimed at students in grades Outreach programs Different organizations, both large-scale and local ones, arrange outreach programs aimed at introducing CT to children and young people. Among these, CS Unplugged [9] and CS4FN [33], are worth particular mention. In addition, universities and private companies arrange holiday camps and various events aimed at both children and their parents. The Hour of Code, an outreach event organized by Code.org during the Computer Science Education Week in 2013, received a great deal of attention, and spread to other countries as well. As of July 2014, nearly 40 million people have written some lines of code using the Hour of Code. In October 2014, the EU is arranging the European CodeWeek for the first time, with the intent of having people throughout Europe arranging events related to programming. In addition to these there is also a range of individual initiatives, where evangelists and other persons passionate about CT at school launch programs, which can be more or less local Discussion There are many positives to these informal activities. The people who organize and participate in them are typically passionate about bringing CS to children. Often the organizers have significant training in the topic around which the event or activity is focused. Many times the activities attract the attention of the media and/or parents of children, improving the potential impact. The activities also have their drawbacks. Typically they are not integrated into the curriculum in the schools, which does not allow the children to see the connections between the CT-related material and the subjects that they are required to learn at school. There is little consensus on what should be taught in the informal activities nor on the pedagogy upon which the activities are based. The activities may or may not involve the teachers, and when teachers are not involved it does not allow further development of the ideas. The activities also include a strong focus on programming, which may have some downsides discussed earlier in this section. 4.4 Curricular initiatives One of the first steps to integrating CT into a curriculum is to suggest how teachers could begin using CT to meet existing curricular requirements. In this section we highlight a few curricular initiatives to provide some examples of such work. It should be noted that many other countries, both within Europe [51] as well as elsewhere (e.g. New Zealand), have made significant contributions to addressing CT in the curriculum. For the purposes of brevity we choose to review a couple of examples from Europe and the U.S. A country that has made significant progress in developing and disseminating CS curricular standards is the UK. As part of a now-successful effort to include the subject computing in the English national curriculum, the Computing at School [26] project has developed a guide entitled Computing in the national curriculum: A guide for secondary teachers. Developed as a part of an initially informal and grassroots collaboration between K-12 teachers, IT professionals, and university academics, the guide discusses the programme of study that will be required in English secondary schools beginning in September 2014 and gives support for planning, teaching, and assessing computing. In order to ensure a smooth implementation of the required curriculum, the Computing at School project also has a certification program which is discussed in more detail in Section 6.4 addressing teacher training below. In an attempt to proactively influence curricular developments in countries other than the UK, several private organizations and companies have worked to develop curricular materials that make it easier for teachers interested in introducing CT into their classrooms. The organizations include, for instance, the CSTA, the ISTE, Code.org, and Google. University academics working in conjunction with K-12 educators have also worked to develop curricular materials, most notably the Exploring CS project [53]. The Exploring CS project has a significant professional development component, so that the discussion of that project is postponed for a later section focusing on teacher develop- 10

11 ment. Some information about the contributions of each of the other organizations is given below. The CSTA was founded in 2004 and is a membership organization that supports and promotes the teaching of CS and other computing disciplines [31]. The CSTA focuses on teachers and offers curricular standards and sample teaching materials. One set of materials available is the CS Principles: Computation in Action curriculum package which includes lesson plans, activities, assessments, and projects with solutions. The CSTA has taken a broad approach to CS and has been involved in the development of CT materials for teachers. The organization has made available CT Teacher Resources, which is a package of prototype materials including an operational definition of CT for K-12 Education, a CT vocabulary and progression chart, nine CT Learning Experiences, and CT classroom scenarios. The CSTA also has a CT Leadership Toolkit which complements the CT Teacher Resources and includes a document that can be used to make the case for teaching CT, resources for creating systemic change in K-12 institutions, and an Implementing Strategies Guide. The CSTA also supports local chapters, which are an important support system for CS teachers, especially in the U.S. Working both independently and in conjunction with the CSTA, the International Society for Technology in Education [73] is a non-profit organization serving educators. It is a global organization that has developed standards for students, teachers, and administrators among others. The ISTE has worked with the CSTA to develop the Computational Thinking Toolkit. They also have multimedia presentations on CT to be used for an elementary school level audience and one for middle- or high-school audience, and presenter instructions. Founded in 2013, Code.org [23] has made tremendous progress in that time in raising awareness about the lack of CS education, especially in the United States. The staff and volunteers at Code.org have worked to bring CS into the K-9 classroom by developing materials for teachers to use with their students. Beginning in the summer of 2014, Code.org will have three levels of CS courses for the elementary school. The first course is on for early-readers, ages 4-6, the second is for beginners, ages 6+, and the third is for more experienced students ages 6+. The courses will blend online, self-guided, and self-paced tutorials with unplugged activities. Each level consists of about 20 lessons that may be implemented as one contiguous unit or one lesson a week for a semester. The courses have been designed for students of all ages, but they reinforce math, science, and English education standards for elementary school students. Code.org also has a K-8 introduction to CS curriculum which is a 20-hour course introducing core CS and programming concepts. As suggested by its name, the curriculum contains a lot of material on writing programs, but there are unplugged activities and CT-focused activities too. As part of their Exploring Computational Thinking resources [52], Google has put together a page of classroomready lessons, examples, and programs for K-12 educators. The sources for the materials are typically not researchers associated with Google, and the credit for each is provided as a part of the document. The materials are classified according to grade level, subject (including math, language, and science), and when applicable each is provided a label that indicates the Common Core Curriculum or other (U.S.) standard that it meets. There are a large variety of subjects and types of problems represented in the materials. Funding for teacher workshops can also be acquired from industry, for example, through the Google CS4HS program [30, 11]. 