A Digital App for Early Programming
(2018) MAMM01 20181Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology
- Abstract
- Today, technology is everywhere in our everyday lives whether it is wanted or not. The world has become digitalized and this development continues for each year that passes. The Swedish government has now (2018) updated the curricula for both kindergarten and elementary school to include more digital aspects in the teaching.
With this background, this thesis (project) set out to design a digital app for teaching programming semantics to children in the ages of 4 to 6. The project explores the aspects of teaching programming as well as the aspect of doing this using new technology. In order to carry out this endeavor, a series of design methods were conducted; all the way from background research on early programming and visiting schools... (More) - Today, technology is everywhere in our everyday lives whether it is wanted or not. The world has become digitalized and this development continues for each year that passes. The Swedish government has now (2018) updated the curricula for both kindergarten and elementary school to include more digital aspects in the teaching.
With this background, this thesis (project) set out to design a digital app for teaching programming semantics to children in the ages of 4 to 6. The project explores the aspects of teaching programming as well as the aspect of doing this using new technology. In order to carry out this endeavor, a series of design methods were conducted; all the way from background research on early programming and visiting schools to designing and implementing a product (programming app for small children). The design methods were executed one by one, reaching a final design manifesting the subsequent steps of the design process.
The result of the thesis project and the applied design procedure was FluteBot, an interactive tablet game designed to teach basic programming semantics to young children. FluteBot takes new approaches to teach programming by letting children give instructions in form of music which can be used to control animals. FluteBot is also taking a new approach, compared to the common navigation based programming approaches, in that a more event based and conceptually more accurate representation of programming is explored. (Less) - Popular Abstract
- Technology is taking over the world! Well, maybe not. But our society is getting digitalized and our children need to get prepared for the inevitable future. A world full of technology!
The Swedish government has now added programming lessons as a part of our public school curricula – including our kindergartens. This means children are exposed to more than 10 years of programming before even reaching high school. Great! That means we will have super programmers in 10-20 years! We sure need more programmers today, and we will need more in the future! ...but wait a second. Should we teach programming in public schools to prepare all children to become programmers? Should we teach math in school to prepare all children to become... (More) - Technology is taking over the world! Well, maybe not. But our society is getting digitalized and our children need to get prepared for the inevitable future. A world full of technology!
The Swedish government has now added programming lessons as a part of our public school curricula – including our kindergartens. This means children are exposed to more than 10 years of programming before even reaching high school. Great! That means we will have super programmers in 10-20 years! We sure need more programmers today, and we will need more in the future! ...but wait a second. Should we teach programming in public schools to prepare all children to become programmers? Should we teach math in school to prepare all children to become mathematicians? Or teach chemistry to prepare children to become chemists? Doesn’t sound right to me. Just like chemistry is taught because we live in a world with chemical interactions, we should teach programming because we live in a world full of technology.
In my masters-thesis, A Digital App for Early Programming, I researched the possibilities to develop a tool to introduce programming for young children in kindergarten. The result was FluteBot – a tablet game where children help sheep to reach the delicious grass by using programming concepts! The thesis tell the story behind the process – how this tool was produced, how and why the design became as it is, as well as the thought process throughout the making. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8952679
- author
- Helmertz, Johan LU
- supervisor
-
- Magnus Haake LU
- organization
- alternative title
- En Digital App för Tidig Programmering
- course
- MAMM01 20181
- year
- 2018
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Early programming, FluteBot, Kindergarten, Programming semantics
- language
- English
- id
- 8952679
- date added to LUP
- 2018-06-25 12:45:04
- date last changed
- 2018-06-25 12:45:04
@misc{8952679,
abstract = {{Today, technology is everywhere in our everyday lives whether it is wanted or not. The world has become digitalized and this development continues for each year that passes. The Swedish government has now (2018) updated the curricula for both kindergarten and elementary school to include more digital aspects in the teaching.
With this background, this thesis (project) set out to design a digital app for teaching programming semantics to children in the ages of 4 to 6. The project explores the aspects of teaching programming as well as the aspect of doing this using new technology. In order to carry out this endeavor, a series of design methods were conducted; all the way from background research on early programming and visiting schools to designing and implementing a product (programming app for small children). The design methods were executed one by one, reaching a final design manifesting the subsequent steps of the design process.
The result of the thesis project and the applied design procedure was FluteBot, an interactive tablet game designed to teach basic programming semantics to young children. FluteBot takes new approaches to teach programming by letting children give instructions in form of music which can be used to control animals. FluteBot is also taking a new approach, compared to the common navigation based programming approaches, in that a more event based and conceptually more accurate representation of programming is explored.}},
author = {{Helmertz, Johan}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{A Digital App for Early Programming}},
year = {{2018}},
}