A classroom SNS to promote reflective activity in programming learning for children

Kumpei Tsutsui,Hideyuki Takada

doi:10.1186/s41039-018-0069-9

Kumpei Tsutsui, Hideyuki Takada

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-018-0069-9

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Abstract

■■■In recent years, workshops involving programming on computers have been held in elementary education to promote creative thinking. In our experience of conducting programming workshops for children for over 10 years, we cannot have enough time to let them share and reflect on their creative activity, although reflection is one of the important factors for successful experience-based learning. In order to solve this problem, we have developed a classroom SNS (social networking service) system for children to upload a post and share their project. On the SNS site, they can upload three kinds of contents: action view, code view, and comments. We conducted an experiment to examine if children have performed the sharing and reflection activity with the SNS system during a programming workshop. The result shows that the SNS system would promote motivation for children to reflect on their project.

Highlights

Programming education is becoming an important element of elementary schools in Japan (MEXT 2011)
Applying the proposed SNS to programming education Application procedure In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system, we conducted experiments at programming workshops organised by NPO Super Science Kids
Our contribution is that we have shown what functions are required to promote the reflection activities in programming workshops and revealed their effectiveness by applying the SNS to actual workshops

Summary

Introduction

Programming education is becoming an important element of elementary schools in Japan (MEXT 2011). Elementary school students have many opportunities to do programming through trial programming classes at a school or workshops. In experience-based learning, it is very important to reflect on the activities. It is essential to be evaluated by others in addition to engaging actively during a class, especially, in programming education (Monroy-Hernández 2007). Scratch (Resnick et al 2009) which was specially developed for primary school students offers an easy programming function and a function to share and publish the finished project to the world. Users do not have much opportunities to present the finished project for evaluation and reflect on their experiences

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