5. TEACHERS EXPERIENCE OF CT In order to collect empirical data on the current situation with regard to teaching activities with promising potential for introducing CT, we developed a questionnaire addressed at K-9 teachers. In this section we discuss the results from the questionnaire. 5.1 Data collection and analysis Although CT might not be explicitly mentioned in official documents, such as core curricula or covered in textbooks used at schools, this does not mean that abilities relevant to CT are not covered in the classrooms. In order to reveal to what extent and how teachers already use activities with significant potential for introducing CT, we developed an online questionnaire which was translated into six languages and distributed to teachers in Finland, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden and the Netherlands through social media, direct contact to local head masters, and lists. The questionnaire included eight questions (see Appendix), out of which one was open-ended and the rest were multiplechoice. The goal of the questionnaire was threefold: 1) gather information on teachers perceptions of the nine CT aspects described by the CSTA/ISTE (data collection, data analysis, data representation, problem decomposition, abstraction, algorithms, automation, simulation and parallelization), 2) reveal to what extent teachers see themselves working with these aspects in their classrooms, and 3) collect examples on how this is accomplished. In addition to including the nine aspects in the questionnaire, we also briefly described each aspect in free form to provide some guidance to the respondents. The data collected from the multiple-choice questions were analysed using basic statistical methods as well as cluster analysis. The answers to the open-ended questions were read and collaboratively categorized by the authors according to whether a given answer should be considered as CT or something else (e.g. computer literacy). 5.2 Demographics We received 961 responses, with the main part coming from Italian and Lithuanian K-9 teachers (Table 1). The time for sending out the questionnaire was somewhat problematic in Finland and Sweden, as teachers were just about to leave for their summer holiday. Country Number of responses % male % female Finland Italy Lithuania Netherlands Sweden Total Table 1: Number of survey responses per country. Some teachers chose not to specify their gender, resulting in the percentages not always adding to

12 Figure 1: How teachers perceive their activities in relation to CT concepts. Almost two thirds of the respondents (63%) were between years old, one third (32%) older than 50 years and only 6% were younger than 30 years. The teaching background also varied, from only a few having taught less than five years (8%), 15% having taught 5-10 years, 36% years and finally 42% having a teaching background over 20 years. Several subjects were represented among the teachers. In the questionnaire they had to tick which of the subjects listed in Table 2 they taught. Subject % teachers Information technology 41 Mathematics 38 Natural Science 22 Mother language 17 Foreign language 10 History 10 Geography 10 Gymnastics 8 Arts 8 Technology 7 Music 7 Crafts 6 Environmental 5 Religion 3 Health 2 Other 14 Table 2: Percentage of teachers (n=961) involved in different subjects. Most teachers stated that they teach more than one subject. In the following, we present our findings from analysing the survey data. 5.3 Findings As Figure 1 shows, teachers reported on using the CT concepts related to data (collection, analysis and representation) in their teaching to the highest extent. A cluster analysis revealed that these three make up one cluster, whereas problem decomposition, algorithms and abstraction form another, and finally simulation, automation and parallelization form a third cluster (Figure 2). Figure 2: The clusters extracted from data. We also asked teachers what tools, applications or software if any they use when working with these CT concepts in the classroom. The resulting data is illustrated by the chart in Figure 3. Other types of technology, such as interactive whiteboards including related applications, as well as different types of specialized software (e.g. Geogebra) and hardware (e.g. ipad) were also mentioned. The tools used reflect the same situation as the clusters above web resources and production tools are commonly used for collecting, analysing and representing data, whereas the other tools are more seldomly used as they involve, for example, programming or simulations. We offered teachers the opportunity to give us their address if they were interested in receiving the final report. Over a third (35%) of all teachers provided their addresses, indicating that there is quite a bit of interest in these questions among teachers in grades 1 9. Over half of the teachers (52%) responded to the openended question asking for two examples of instances when they had felt successful incorporating some of the nine CT aspects in their teaching. The examples gave us some insight into what teachers consider to be CT and how well their thoughts correspond to our own view of CT. In the following, we will present a selection of the more creative examples teachers mentioned for introducing different CT aspects in the classroom. The activities were selected by the authors through a collaborative evaluation of the survey data aiming at revealing unconventional ways of introducing 12

13 Figure 3: Technology used by teachers when working with CT concepts in the classroom. The percentages represent the proportion of teachers reporting on using the respective tool or software. CT in education or those enriching and motivating activities that are already present at school. The quotes provided below were freely translated to English by the authors. Data collection, analysis and representation These CT concepts deal with gathering appropriate information and selecting relevant information; making sense of data, finding patterns, drawing conclusions; and organizing and depicting data in appropriate graphs, charts, words, images, tables, etc. Deciding whether a data collection activity should be interpreted as CT or more as something that supports the development of digital literacy turned out to be quite a challenge. Considering the amount of information available online, most teachers likely ask their students to look up information on the web. In our opinion collection has to go together with analysis and/or representation in order to be an example of a CT activity. Practiced evaluation of sources with my students where they, based on given statements, were to look for information