Computational thinking and 21st century competencies

1. Institute of Education of Lisbon University
jmpiedade@ie.ulisboa.pt
João Piedade
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING,
PROGRAMMING AND ROBOTICS
AS STRATEGY TO PROMOTE 21st
CENTURY COMPETENCIES AND
SKILLS
Institute of Education of Lisbon University
aipedro@ie.ulisboa.pt
Ana Pedro

2. WHAT ARE
COMPUTATIONAL
THINKING ABOUT?

3. Papert, Seymour (1980).
Mindstorms – children, computers
and powerfull ideas. NY: Basic
Books.
Papert, Seymour (1994). The Children Machine -
Rethinking School in the Age of the Computers .
Common Paperback.
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

4. Seymor Papert with one of his
Turtles
“Objects to think (and create) with”
“Children Teaching Computers”
“Children should be programming the computer (or
other artifacts) rather than being programmed by it”
Construcionism
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

5. COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
Based in the turtles robots of
William Grey Walter
Instruções básicas em LOGO
Papert, 1967

6. COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
Seymour Papert
1980
Jannet Wing
2006
Mitchel Resnick
and Karen Brennan
CT is about “solving problems, designing systems,
and understanding human behavior, by drawing
on the concepts fundamental to computer
science” and “is using abstraction and
decomposition when attacking a large complex
task or designing a large complex system”
CT “helps us think about learning with Scratch,
and, in turn, we believe that programming with
Scratch provides a context and set of
opportunities for contributing to the active
conversations about computational thinking”
“Children should program the computer (or other
objects and artifacts) rather than being
programmed or controlled by it”
“Object to think with”
2012

7. ALGORITHMS
Design a sequence of instructions to solve a
problem.
4
PATTERN RECOGNTION
Recognizing a pattern, or similar characteristics
helps break down the problem and also build a
construct as a path for the solution. Find a set of
patterns or similar characteristics that can be
generalized.
3
1
PROBLEMS IDENTIFICATION / DECOMPOSITION
To solve problems we need to make choices about
to do and how. Decomposition is about breaking
problems down into small parts in order to make it
easier to solve.
ABSTRACTION
Process of taking away or removing characteristics
from something in order to reduce it to a set of
essential characteristics.
2
COMPUTATIONAL
THINKING DIMENSIONS
DEBUGGING
A step-by-step analysis of the problem solution.
5

8. COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
Miles Berry

9. COMPUTATIONAL THINKING OFFLINE ACTIVITIES
https://csunplugged.org/en/

10. 01
02
03
Simple Portfolio
Presentation
Block-based programming and robotics, with a
well-designed pedagogical activities, can promote
a strong path for developing computational skills
and prepare pupils for computer science
education, and also for life.
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING,
BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING
AND ROBOTICS
During the learning process of programming a
robot or interacting with robots, pupils applying CT
concepts such as abstraction, decomposition,
pattern recognition, logical thinking and
debugging.
Additionally, pupil’s achievements and outcomes
of their computational practices are connected to
the problem definition and decomposition, the
algorithm designed, the testing and debugging
programs and the robot performance solving the
problem.

11. BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/335711708/editor/

12. BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/345524816/editor/

13. BLOCK- BASED MUSIC EXAMPLE
https://blockly.games/music?lang=en&level=10#ccobp5

14. Dr. SCRATCH

15. BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING AND ROBOTICS

16. BLOCK-BASED PROGRAMMING AND ROBOTICS

17. A Pedagogical Experience
The syllabus of this subject is organized in three core topics: (i) Initiatives
related to ICT and computer science in the curriculum in national and
international contexts; (ii) Computational Thinking and Programming in
basic education; and (iii) Tangible Programming and Robotics.
Didactics of Informatics I
The pedagogic experience took place in curricular unity of Didactics of Informatics I
of the Master in Teaching Informatics. This subject (with 6 ECTS) is the first of five
subjects in didactics and, in the first semester, it takes place in a face-to-face
session of three hours during about 12 weeks.

18. Student-teachers
9
11
students-teachers of the Master in Teaching Informatics who
attended the course of Didactics of informatics, in the first
semester of the 2018/19 school year
All students have a previous bachelor’s degree in computer
science and are attending this master program in order to
become teachers in primary and secondary schools, as it is
mandatory for teachers in Portugal to hold a Master in
Teaching.
Students (2018/2019)
2

19. Pedagogical Activity
AIMS
Lead student-teachers to explore the programming of tangible
objects – such as robots, drones and mobile devices – as pedagogic
strategies to promote the development of computational thinking
skills and the learning of basic programming concepts
TASK I
Analysis of the core characteristics and pedagogic potentialities
of different types of robots (developed in groups);
TASK II
Design and implementation of a learning scenario including robots as
mediating tools to teach computer science concepts to the primary and/or
secondary pupils. In this task each group should choose one of 5th to 9th
grade class curriculum, define a multidisciplinary problem to solve and design
a learning scenario with the robots that were analyzed in task 1.
TIMELINE
Both tasks were implemented for five weeks and at the end of this period each
group of students presented to the class the learning scenario, the physical models
of the scenarios with robots in action and the algorithms and programs to solve the
problems.

