Motivational Tools for Learning Programming in Primary Schools

Abstract

Studying pedagogical sciences for Computer Science subject nowadays does not meet with great interest of students in Slovakia. Education of young generation in this area is strongly affected by small number of well qualified teachers as well as lack of high-quality teaching materials resulting to deplorable knowledge of the pupils. The very same situation is also with preparation of future teachers. They have only limited possibilities of direct contact with pupils during their studies, what leads to weak experience of the future teachers and low motivation of the children for Computer Science subject. This contribution gives a positive example of extracurricular educative activity for pupils from lower-secondary schools, where students of Teaching of Computer Science program and Applied Informatics program were involved as lecturers or tutors. In this activity we used various motivational tools for teaching programming and Computer Science as well. The contribution describes our experience with these tools for programming, which we used in our extracurricular activity – so called “Informatics club” and also in the two primary schools and three secondary schools in the region of Banská Bystrica. Motivational devices, which were used are: education board bbc micro:bit with accessories (IoT set, gamepad, micro:bit cars), didactic devices – robots (Airblock, mBot Ranger, Phiro Pro) and board game Scottie Go!.