that confirm or deny the statements. After that, we discussed what students had found and the sources they had used. (collection and analysis) The quote above is an example of how analyzing and evaluating information makes a collection task much more interesting. Similarly, the following activity is interesting as the teacher explicitly mentions that students explore different ways of representing the information they have found. Students make a questionnaire for the rest of the class about a topic that interests them, input the class results in Excel and try out different charts, in order to find the best alternative for telling the story of the given data. (data collection and representation) Teachers also mentioned activities that involved all three data-related activities: Selecting relevant data occurs regularly in so called word problems. If appropriate, I have students organize the data in an overview or in a sketch. (data collection, analysis and representation)... in the 6th grade I integrate math with IT: the students gather statistics, then process them using MS Excel by creating frequency tables that display the data using histograms. The following simple but rather creative example comes from a teacher working with children in kindergarten: With kids we invent iconic representations (where the icons are drawing) of the weather, stick them on a timeline (day-by-day), then analyze the data in terms of more often / less often during the month. (data collection, analysis and representation) Collaborative projects were also mentioned, involving looking up relevant data, condensing it in an online document to collaboratively create a script for a movie. When students create documentary films on the theme of environmental problems. The whole process contained both planning/structuring, collecting information/data and various techniques for presentation. The students worked in groups where, for instance, a Google document tied together the various activities and members of the group while they were in different places. Another activity mentioned in this context involved analysis of lyrics to find recurrent patterns (e.g. background metric rhythm) and variants introduced by the poet; analysis from the phonological, structural and metaphorical perspectives. Some teachers also mentioned letting students work with real-life data, such as collecting information about and analyzing sleep patterns of students in class. Problem decomposition Breaking down tasks into smaller manageable parts and merging subtasks is common to many subjects. 13

14 Problem-solving skills should be developed in all subjects, both individually and in an integrated way. We use the common structure understanding the problem, decomposing the problem, simplification of the problem, raising questions about the problem, finding answers (via a search or experiment), and a summary of the presentation. For IT subjects I emphasize CT and information literacy including data acquisition, management, information extraction, and communication. I use technology as a tool for solving real-life problems, usually connected with other subjects. Algorithms Despite the fact that algorithms were part of the cluster of concepts that was not very commonly used by teachers, we found surprisingly many inspiring activities related to planning and organizing sequences of steps in order to solve a problem. This suggests that those who do introduce programming in their teaching actually are explicitly thinking about and planning the ways in which this is done, and hence also have rather nice examples to share. We work with different problems when building small programmable robots for different types of tasks such as cleaning, recycling and rescue or playing soccer. In these challenges we have to solve problems, where you first look for information and have to choose the correct/important data, where you need to interpret data in different formats in, for instance, different graphs, where we have to split the problem into smaller pieces in order to be able to move forward with the solution, where we have to move backwards in the solution process in order to approach the solution in another way, where we need to test solutions in pieces and bring together solutions that work. (also covers data collection, data analysis, problem decomposition, automation) Teachers also recognized that algorithms can be found in non-traditional subjects such as in domestic sciences: We do that all the time when using recipes. and languages: Understanding the structure of a sentence, identifying subjects and objects first in order to be able to use the correct form for, for instance, an adjective or the correct relational pronoun, etc. I don t know if this can be called a CT skill, but at least it is a way of solving a task step-by-step. In addition, teachers mentioned projects where programming had been used for cross-curricular and general tasks: We designed and implemented Scratch activities with common goals: for example to be used as interactive sets for stage performances at school (such as the one organized at the end of the year). In the 6th grade we use Imagine Logo for creating various projects, which children really like. Teachers also recognized problem solving and puzzles as involving algorithms, for instance when using a gradual approach to solve maze problems, starting from easy tasks where the maze is known in advance and ending up with more general strategies. Abstraction We did not find much related to reducing complexity to define the main idea, finding characteristics, and creating models in teachers responses. One teacher did however mention using different representations for the same thing, hence abstracting away the meaning from the symbols used: Conversions between number representations using different alphabets and bases. Simulation Only a few teachers mentioned using or creating simulations, for example, for running experiments together with the students. This was quite surprising given the number of different kinds of tools available for these kinds of activities. Here is an interesting unplugged example: Simulation of genetic-drift phenomena for small populations through random extraction of coloured tokens which represent different genetic features. Automation Very few teachers mentioned examples related to automation, that is recognizing ways in which technology can help us accomplish tasks that would otherwise be too repetitive, infeasible or difficult. Some had, however, used spreadsheet software for this purpose: Creating macros and spreadsheets in order to automate and simplify repetitive tasks. (primary school) Using spreadsheets in order to automate data processing. Parallelization Most examples mentioned in the data related to parallelization dealt with students working in parallel on solving a problem or a common project. Students are working to solve problems. They divide the tasks among each other so that they can work in parallel. On the other hand, students are automatically dealing with parallelization when for instance working with Scratch, where the different scripts are running in parallel. As this happens totally behind the scenes, students and teachers may not be aware of it, unless it is explicitly pointed out. 5.4 Discussion The goal of our questionnaire was to explore their current perception of some concepts and the potential for introducing these concepts in K-9 education. Teachers were asked to indicate how frequently they use different types of CT-related activities, such as data collection, data representation, etc. in their teaching. The responses naturally correspond to the respective teacher s subjective perception 14

