Science education and computational thinking – adapting two projects from classroom learning to emergency distance learning

Abstract

The sudden need for an adaptation of two science projects based on the changes that the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the education system in Portugal, transitioning from classroom learning to distance learning, led to a reorganization within the structure of these projects in order to implement them, maintaining the same objectives. Both projects have the main goal to develop computational thinking, with the first project having simultaneously the aim to also develop an environmental awareness through an initiation to programming by way of implementing challenges regarding the same topic, within 1st grade pupils, namely recycling and reducing single use waste. The second project constitutes the assembly and implementation of a weather station, based on the microprocessor Micro:bit, at the service of the science curricula contents within 5th grade students, with regard to abiotic factors and its influence on animals and plants.