Learning Computational Thinking and scratch at distance

Abstract

Learning Computational Thinking concepts by all has gained quite importance in last years. Scratch is also one of the most used products to promote it worldwide. Yet, most teachers face difficulties when using it in the classroom with their students. With this idea in mind we developed and run a distance education course under the Project of Distance Education of the University of Coimbra specially designed for elementary school teachers to learn both Computational Thinking concepts and Scratch via an e-learning course using Moodle as a Learning Management System. In this paper we describe this first experience of teaching and learning online, the results obtained and also our future work about this course. Results of this first experience showed that it was possible for the trainees to learn Computational Thinking concepts and Scratch programming and also to develop useful products for their classroom practice using this modality of teaching and learning. As such, a second edition of the course is already planned to take place shortly.