Arturo J. Sánchez-Ruíz
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses a series of presentations and activities designed to enhance the computing skills of elementary school students and hence expose them to Information Technology-related careers. Goals of the sessions include increasing the students' formal understanding of the inner workings of a computer and increasing their set of abstract skills by adding computer programming to it. A cohort of students participated in these one-hour sessions on a weekly basis (except for holidays and special school activities) during their 4th and 5th grade years. Overall, the students enjoyed the computing projects, which were not part of their formal curriculum. At the completion of the first year of lessons, approximately 91% of the students were able to trace the execution of a simple imperative computer program. After the second year of lessons, approximately 91% of the students were able to successfully write programs using mathematical skills associated with points in a 2-dimensional coordinate system in Squeak. In terms of programming, they liked controlling the appearance and behavior of their robot in the BotsInc environment but disliked having to correct errors.
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Index Terms
- FunFonts: introducing 4th and 5th graders to programming using Squeak
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