Scratch Programming Language Research Articles

Pengaruh Bahasa Pemrograman Scratch Terhadap Peningkatan Hasil Belajar Informatika Siswa di SD Islam Al-Azhar 32 Padang

This research is motivated by the implementation of Informatics learning at SD Islam Al-Azhar 32 Padang. The theory and practice of programming languages ​​is included in the Informatics material but is not implemented so that the ability to recognize and understand programming languages ​​in children has not yet emerged. Apart from that, the Informatics learning outcomes of students who have not yet reached the KKM are 70. This research aims to determine the effect of the scratch programming language in improving the Informatics learning outcomes of class IV students at Al-Azhar 32 Islamic Elementary School in Padang. This type of research is quantitative research. This quantitative research uses experimental methods. As for several types of experimental methods, researchers used Quasi Experiments. Then, the research design pattern used in this research uses the non-equivalent group design. The non-equivalent group design is a design that requires the existence of an experimental and control group. This is because the determination of the hypothesis is based on the results of the observations of the two groups. Determination of experimental and control groups is not random. These two groups will later be tested using the same instruments and analyzing which treatment is more optimal

Creating interest in programming lessons in young school children (scratch language)

Different from the traditional education system, according to the curriculum teaching form, the knowledge that the students will be able to apply in practice is preferred over the knowledge of mental perception. Currently, high school students are taught the Python programming language. In addition, Digital skills and Scratch programming language are taught to students through the platform.

Experience of using the visualized programming environment Scratch for teaching the basics of algorithmization and programming in grades VI—VIII in schools of Belarus

"Algorithmization and programming" is an important content line of the school informatics course. However, many students have difficulty learning it due to insufficient development of abstract thinking and lack of practical experience in programming. The visual programming language Scratch can become a propaedeutic tool for studying this content line, allowing one to overcome these difficulties and make the study of programming more accessible and interesting for schoolchildren.The article presents examples of tasks to be performed in the visualized programming environment Scratch, which are offered to students of the VI—VIII grades of schools in Belarus to master the content line "Fundamentals of algorithmization and programming" of the academic subject "Informatics". Each task is presented at three levels: reproductive, productive and creative.The material will be useful to informatics teachers working with students who find it difficult to master the concepts of algorithmization and programming using text-based programming languages (Pascal, Python, C++, etc.).

ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛНА ИГРА НА SCRATCH, СВЪРЗАНА С УЧЕБНИЯ ПРЕДМЕТ ЧОВЕКЪТ И ПРИРОДАТА ЗА 4. КЛАС

The following work presents an educational game created with the Scratch programming language, which includes part of the teaching material on the subject Man and Nature for the 4th grade. The aim is to help the activity of the primary teacher by providing additional learning resources, which it could use when it necessary. An alternative way of organizing the educational process in the form of a game is presented – more interesting, more attractive and more dynamic (if we compare it with traditional methods). The game is titled „The Treasure of Anubis“ and the story revolves around a hero who is searching for a long buried treasure. Arriving at the pyramids, the hero understands that in order to get inside and find the treasure, he must answer several questions. There are five questions and they include specific material, but if the teacher decides to change the questions from another educational material, the structure of the game allows it. Only the questions and their answers need to be changed, which does not require digital competence related to the Scratch programming language. The game could be used as a template and modified a lot of times by including material from other subjects.

The use of magnets for the nonvisual construction of syntax-based tangible object assemblies by individuals who are blind or visually impaired

ABSTRACT Many students have difficulty in mastering syntax when programming. To alleviate this problem, the Scratch programming language was developed to have a visual block-based drag and drop code editor, where the shapes of the blocks and animation are used to make the syntax intuitive. To similarly make syntax intuitive to individuals who are blind or visually impaired (BVI) using tangible code blocks, a method needs to take into account perceptual processing differences between the senses and implementation differences between the physical and virtual world. The studies in this paper examined the effectiveness of using localized reciprocal shape information in combination with magnetic attraction for providing intuitive feedback about syntax. Supplementing the use of localized reciprocal shape constraints with magnetic attraction increased the accuracy and perceived ease of use by blindfolded BVI users to detect whether blocks successfully connected and, therefore, represented a code segment with valid syntax. This did not appear to change significantly with changes in the size and weight of the blocks, although stronger magnetic connections appeared preferred. We also introduced a “stopper” design to allow for code blocks to have exceptions to the regular syntax rules, while not adding complexity to the majority of code blocks.

