Design and Development of Low-Cost Unplugged Activities for Teaching Computational Thinking at K-5 Level

Abstract

Children of this era are considered as ‘digital natives’ as they are born and live in a world integrated with digital technologies. As a user of digital technology, they are expected to be aware of the fundamentals of computational thinking and logic to use it as a creative tool. Though there are many efforts to introduce computational thinking at the K-5 level globally, many children are still not exposed in India to the tools and techniques of the computational thinking, and many of those who are exposed are apprehensive of learning how to code. The major reasons observed in India are: (1) lack of exposure to the computer in many areas, (2) lack of ludic value in the process of teaching computational thinking, (3) cost of the toys and games available in the market are still beyond the capacity of many people and (4) design of the toys and games without considering zone of proximal development. To address these issues, a set of unplugged activities has been designed and developed using blended prototyping approach and the 5/10 method of game design as a framework. This paper illustrates the effort into a comparative analysis of the existing products, user study, state of the art review, design and testing to validate the design of low-cost unplugged activities for teaching computational thinking at the K-5 level.