Computational Thinking and Mental Models: Promoting Digital Culture in the Youth and Adult Education

Abstract

Computational thinking is an ability that has been considered essential for people living in a society mediated by technology. This ability can also be helpful to people with little or no experience with technology, for practicing basic Computational Thinking skills may help understanding how a technological device works and can be used. However, to the best of our knowledge, little research has addressed Computational Thinking and its relation with Digital Culture, especially for reducing the digital divide. In this article, we draw on the notion of Mental Models to relate Computational Thinking and Digital Culture. We claim that practicing basic Computational Thinking skills when exploring simple prototypes favors building Mental Models that are useful to understand and progress in the usage of technologies, contributing to developing a Digital Culture. To situate our discussion, we present a case study that engaged adults, in their initial stages of literacy, in activities that grew from basic ones, with a low-fidelity ATM prototype, to more complex ones with a functional ATM prototype. Evaluation methods used were voting, feedback, structured observation and unstructured interviews. Results suggested our approach is promising as participants gained confidence and increased autonomy as the activities progressed, using the experience and knowledge they obtained from previous activities to perform the next ones.

Avaliando a acessibilidade a partir de uma perspectiva inclusiva: o caso da Plataforma MEC de Recursos Educacionais Digitais

“…", que é uma indicação de como o avaliador poderá encontrar esta barreira, além de "Resultados esperados", que é o comportamento que se espera da TE para que não exista mais a barreira ilustrada no "Exemplo de uso". O MeTA tem sido aplicado em diferentes contextos, como na avaliação de uma TE para ensino de habilidades do Pensamento Computacional na Educação de Jovens e Adultos [Ortiz et al 2022], e na concepção de atividades gamificadas em uma turma introdutória de computação [Pereira et al 2023]. Para a aplicação do método, há um passo a passo e materiais, incluindo planilhas do processo de avaliação, as normativas, e diferentes possibilidades de organização/visualização, disponibilizados no website do MeTA 2 e na dissertação de Menezes (2021).…”

Digital Competences and Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Systematic Review Article

“…As the threat of cyber-attacks and data theft increases, it is essential that individuals understand how to protect their personal information online and take good security practices. This includes creating strong passwords, using anti-virus software and recognizing potential online scams (Ortiz et al, 2023).…”

“…in education and professional training is in a fast-development (Conde-Zhingre et al, 2022), seeking to control things, being IOT one of the internet specialties, something that is practiced by university students (Jeon, 2023), in the same way, the impact surprises users by what can be done using A.I. on things (Xu et al, 2023), the students seeks to improve every day in their competences or skills to achieve empowerment of the tools at the programming level (Wang X et al, 2023), or in the mastery of (Górriz et al, 2023), programming languages and further into the structure of new approaches to robotics among others (Ortiz et al, 2023), created and formulated in the problems of learning that are presented in classrooms.…”