The Ability of Scratch Teaching in Programming Language—Taking Roguelike Mathematical Games as an Example

In recent years, Japan and Taiwan have begun to include programming education in the elementary and secondary school curriculum as well as in universities so as to strengthen students’ programming language ability. In this study, the Scratch programming language was used to design a roguelike mathematical game based on a prince saving a princess in a forest. Mathematics refers to the positioning of each object, its XY coordinates, movement and distance, positive and negative movement angles, waiting time (seconds), and speed. In this study, the mathematical game program was provided to a class of rural elementary school students in southern Taiwan. By imitating the design, the teachers, and students can work together on this hands-on programming project to design the pictures, cooperate in discussing and solving the programming dilemma, and enjoy the game together. The elementary school principals and teachers who participated in the scene observed and concluded that it allowed the pupils to think seriously, enjoy discussing the integration of mathematics and programming, design digital games, and develop the final result of roguelike digital games. This project allowed students to take on the challenge of learning to write programs with curiosity and learn to use different building block programming languages in Scratch to produce a program by imitation. Students can also learn to change and add objects, and arrange the things to be done by different characters through programming. The mathematical roguelike challenges let the students understand the learning achievements through the taste of each victory. Through the game attraction, this study fostered cross-domain digital talents in areas such as digital technology, program education, and artificial intelligence.

Gamification with Scratch or App Inventor in Higher Education: A Systematic Review

Programming skills should be taught and developed; Scratch and App Inventor are two tools that can contribute significantly to developing this competence in university students. This study aims to investigate the use and effect of the programming language Scratch and App Inventor on the development of skills and competencies for learning (autonomy, attention, motivation, critical thinking, creative thinking, computational thinking, communication, problem solving and social interaction) in higher education. To achieve this goal, a systematic review of articles in English and Spanish was carried out using the PRISMA statement (research publication guidelines designed to improve the integrity of systematic review and meta-analysis reports). A search for studies was conducted in the Web of Science (WOS), Dialnet, and SCOPUS. A total of 405 papers were analyzed, of which 11 were finally selected. The results showed that both Scratch and App Inventor favor the development of skills and competencies for learning in the context of higher education, despite being underutilized strategies that all knowledge disciplines should promote.

Automatic Creativity Measurement in Scratch Programs Across Modalities

Promoting creativity is considered an important goal of education, but creativity is notoriously hard to measure.In this paper, we make the journey fromdefining a formal measure of creativity that is efficientlycomputable to applying the measure in a practical domain. The measure is general and relies on coretheoretical concepts in creativity theory, namely fluency, flexibility, and originality, integratingwith prior cognitive science literature. We adapted the general measure for projects in the popular visual programming language Scratch.We designed a machine learning model for predicting the creativity of Scratch projects, trained and evaluated on human expert creativity assessments in an extensive user study. Our results show that opinions about creativity in Scratch varied widely across experts. The automatic creativity assessment aligned with the assessment of the human experts more than the experts agreed with each other. This is a first step in providing computational models for measuring creativity that can be applied to educational technologies, and to scale up the benefit of creativity education in schools.