15 both of their classroom activities and of the descriptions provided for the CT abilities. The quotes were included to give an idea of the kinds of (interesting) activities with potential for introducing CT, not to convince that the teachers are aware of CT. Getting at teachers true understanding of a subject requires a study over time including in-depth interviews. An effort in that direction is being undertaken by one of the authors [63], who is currently interviewing informatics teachers to establish their pedagogical content knowledge [96] pertaining to a limited number of CT aspects through semi-structured interviews based on the CoRe instrument [93]. The teachers in our questionnaire represented a large number of different subjects, although the large majority of respondents were teaching ICT, mathematics, and/or some other natural science. The results should be interpreted with this background in mind, as there is a chance that the results are somewhat biased towards illustrating the situation among STEM teachers. Many of the examples provided by the teachers contained too little detail for us to determine whether an activity supported CT or maybe was more aimed at, for instance, developing digital literacy. As such, some of them may only be marginally interesting from a CT perspective. To clarify this, we would need to conduct follow-up interviews. Nevertheless, we believe that already the results presented here can be considered a valuable contribution to the discussion on CT in lower levels of education. To the best of our knowledge, a multinational investigation similar to this one of teachers current practices and their perceptions of CT concepts has never been done before. 6. INTEGRATING CT IN EDUCATION In this section, we present some sample activities and lesson plans highlighting how CT can be used in a range of subjects. The activities are not to be interpreted as ready-made teaching material, but rather as examples of the breadth of CT in education. Although many are related to programming, there are also many examples that go beyond the obvious. We start with shorter activities and then move into longer and more extensive activities. After that, we introduce examples of ways in which teacher training is and can be arranged. 6.1 Discussion of possible activities In this subsection we discuss a few interesting types of activities aimed at fostering the CT skills of young students. Before introducing them, we try to provide a coarse characterization of what is specific to CT in the otherwise quite general CSTA/ISTE categories mentioned in section 2. To schematize a little, we can recognize three broad areas. From a computational perspective, data collection, representation and analysis are about the distinctions and the relationships between information and symbolic data: data vs. information; conventionality (arbitrariness) of codes; universality of codes (e.g. of binary codes); amenability to formal manipulation which is the basis for automated data processing. The scope of this area is nicely condensed into Duchâteau s statement: informatics is an unceasing quest to disclose the meaning hidden in a form, as well as an endeavor to bind our intended meaning to some form [46]. (The author then adds: No one should leave school without at least some appreciation of this about informatics. ) The focus of problem decomposition, algorithms, abstraction and parallelization is on (non-trivial) information processing tasks: how we approach information-related problems and what kind of solutions we are looking for. This requires, for instance: mappings between (data vs. information) transformations; introspection (metacognition) and verbalization of solution strategies; (re)formulation in terms of rules; organizational work; mastery of complexity. Finally, automation and simulation are concerned with orientation (in the sense of [45], where the term is introduced to mean what programming is for), i.e. why we carry out computations. In this respect, automation is aimed at delegating boring information-related tasks to a machine, at avoiding errors in routine work, at speeding-up processing. Simulations, on the other hand, are created to acquire new knowledge; to anticipate trends (based on the acquired knowledge, e.g. to forecast) and so on. Unplugged and kinesthetic activities CT can be introduced in the classroom using software and hardware, but technology is not required. In fact, a variety of kid-friendly activities proposed in projects such as CS Unplugged [9], CS4FN [34], Informatik erleben [99] and Abenteuer Informatik [58] are based on the belief that valuable educational objectives relevant to CS can be achieved without using a computer. These activities have been embraced by a variety of educators, for example, as described in Curzon s recent keynote address [32]. The activities can easily be combined, as seen by the fact that Curzon mentions a mix of CS Unplugged, CS4FN, and CT in his keynote. The CS Unplugged site provides approximately two dozen activities highlighting concepts behind a variety of CS concepts, including information theory, searching and sorting algorithms, graph problems such as minimal spanning trees and graph colouring, cryptography, and computer architecture. All of the activities are available in at least a half a dozen languages and many of the activities have implementations in Scratch or other simplified programming environments. Some activities have videos that show demonstrations, and in some cases the activities are categorized, for example with respect to the ACM K-12 curricular standards, New Zealand s curricular standards, and Denning s Great Principles of Computing. To illustrate the flavor of the activities, we briefly describe two here: Information theory: Twenty questions. In this activity participants begin to understand how to classify the amount of information represented in a given text, for example, by understanding how you might indicate that a 1000-page telephone book contains more information than 1000 blank sheets of paper. The activity is recommended for participants aged 10 and up. The first exercise asks the moderator to discuss what participants think information is. After this, the concept of surprising information is discussed. The specific example given is that it would be easy to guess if a classmate had walked to school but difficult to guess that a classmate had ridden a rocket to school. The more difficult concept is the one that requires more information to represent. A concrete activity to illustrate this is the last part in which participants are asked to guess a number between 1 and 100. The optimal strategy for this game is mentioned and the idea that increasing the interval by a factor of 10 only re- 15

