Facilitating K-12 Teachers in Creating Apps by Visual Programming and Project-based Learning

Abstract

The use of apps in education has become popular in recent years with the development of technology. How to prepare K-12 teachers in creating apps for students learning is worth our attention. This paper presents how to ap-ply visual programming and project-based learning to facilitate K-12 teachers in creating apps. Seven K-12 teachers with less computer background partic-ipated in this study. Data source including (1) K-12 teachers’ project codes, (2) K-12 teachers’ questionnaire, (3) K-12 teachers’ interviews, and (4) ques-tionnaire giving to K-12 students were collected and analyzed. The results reveal that K-12 teachers applied many programming concepts in the coding implementation in these projects. Most students gave positive feedback to these K-12 teachers’ app projects. Furthermore, K-12 teachers were also very positive toward the creation of apps by visual programming and project implementation, which was reflected through K-12 teachers’ questionnaire surveys and interview results. The above findings provide a practicable ap-proach for future teaching to K-12 teachers or novice programmers on app programming.

The Effect of PjBL with WBL Media and Cognitive Style on Students’ Understanding and Science-Integrated Concept Application

“…It stresses primarily on the learning activities rather than educator activities that focus on the activities of active learners in getting the direct experience "learning by doing" (Kızkapan & Bektaş, 2017). Also, the findings of some studies have shown that PjBL positively supports instructional so that it is recommended to apply in other subjects (Chiu, 2020;Maulana et al, 2019). The strategy syntax of PjBL consists of pre-project and post-project.…”

Remaking and reinforcing mathematics and technology with programming – teacher perceptions of challenges, opportunities and tools in K-12 settings

“…A definition of textual programming is that it is written and modified with the help of a text editor (Chen et al , 2019; Chiu, 2020). Many see this as the authentic way of programming and the approach has a more established connection to professional development than block programming tools (Garneli et al , 2015; Tsukamoto et al , 2016; Mladenović et al , 2020).…”

“…A common challenge in previous research is that textual programming is more complex and difficult to learn for novice programmers than other types of programming, such as block programming (Garneli et al , 2015; Tsukamoto et al , 2016; Lindberg et al , 2019; Chiu, 2020). In a study on introducing programming to primary school students, textual programming tool did not seem to score as high as the block programming tool in regards to student motivation (Tsukamoto et al , 2016).…”

“…Block programming tools can be compared to building with LEGO, programmes are created by manipulating graphical elements in the environments, usually by a drag-and-drop approach (Maloney et al , 2010; Lawanto et al , 2017; Rodríguez-Martínez et al , 2020; Chiu, 2020). According to a study, block programming tools are amongst the most commonly used in introductory programming in K-12 education (Garneli et al , 2015).…”

Online Learning Using Block-based Programming to Foster Computational Thinking Abilities during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Providing students with CT will also strengthen students' confidence in their ability to problem-solve. There are various approaches to cultivating CT, such as block-based programming and games design [13,14,15,16,17], educational robotics [18,19,20,21], e-learning [22], and board games [23,24]. From the survey, most students in this class had no prior experience with programming, and block-based programming is considered as an alternative to foster CT because text-based coding is not easy for beginners to start coding and the language syntax is a barrier for students to better understand CT concepts [25].…”