A Guided Scratch Visual Execution Environment to Introduce Programming Concepts to CS1 Students

First-year computer science (CS1) university students traditionally have difficulties understanding how to program. This paper describes research introducing CS1 students to programming concepts using a Scratch programming language guided visual execution environment (VEE). The concepts addressed are those from an introductory programming course (sequences, variables, operators, conditionals, loops, and events and parallelism). The VEE guides novice students through programming concepts, explaining and guiding interactive exercises executed in Scratch by using metaphors and serious games. The objective of this study is, firstly, to investigate if a cohort of 124 CS1 students, from three distinct groups, studying at the same university, are able to improve their programming skills guided by the VEE. Secondly, is the improvement different for various programming concepts? All the CS1 students were taught the module by the same tutor in four 2-h sessions (8 h), and a qualitative research approach was adopted. The results show students significantly improved their programming knowledge, and this improvement is significant for all the programming concepts, although greater for certain concepts such as operators, conditionals, and loops than others. It also shows that students lacked initial knowledge of events and parallelism, though most had used Scratch during their high school years. The sequence concept was the most popular concept known to them. A collateral finding in this study is how the students’ previous knowledge and learning gaps affected grades they required to access and begin study at the university level.

Assessment of Scratch Programming Language as a Didactic Tool to Teach Functions

The objective of this research is to study the Scratch programming language as a didactic tool to teach functions. The introduction of didactic tools allowing comprehension in simple and attractive ways is required. Given the traditional teaching/learning system, it is necessary to organize participatory and collaborative dynamic classrooms, which allow the interaction of students in activities where the educator modifies his or her traditional role as an advisor and the students take a more active role in learning through their own effort. In this sense, three activities using the Scratch programming language are proposed: the first one refers to the linear and affine functions, while the second one deals with the quadratic function and the third one is related to the exponential function. The participants in this study were 30 future teachers. The study considers the combination of magisterial lessons and active didactic methodologies as demonstration method, cooperative learning and gamification, also including the applied assessment. The activities, methodologies and assessment were evaluated by the participants with results higher than 4 in 5-point Likert scale for all cases, preferring the active methodologies than magisterial lessons.

Effect of Scratch Programming Language (SPL) on Achievement in Geometry among Senior Secondary Students in Ibadan, Nigeria

The knowledge of Mathematics is germane to the scientific and technological development of nations all over the world. In addition to this, the integration of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) cum advances in pedagogy have made educators all over the world adopt innovative approaches that are ICT-inclined to enhance students’ acquisition of mathematical skills and also to enhance their academic achievement. In view of this, this study determined the effect of scratch programming language (SPL) on achievement in Geometry among senior secondary one (SS 1) students in Ibadan North Local Government Area of Oyo State, Nigeria. The study adopted the pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental research design. The participants were 116 (75 males and 41 females) Senior Secondary School students in two intact classes from two public schools in Ibadan North Local Government Area. The instruments used for data collection were the Students Achievement Test in Geometry (SATG) (with a reliability coefficient of 0.75) and the Instructional Guide or Manual for the use of Scratch Programming Language (TGUSPL). Data were analyzed using Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). Results revealed that there was a significant main effect of treatment on students’ achievement in Geometry (F(1, 111) = 124.80; p<0.05, partial η2 = 0.53). Gender also had a significant main effect on students’ achievement in Geometry (F(1, 111) = 20.25; p<0.05, partial η2 = 0.15). It is, therefore, recommended that teachers and curriculum developers should adopt the use of Scratch programming language (SPL) for teaching Geometry for improved achievement in this aspect of Mathematics.

A data-driven approach to assess computational thinking concepts based on learners’ artifacts

Integrating computational thinking into K-12 Education has been a widely explored topic in recent years. Particularly, effective assessment of computational thinking can support the understanding of how learners develop computational concepts and practices. Aiming to help advance research on this topic, we propose a data-driven approach to assess computational thinking concepts, based on the automatic analysis of data from learners’ computational artifacts. As a proof of concept, the approach was applied to a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to investigate the course’s effectiveness as well as to identify points for improvement. The data analyzed consists of over 3300 projects from the course participants, using the Scratch programming language. From that sample, we found patterns in how computational thinking manifests in projects, which can be used as evidence to guide opportunities for improving course design, as well as insights to support further research on the assessment of computational thinking.