16 quires three additional questions is discussed. Image representation: Colour by Numbers. In this activity participants understand that computers represent drawings, photographs, and other pictures only using numbers and demonstrates how this can be done. It is recommended for participants aged 7 and up. The activity begins with a discussion of the purpose of fax machines, when computers would need to store pictures, and that computers only represent information using numbers. The activity then demonstrates that computer screens are divided in a grid of pixels by showing how a lowercase a could be drawn onto a grid using rows of black and white dots and then using numbers to represent the places in each row where the black dots are located. The activity continues by asking participants to translate a row of numbers into black dots to draw a picture and then to design their own picture to be turned into a row of numbers representing black dots. Kinesthetic activities are those which do not require the use of pen and paper and instead focus on making participants move around while participating (see e.g. [131]). Such activities are broader than CS Unplugged, although several CS Unplugged activities can be adapted into kinesthetic activities. For example, sorting algorithms can be implemented by participants physically holding the numbers to be sorted and being allowed to compare their number to other participants numbers using the rules imposed by the sorting algorithm in question. Kinesthetic activities are popular for younger children, although the learning benefits of using such activities are controversial. Cross-disciplinary projects The use of information technology artifacts is widespread in all the subjects, but students (and teachers) are often hardly aware of the underlying processing as well as of the related implications for a critical evaluation of the outcomes they can achieve. From a CT perspective the power of computing relies on the opportunity to have a machine do some processing for us whereas, as Bruillard (2006) points out (as translated from the original French by the authors of this paper), the illusion of doing directly is definitely a significant obstacle to the mastery as well as to the understanding of the potential of computers [16]. This is a major reason why it is important to have CT-oriented activities across the disciplines. In general, in order to induce a more mindful attitude toward the CS sphere, while working on other subjects, a list of guidelines may include the following: Care about the process, not (just) the final product. Whatever you intend to do, start from a careful design. The interpretation of output data is only trustworthy as far as you are mindful of the underlying data processing. Beware of the tools that give the illusion of operating directly at the level of meaning; if possible, figure out unusual representations that force you to distinguish (and to create mappings) between form and meaning. Build upon few basic tools: what s important are the organization abilities; try restricting the available tools to the most elementary functions. Make your procedures explicit in every detail, avoid ambiguity and verbalize the intended processing. Plan carefully before carrying out a procedure: try to anticipate all possible developments; as far as possible, avoid proceeding by trial-and-error. Some suggestions to stimulate pupils creativity within a multidisciplinary setting can be found, for instance, in [115, 133]. In particular, in order to promote a more natural integration of informatics with other school disciplines, Sendova (2006) figures out a set of scenarios for putting informatics tools in the context of mathematics, art, and literature [115]. Moreover, Lu and Fletcher [94] mention a variety of contexts where CT topics can be introduced, essentially at a basic language level, in different subjects as well as in cross-disciplinary projects: while carrying out arithmetic operations or finding square roots (mathematics), testing reading comprehension (mother language), charting information (science), simulating/dramatizing assembly lines (history and social studies), diagramming sentences through syntax trees (mother/foreign languages), designing travel brochures and organizing teamwork (interdisciplinary). Finally, we mention two concrete examples of the use of CT for covering mathematical concepts in a constructive way: An example for middle school, described in [3] is the think of a number and I will tell you which it is activity where a popular riddle ( think of a number, add something, multiply with something else, tell me the number you have now and I can say which number you started with ) is to be played by two Scratch actors or between a Scratch actor and the student using the program. Students learn that the steps of the riddle can be used to compose a linear equation, where the variable is the original number thought of at the beginning. This hence makes it possible to experiment with how an activity can be modeled by an equation, an uncommon experience in middle school where equations are normally introduced as a formal exercise having few connections with the reality. A similar experience comes from trying to find how long the path covered by a small robot is. If the robot is mounted with sensors and the program moving the robot uses them, the path covered during each run can change and have a different length. Students then realize that the path can be specified with an expression containing variables. This analysis associating algebraic expressions to robot programs helps motivate elementary algebra, a typical subject addressed in middle schools. Programming for addressing CT aspects As discussed in section 4.1 above, well designed programming activities can be used to address all CT aspects. In the following, we give some examples of programming activities for each of the nine aspects: 16

17 Data collection: parsing information from a text, fetching data from web sites or databases, collecting own data through different sensors ( quantified self ), etc. Data analysis: creating a library of basic statistical analysis methods, making sense of collected data through custom-written programs, creating models using graphical programming environments to find patterns and draw conclusions about data, etc. Data representation: using different data structures, creating visualizations, building interactive graphics and stories, etc. Problem decomposition: formulating a solution to a larger problem and breaking the solution down into smaller tasks to be dealt with, visualizing a hierarchical structure (e.g. a species classification) by first visualizing individual parts, etc. Algorithms: designing a step-by-step solution to a problem using, for example, unplugged instructions, graphical programming environments, robots or programming languages, etc. Abstraction: using larger programming blocks (e.g. procedures) to encapsulate repeated parts of the program, etc. Simulation: creating simple simulations of everyday actions in graphical programming environments, adding new actors/variables, making changes and what if analyses, etc. Automation: creating scripts for tedious and frequently occurring tasks, generating invitation cards where the names are automatically filled out, replacing words with others, etc. Parallelization: working on a programming task simultaneously together with someone else, having several scripts running at the same time, etc. In