20. LEARNING SCENARIOS

21. LEARNING SCENARIOS
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNI9GDVf_H6zSqo7jiVluBg/videos

22. LEARNING SCENARIOS
“Intelligent Forest
“Walk through the Forest”

23. Learning Scenarios with Robots

24. Results
Problem Identification
P+ P+
Problem Decomposition
P++ P+
Abstraction
P P
Logical Thinking
P+ P
Patterns Recognition
P
Algorithms
P++ P+
Debugging
P+ P+
Walk Through the ForestIntelligent Forest
P, P+ and P++ represent the growing degree of presence of each dimension in each scenario as
it was observed.
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

25. Results
Algorithm
P++ P+
Sequences
P++ P+
Input/ Output Operations
P++ P+
Arithmetic, Relational and Logical
Operators
P++ P
Variables and Constants P+ P
Conditional Structures and Loops
P++ P
Procedures
P+
Parallelism
P
Synchronism
P
Test & Debugging
P++ P+
Walk Through the ForestIntelligent Forest
PROGRAMMING CONCEPTS

26. Critical thinking P++ P+
Creativity P+ P
Collaboration P++ P+
Communication P++ P+
Information literacy P+ P
Media literacy
Technology literacy P+ P
Flexibility P+ P
Leadership P P
Initiative P+ P
Productivity P++ P
Social skills P P
Walk Through the ForestIntelligent Forest21ST COMPETENCIES
21st CENTURY COMPETENCIES

27. TO CONCLUDE
01
02
03
04
Regarding the main goal of this study – the effect that learning scenarios can had on the
development of computational thinking skills – the results showed that learning scenarios may
developed six of the seven Computational Thinking Patterns analysed as well as applied several
programming concepts.
Through the learning process of constructing and programming a robot to solve a problem,
students applying computational thinking patterns as abstraction, decomposition, logical
thinking, pattern recognition, design algorithms and debugging.
Design learning scenarios with robots are aligned with Paper´s constructionism principles and
the idea of use robot as objects to think with.
When student-teachers are involved in the planning, designing and implementing of learning
scenarios with robots and thinking about the solutions, they rethink all the possible pedagogic
approaches that they learned in theory and transfers the knowledge they learned to new
situations and problems.

28. COMPUTER SCIENCE ACROSS THE CURICULUM
ISTE Standards for Computer
Science Educators
Ana Pedro | João Filipe Matos | João Piedade | Nuno Dorotea
Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa

29. Computational Thinking
Digital
Technologies
Algorithms and
Programming
Robotics
Computational Thinking, Progamming and Robotics:
A Strategy to Learn
S
T
E
A
M
L
H
G
…

30. Research Examples
Ching, Y.H., Hsu, Y.C. & Baldwin, S. (2018). Developing Computational Thinking with Educational
Technologies for Young Learners. TechTrends, nº 62, 563. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-018-
0292-7.
Durak, H., Yilmaz, F. & Yilmaz, R. (2019). Computational Thinking, Programming Self-Efficacy, Problem
Solving and Experiences in the Programming Process Conducted with Robotic Activities.
Contemporary Educational Technology, 10(2), pp. 173-197. https://doi.org/10.30935/cet.554493
Piedade, J., Dorotea, N., Sampaio, F. & Pedro, A. (2019). A Cross-analysis of Block-based and Visual
Programming Apps with Computer Science Student-Teachers. Educ. Sci. 9, nº. 3: 181.
https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci9030181.

31. Literature Review
Cutumisu, M., Adams, C. & Lu, C. (2019). A Scoping Review of Empirical Research on Recent
Computational Thinking Assessments. Journal of Science Education and Technology.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-019-09799-3
LeChen, Z. & Jalal, N. (2019). A systematic review of learning computational thinking through Scratch in
K-9. Computers & Education, 141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103607
Hickmott, D. & Prieto-Rodriguez, E. & Holmes, K. (2018). A Scoping Review of Studies on
Computational Thinking in K–12 Mathematics Classrooms. Digital Experiences in Mathematics
Education, 4(1), 448-69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40751-017-0038-8

32. Thank You
PowerPoint Presentation
Obrigado