SCRATCH: POSSIBILIDADES REAIS PARA PRODUÇÃO TEXTUAL EM AMBIENTE FORMAL DE APRENDIZAGEM?

O presente trabalho, cujo objetivo foi compreender como alunos se apropriam de Narrativas Digitais, apresenta resultados de uma investigação relacionada ao uso da linguagem de programação Scratch em aulas de Língua Portuguesa. O aporte teórico se deu com base nos princípios socioculturais de J. Wertsch e nos Novos Estudos do Letramento. Apoiamo-nos no método de estudo de caso, sendo um caso único de caráter exploratório e descritivo para produção de dados. Para tal, valemo-nos das seguintes técnicas: observação participante, com anotações em jornal de pesquisa, questionário e análise de artefatos físicos. Os sujeitos foram 26 alunos dos anos iniciais do segundo ciclo do Ensino Fundamental da Educação Básica de uma escola pública do Estado de Minas Gerais. Entre os achados, obtivemos indícios de que o Scratch pode favorecer, de maneira lúdica e usual, a produção de texto, bem como potencializar situações reais para tal trabalho.

Towards the Development of Computational Thinking and Mathematical Logic through Scratch

Currently the need to provide quality education to future generations has led to the development of new teaching methodologies, within this fact the tools provided by information technologies have been positioned as the future of learning, in this sense, the learning to program is no longer considered a selective skill in the field of computing, being today a necessity for any student who wants to be competent in this globalized and dynamic world. Within this context, the present research aims to analyze to what extent the use of the Scratch programming language allows the development of computational thinking skills and mathematical logic. The methodology consisted of the application of programming fundamentals through Scratch 3.0 to an experimental group composed of 25 students who were randomly selected from a population of 100 students, the data collection was carried out through a test of logical reasoning standardized by Acevedo and Oliva and a test of levels of computational thinking standardized by González. According to the results, a significant difference is postulated in the performance of the students in both tests, having a more considerable improvement in the criteria: Loops, Control of Variables (CV), Probability (PB) and Combinatorial Operations (CB). Therefore, it is concluded by highlighting the importance of teaching basic concepts of Computer Science such as computational thinking and mathematical logic, since it contributes to the internalization of concepts when developing algorithms in problem-solving.

AROUND THE SIERPINSKI TRIANGLE. THE CHAOS GAME AND THE SCRATCH PROGRAMMING

The article discusses the experience of studying Sierpinski geometric fractals in circle classes in mathematics and informatics with students of grades 4–6. A versatile approach to the construction of fractal objects is used: a method of cutting out of paper, Chaos Game on transparent films and implementing the studied algorithm in the Scratch programming language. At the same time, some issues related to the occurrence of random events are discussed with the children. After the fractal is obtained on a computer, the research phase of the constructed model follows. In the computer Chaos Game: (1) a small rotation by a specified number of degrees is sequentially added before setting the next point; (2) a turn in front of individual fractal vertices; (3) compression of a fractal to individual vertices. Conclusions are drawn about the self-similarity of the resulting objects. The proposed method allows us to study some properties of fractal sets, by involving visualization, intuition and computer modeling.

WeScratch: an inclusive, playful and collaborative approach to creative learning online

Purpose Many educators currently face challenges when trying to engage students in creative learning experiences online, where it can be particularly difficult to move beyond the transmissive approach typical of video lessons and webinars. The purpose of this paper is to present WeScratch, online workshops designed as welcoming, playful and peer-supported spaces where educators can experience first-hand an alternative approach to learning online, as they actively learn to create projects using the Scratch programming language. Design/methodology/approach The WeScratch experience is designed as a hands-on, creative online workshop where participants spend most of their time making projects while they share ideas with peers. The authors describe the structure, platform, facilitation and activities of WeScratch workshops, highlighting the main design choices and their underlying motivations. Findings This study discusses how this environment has engaged educators from around the world to experiment with Scratch in a playful way. The authors give examples of how educators have described the value of the experience, both as learners developing their skills and as designers developing similar learning experiences for their students. Originality/value WeScratch provides a model for how to design online learning environments to be more inclusive, playful and collaborative. Although WeScratch workshops are designed to support learning to create with code, the authors see the wider potential for applying this approach to other online learning environments to broaden participation, build connection and expand creative expression.