order to make it possible to use programming as a tool for addressing all CT capabilities, there needs to be some common ground and consensus with regard to what programming is and how it should be introduced at different levels taking into account the age of the students. Without concrete examples and suggestions, there is a risk of programming being introduced in a variety of more and less appropriate ways, providing notably different possibilities for students in different schools [113]. Many of the current curricular and informal initiatives mentioned above use graphical programming environments. An early and well-known language for graphical programming is Logo [92], conceived by Papert in 1967 to let children develop their creativity and problem solving skills. In essence, pictures could be drawn on the screen by providing instructions based on a small set of simple movement commands to a small turtle (a sort of simulated robot). Today, there are a multitude of programming tools that are inspired by and can be seen as variations of Logo, for example, in the form of mobile apps (e.g. Kodable [83] and Lightbot [89]), Turtle graphics environments (e.g. Kojo [85] and Turtle Academy [125]) and simple robots (e.g. Bee-Bot [8]). (More on the Bee-Bot in Section ) Another popular type of graphical environments implements block-based programming. Examples include Scratch [109], Snap! [119] and Alice [118] make it possible to assemble programs by combining iconic commands shaped like puzzle tiles that only match if the code is syntactically correct. In their list of guiding principles for designing construction kits for kids within active learning contexts, Resnick and Silverman (2005) suggest that children are to be considered as designers and acknowledge the important role of Scratchlike environments in that [p]rogramming languages are the construction kits of the computational world [108]. The environments mentioned above can appeal to young novices for several reasons. For instance, the interaction is close-to syntax-free, which removes the need to struggle with syntax errors. Students get immediate feedback as the results of the student s code is visually shown when the program is run. The environments use characters and scenes, making them suitable for creating, for example, games and multimedia stories. Hence, children can, for instance, animate role-play stories with one or more characters, by reproducing personal everyday experiences, such as going home from school. Storytelling Storytelling has played a role in our society and as a research tradition since long before the computing era. Digital storytelling has been investigated under a variety of approaches, for example [18, 68] and in different contexts, for example showing that it is a kind of activity where girls stand out [78]. Important contributions concern students and adults with learning difficulties [41]. Using a kid- and girl-friendly environment like Scratch [109, 17], Looking Glass and Storytelling Alice [77], whole stories can be implemented by a few commands in repeated patterns. In early education, children develop a narrative, with characters and dialogue, and at the same time they learn some programming. Programming is not the main learning objective, but rather a tool for presenting the story in an entertaining way. When difficulties arise, the children want to overcome them in order to complete their stories, rather than simply getting some abstract code sequences correct. One of the answers to the survey reported on in this paper reflected on the use of Scratch for producing backgrounds for schoolchildren s end-of-the-year stage performances. Clearly, this type of activity is not primarily seen as a programming task. Rather students are introduced to a new tool to produce what they used to obtain with other, more traditional, materials such as colors, paper, clothes, mirrors and so on. Interactive backgrounds can reused and easily adapted to different shows each time they are run. In this way the teacher and her schoolchildren can invent a performance plot, begin a story they intend to produce, make drawings, introduce characters and roles, create a sort of storyboard, discuss what is most appropriate to do with a computer, try some solutions and finally make decisions. Educational robotics Educational robotics refers to activities with different types of robots that students instruct and direct by programming. Robots can be both unplugged and technology-based. When talking about unplugged robots, the basic idea is to help a robot do a given task, by giving it clear and precise instructions in a given order. Students can for instance make their 17

18 larly, a robot dance is attractive though very simple to program either as a dance that always looks the same at every program execution or as a varying dance depending on the rhythms, given for example by clapping hands or by switching on and off some lights. Creating interactive cards and posters Students of all ages are used to creating posters in different subjects and creating cards for Mother s and Father s Day, Christmas and Valentine s Day. Using technology, such as simple web programming or animation (e.g. in Scratch), these posters and cards can be made interactive, hence introducing CT aspects, in particular problem decomposition, algorithms and automation. When creating posters of a project or groupwork, children also engage in data collection and analysis. Figure 4: A subset of instruction cards for dance programming created by Karin Nyga rds in Sweden ( Experimenting and simulating Students often observe and conduct experiments on the world around them. In this respect, making models and simulation would contribute to improving their understanding of natural phenomena. For example, observation of a plant in the windowsill growing from a seed can give rise to a variety of CT activities: teacher or peers lift a cup from the table, move from one end of the room to another or sort candy into piles. This can be done individually or in teams with several robots making it possible for teams to compete against each other. For instance, while the teacher or a student role-plays the robot, students are required to apply a given set of instructions in order to get the robot to carry out some given task. This type of activity is also well suited for engaging parents in their children s learning: for instance by arranging parent-children-workshops, where students are to program their parents through an obstacle course using a simple set of instructions [44]. Another version of this kind of unplugged programming is dance programming, where students program each other to perform a given dance, for example, using handmade cards (Figure 4). As a matter of fact, we just need a little imagination to devise plenty of unplugged activities of this kind. With regard to physical robots, the number of alternatives to choose from has risen notably during only a couple of years. There is now a wide range of robots that can be used for introducing CT aspects to children starting at a very young age (e.g. Bee-Bots [8] and Play-I [107]) going up to older age levels (e.g. Lego Mindstorms, [88]). Low-cost and accessible robots aimed at children have also raised interest on the crowd-sourcing platform Kickstarter [81], where several related projects have been funded. In [38] the expression concrete programming is introduced to describe activities with RCX and NXT Lego robots, which have to move along a given path. The term concrete programming reflects what happens in the classroom the students themselves move along the path in order to decide on which commands to give the robot. Commonly the command sequence is built up by subsequences that are verified by simply checking whether the robots move in the anticipated and desired way. Using small robots, interesting problems to be solved are (almost) suggested by the device itself young children want to see the robot move and then simply invent something to be done by their robot. Robots can also be used for finding general solutions. While executing activities with the Lego robots students can discover that one program drawing geometrical shapes always draws the same figures, while another solution could draw different shapes if the robot is controlled by means of sensors rather than by commands with static input. Simi- Collecting data on the size of the plant, external circumstances (temperature, light, watering it etc), then representing these data in appropriate charts (possibly by using spreadsheet or other software) Modeling the growth pattern of the plant in relation to time and external circumstances and making an interactive simulation (e.g.in the form of a Scratch game). Then, applying scientific method, improving the model and simulation based on observations of the behavior of the simulation. Playing educational games Many students enjoy playing computer games, and there are many types that can be valuable when looking at CT from an educational perspective. In addition to commercial, high budget, simulation and strategy games such as The Sims, Hay Day and Civilization, there are also many other game resources (see e.g. Educative-Games.org [49]) that can be used to support the development of CT related skills. 6.2 More extensive activities The extensive activities presented in this subsection encompass a variety of the smaller activities discussed so far. Most of them are based on the authors experience of collaboration with teachers Testing generalizations about texts Students in literature classes often make generalizations about authors and their work. For example, students who have read a single play by Shakespeare have no issues making major claims about his entire oeuvre. Erroneous generalizations can be corrected directly by the teacher or can be handled by asking students to support them, which they typically cannot. But while this approach may encourage students to think seriously about offering support and evidence for their arguments, it may also discourage them from thinking broadly about the texts they read. To test intuitions that deal with large number of texts, for example the 18

19 37 plays written by Shakespeare, one needs an efficient way to deal with a large amount of information. The widespread availability of digital texts and free online tools for analyzing them makes it relatively easy to generate data about texts. Even for intuitions that focus on only one text, these tools can still be efficient and illuminating. The following activity [116] assumes that students will have read Macbeth and several sonnets by Shakespeare. The activity was developed by a 10th grade English teacher but could be adapted to lower grades with a different choice of author and with sufficient scaffolding of the activity. The central focus of the unit is a close reading of Romeo and Juliet based on an examination of word choice, imagery, and syntax. The work for the project involves three to four class days of work as well as some related homework. The unit is divided into three parts: introducing the approach, using the approach on Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, and finally generating and testing intuitions independently. The teacher models the process of testing intuitions using text analysis as follows: 1. Form or identify intuitions 2. Hypothesize results, what results would suggest / confirm your claims? 3. Apply the tool(s), e.g. TAPor [122] and TagCrowd [121] 4. Analyze results and assess the intuition 5. Form conclusions This process involves CT in every step. To form an intuition, students must abstract ideas from the text to design an intuition and then construct results that would confirm their claims. Finally, the connection between the intuition and the hypothesis must be evaluated. Using the tool(s) involves computation, albeit indirectly. Analyzing the results is a form of evaluation, and drawing conclusions involves both evaluation and abstraction. When modeling intuitions, there are two types of thoughts that can be considered. The first are intuitions that could be answered through a traditional reading of the text but for which textual analysis might provide support, such as Macbeth is the most violent character in the play. The second are claims that must be supported by evidence drawn from a number of texts, such as Shakespeare s plays are violent. For both types of intuitions, the instructor goes through the five steps given above, so that students could see that while the tools produce results quickly, it is necessary to spend time reviewing the results to see if they produce useful evidence for the claims. After the introduction of the textual analysis process, students work in small groups to use a tool to answer a question that relates to the class work on Romeo and Juliet or the sonnets. Each group is assigned to use one of the tools demonstrated, including programs that allow users to examine collocation and word frequency. Students follow the process, write a report describing their findings, present that report to the class, and offer an assessment of the tool s capabilities and drawbacks. Finally, later in the term, students are asked to form intuitions independently and to explain how they would apply one of the text analysis tools to test that hypothesis Effective note-taking Effective note taking is essential for every student, but it is usually assumed and rarely verified. In a subject like history where understanding and classifying information during a lecture is important this is particularly problematic. Efficacious note taking is not a passive activity, since a good set of notes should be an accurate record not just of what the teacher said, but also of the broader discussion including student comments and questions, and is a multi-stage process. The goals of the activities [116] introduced into the American history course are to use CT to help students: Improve their note-taking ability Improve their active-listening skills Recognize the difference between homework and studying Improve their recall skills The activities ask students to use hashtags to improve their understanding of the process of note taking. The activities involve abstraction (to identify appropriate hashtags), evaluation (to consider if an effective set of hashtags has been chosen and applied correctly), and recollection (because the purpose of the hashtags is to allow classification and recall of information). This activity was developed and implemented by a high-school (10th grade) teacher but could be adapted for lower grades with sufficient scaffolding. The activities are sequenced as follows: 1. Give a formal presentation on the definition and value of efficacious note taking. Preface the presentation with a discussion of note taking and affirm student observations whenever possible. 