ИГРОФИКАЦИЯ КАК МЕХАНИЗМ ПАТРИОТИЧЕСКОГО ВОСПИТАНИЯ ПОДРАСТАЮЩЕГО ПОКОЛЕНИЯ

The article presents the experience of using gaming technologies and gamification in the patriotic education of the younger generation. The authors consider the features of Z generation (iGeneration), parameters for their successful learning. The article presents approaches to patriotic education. In the article the basis and purpose of patriotic education are considered as patriotic consciousness as a result of the development of the initial concrete-sensory perception of the surrounding world. The authors disclose the criteria for the formation of patriotic consciousness – motivationalvalue, cognitive and behavioral. The author's set of games is presented, the mechanics of which are universal and can be applied in the patriotic education of preschool and school age children in any region of the Russian Federation. The complex of games is united in the project «Welcome to the city of Technoinnovations», which is part of the system of additional education and is designed to instill love and interest in the native land through the use of information technology, to provide a wide range of additional knowledge and help to form the necessary social and 4K competencies. The complex includes the following elements: conducting a city tour using robotics and QR-coding technology; creation of virtual city tours for schoolchildren; development of educational board games of regional content using Photoshop; design of the Simbirsk national ornament using the Scratch programming language; creation of the ABC of the hometown using the Power Point program; creating puzzles «Hometown Streets» using a puzzle generator. The implementation of these network projects contributes to the formation of motivational-value, cognitive and behavioral components of patriotism in the younger generation.

Impact of used programming language for K-12 students' understanding of the loop concept

Block-based programming languages are becoming a favourite learning tool for programming novices while the traditional way of teaching programming mostly uses text-based programming languages. The purpose of this study was to compare the impact of used visual and textual programming languages on K-12 students' understanding of the loop concept. Participants were 312 elementary school students from 5th to 8th grade using visual programming language Scratch (n = 59), and textual programming languages Logo (n = 185) and Python (n = 68). Tests for all languages were equivalent, differing only in the used programming language. Results showed that students achieved statistically significant higher scores when using block-based programming language compared to students using textual programming languages. These results show that K-12 students need concrete experience to understand abstract concepts, as the loop concept, which Scratch as a block-based programming language provides.

Using robot-based practices to develop an activity that incorporated the 6E model to improve elementary school students’ learning performances

ABSTRACT This study used robot-based practices to develop an activity that incorporated the 6E model. The sixth-grade students learned interdisciplinary knowledge about how to use Arduino electronic components, microcontrollers, and hands-on tools to make a “Crab Robot.” In addition, the students learned how to use Scratch programming language to control the robot and complete the “Crab Robot Crossing the Road” task. The study implemented a quasi-experimental design to examine whether the students who learned the robot-based activity using the 6E model acquired better learning motivation, learning performance, computational thinking ability, and hands-on ability than those who learned the activity through lectures. This study adopted purposive sampling to select 70 sixth-grade students from four classes, which were divided into the experimental group (6E model) and the control group (lectures). The experiment was conducted over a period of 18 weeks (for a total duration of 1,440 minutes). The results from the pretests-posttests showed that both groups of students improved their learning motivation, learning performance, computational thinking ability, and hands-on ability; however, the experimental group’s scores were significantly better. More importantly, this study provides a pedagogy manuscript for instructors who want to teach mechatronics programs and programming design education.

COMPUTER GAMES FOR INTEGRATED INFORMATICS AND MATHEMATICS LESSONS

The article discusses the psychological and pedagogical problems of using computer games in school education. Graphic and animation capabilities of visual programming language Scratch, as well as computer games for educational purposes as a means of increasing cognitive interest and educational motivation of students to study informatics and mathematics are demonstrated.