2. Introduce the idea of hashtagging. This activity will help students to understand that hashtags are useful for note taking because it allows someone to choose the term or phrase that will best help them retain and retrieve the information they have recorded. It is important to convey that effective hashtags are based on a thoughtful abstraction of the material and will not be proper nouns or words from the lecture. Assign as homework a short reading on hashtagging, to be discussed during lecture the next day. 3. Present a short, formal lecture of approximately twenty minutes in length, during which students need to take class notes. The instructor should identify in advance up to ten key ideas that students might plausibly tag. At the end of the lecture students will be asked to quietly read over their lecture notes, adding or correcting information as necessary and supplying a maximum of ten tags for key ideas in their notes. Finally students will, in small groups, compare, contrast, and debate their hashtag choices and then present a summary of their work to the group for consideration. 4. Present a longer, formal history lecture of about thirty minutes in duration for which students need to take notes. As with the last step, the teacher will have identified up to ten likely ideas that the students might plausibly tag. This time students will correct and augment their notes as homework, again identifying 19

20 a maximum of ten hashtags in the margins of their notes. The ten tags will also be recorded on a separate piece of paper to be submitted to the teacher. In the following class their work will be reviewed in small groups and then with the larger class. This process, and variations of it, will be repeated with regularity throughout the year. It will be applied not only to lectures but also to large group discussions and other classroom activities. Later a similar process will be used to improve students critical reading skills Archaeology of Information The genesis of key ideas in the early cultures can provide useful guidelines for the learning process. Moreover, introducing concepts and techniques in their early, simpler forms helps children s metacognition. Specifically, key ideas and cultural achievements pertaining the sphere of CT are approached from a cross-disciplinary perspective involving ancient history, mathematics, science and, in the primary school, engaging craftwork tasks. The activities are organized in a set of self-contained units that can be variously combined to accommodate for different needs and/or constraints. The broadest implementation of this program has been carried out for primary-school grades 4 5 [10]; parts of the program have also been adapted for primary-school grade 2 and for middle-school grade 6. It is probably most appropriate for primary-school grade 3 5. Here is a summary of the main topics: 1. Counting and communicating with the body. While having fun inventing their own body codes, in imitation of prehistoric populations, children can appreciate the conventional nature of codes. 2. Counting and communicating with objects and notches. Children work with counters (pebbles, twigs, grains, shells, marks on stones, etc.) and quantity models (heaps or bunches of items) that play also the role of permanent storage devices. 3. Counting and data processing with tokens. Children reproduce a variety of clay tokens and can experience a first example of amenability to manipulation in the formal treatment of information. 4. Writing numerals and syllables. By observing and producing clay tablets, children have the opportunity to deal with deeper syntactic structures, to develop more abstract mental models, and to learn unusual ways of coding numbers in mixed bases. 5. Checking for information consistency. The introduction of tallies in the prehistory marked an unprecedented degree of abstraction and objectivity in dealing with information. Their use as contracts is connected to a rudimentary error checking device. 6. Carrying out algorithmic procedures. The material coming from the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations is very rich from an educational viewpoint. In particular, children can experience interesting examples of algorithmic procedures by applying the elaborate techniques of Egyptian arithmetics in hieroglyphic notation. 7. Complying to syntactic rules. Quipus are very peculiar way of coding numerical and non-numerical information in knotted-string artifacts where the syntax rules play an important role. 8. Understanding instruments for data processing. By comparing the additive Roman notation, written with the stylus on wax tablets, with the positional notation represented in the Roman abaci, children can better appreciate that a code can be more or less amenable to manipulation. 9. Toward the idea of computing machine. The last units overview a range of abaci which have been in use for centuries in different areas of the world (schoty, suanpan, soroban, reckoning tables, etc.). A major point of interest in the abaci stems from the fact that this kind of artifacts opens the way to the idea of computing machines and to the development of more sophisticated instruments from the 16th century onwards CS and Nursery Rhymes The ability to spontaneously search for and analyze structures as well as (variant and invariant) patterns forms the basis for understanding information processing. Moreover, unplugged tasks can help avoid stereotypical views of computing. The approach is cross-disciplinary, involving mother as well as foreign languages, mathematics, science and, possibly, music. This program has been carried out within the middleschool instruction cycle [42], grades 6 8, but can be also appropriate for primary-school grade 3 5. The nursery rhymes theme is naturally linked to the pupils experiences in their home. The main steps of this path can be summarized as follows: 1. The pupils collect several examples of nursery rhymes, taken from their personal experiences, which are then analyzed in order to recognize repeats and, within each refrain, fixed and varying parts. 2. The students try to identify formal structures (e.g., prologue + repeated refrain + epilogue), whereas the meaning and aims of the tiny stories are discussed with the teachers of mother language and history. 3. The mechanisms that govern the simplest types of nursery rhymes are elaborated in playful activities, where the pupils engage themselves in the construction of concrete models toy machines using cardboard and other cheap materials. 4. Later, they can verify their ideas by trying out experiments on a larger set of examples with the aid of a specific application: besides implementing a few traditional nursery rhymes, the pupils can also invent new ones of their own. 5. After introducing the rudiments of programming (e.g., in Logo or Scratch), the students try to develop programs to automate the generation of simple nursery rhymes. Through this work they can also gain a better understanding of what is going on backstage of the specific application they used. 20