Using Scratch and App Inventor for teaching introductory programming in secondary education. A case study

Papadakis, Stamatios; Kalogiannakis, Michail; Zaranis, Nicholas; Orfanakis, Vasileios

doi:10.1504/ijtel.2016.082317

Cited by 56 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…We examine teachers' and students' popular projects and calculate their "effectiveness scores" in learning computational thinking concepts based on our rubric. To the best of our knowledge, although there have been papers [21][22][23] comparing Scratch and App Inventor, no papers have compared these languages in terms of computational thinking. Furthermore, although there are rubrics for Scratch projects and App Inventor projects individually, there is no common rubric for assessing both Scratch and App Inventor projects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the Effectiveness of Scratch and App Inventor with Regard to Learning Computational Thinking Concepts

Park

Shin

2019

Electronics

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Scratch and App Inventor are two of the most widely used block-based programming languages for young students. These are educational languages which allow students to program easily by dragging and dropping their code blocks. One question that arises in relation to these educational languages is which of them would be more helpful in fostering computational thinking. It is difficult to answer this question because each language has its own advantages. In this paper, we propose a novel rubric based on Dr. Scratch for assessing both Scratch and App Inventor projects in terms of computational thinking concept learning. We crawled teachers’ and students’ open and popular projects and automatically calculated their effectiveness scores with regard to learning computational thinking concepts based on our rubric. The experimental results show that (1) Scratch projects scored higher on average in Parallelism, Synchronization and Flow Control, while App Inventor projects scored higher on average in User Interactivity and Data Representation. The results also show that (2) in many cases, large programs with numerous lines of code scored high in all areas of computational thinking concepts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing the Effectiveness of Scratch and App Inventor with Regard to Learning Computational Thinking Concepts

Park

Shin

2019

Electronics

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“…As Utting and Roy and their colleagues argue [12], App Inventor and Scratch strive to engage the novice programming students by enabling them to act on projects, which hold more real life context in contrast to more conventional programming. Both of them are attractive programming environments and combine richness with simplicity.…”

Section: Children's Learning and Perceptions On Mit App Inventormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, MIT App Inventor appears to be a more popular programming environment for use with learners in the teenage group than Scratch because it fascinates them as they can create personalized software for their most precious device, the smartphone/tablet, and literally augment their own reality [12]. Such projects are not just about programming but engage the students with the world outside of the computer lab.…”

Section: Children's Learning and Perceptions On Mit App Inventormentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Students’ Perceptions in an App Inventor School Course

Panselinas¹,

Fragkoulaki²,

Angelidakis³

et al. 2018

EJERS

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MIT App Inventor is a block-based programming environment for children and teenagers that sets a “low floor” for allowing creative app building while engaging students in complex computational thinking activities. The present study aims at (a) monitoring students’ perceptions on ‘popularity’ and ‘perceived difficulty’ of certain activities/lessons through the implementation of an App Inventor course in a Greek lower high school, (b) detecting any course design or activity/lesson plan and implementation factors that affected students’ perceptions and finally (c) evaluating their experience with App Inventor in contrast with their previous experience with MicroWorlds Pro and Scratch. Our study confirms students’ positive perceptions such as positive task value beliefs and self-efficacy, identifies features of successful “resources learning” in competence-based learning and finally offers a students’ comparison between App Inventor, MicroWorlds Pro and Scratch.

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“…In an era of rapid development and application of IT in all areas of human activity, it is imperative for students to develop creative practices through the use of ICT (Kalogiannakis, 2010;Papadakis et al, 2014, Papadakis et al, 2016, and in this respect the use of a digital platform developed for the occurrence of student conferences can provide significant assistance. Regarding ICT, the use of the Internet is undoubtedly considered to be particularly pleasant for students, as it offers rich audiovisual material while simultaneously creating incentives for learning, and making coursework accessible and understandable (Anastasiou et al, 2014).…”

Section: Open Education -The Journal For Open and Distance Education mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Education and training must respond to this need, which requires investments in infrastructure, organisational changes, digital devices and knowledge in the wider educational community as well as the creation of digital (and open) educational resources and high-quality educational software (Official Journal of the European Union, 2015). Education and training must utilise the new developments in ICT and adopt innovative and dynamic pedagogical processes by adapting and updating content according to the dynamics of time, and up to date with the transformation of society (Anastasiades, 2005;Kalogiannakis, 2010;Papadakis, Kalogiannakis, Orfanakis & Zaranis, 2014;Papadakis, Kalogiannakis, Orfanakis & Zaranis, 2016). The majority of the educational community is aware of the contribution of ICT as a cognitive tool within a constructive and socio-cognitive approach to teaching and learning (Jimoyiannis, 2012;Spanos & Sofos, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital Student Conference Platform Implementation: The case study of the “Research Project” course

Orfanakis¹,

Papadakis²,

Kalogiannakis³

et al. 2016

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Today, during the 'fourth industrial revolution' which is led by the Internet and the digital ecosystem it creates, schools are expected to achieve the development of not only the functional skills of literacy and numeracy but also of general knowledge. The apparent inadequacy of the standardized education system to respond to the needs and interests of 21 st -century students urges researchers to adopt new forms of teaching as meaningful and high-quality teaching requires a more active use of innovative educational methods and tools. With the rapid development of IT globally, there is a tendency to utilize the capabilities of e-learning as a mode of distance learning since it can function both independently of and in conjunction with conventional teaching. The varied applications of Web 2.0 tools create new possibilities in the educational sector. It provides the ability to develop innovative educational methods that transform students from passive recipients of information to knowledge creators through an active involvement in the learning process often within a modern interactive environment. This study presents the results of the implementation of a teaching intervention, with the use of a flexible and student-centered web system http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 13/05/2018 05:08:48 | Open Education -The Journal for Open and Distance Education and Educational TechnologySpecial Edition one "school distance education Volume 12, Number 2, 2016 Section one. © Open Education 6 developed and used as complementary to the 'Research Project' course during the first term of the 2015-2016 school year. The ultimate goal of this effort was to highlight and consequently incorporate the use of a digital platform for student conferences which we implemented in schools as a means to research, learning, and skill development. The students had the opportunity to participate in a digital community which employed distance learning tools for communication, cooperation, and learning during a digital conference in which they had leading roles as writers and reviewers. The initial results of the pilot study indicated that the use of the digital platform increased the interest of students, supported the development of various skills and contributed to the overall improvement of the teaching and learning process.

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Using Scratch and App Inventor for teaching introductory programming in secondary education. A case study

Cited by 56 publications

References 0 publications

Comparing the Effectiveness of Scratch and App Inventor with Regard to Learning Computational Thinking Concepts

Comparing the Effectiveness of Scratch and App Inventor with Regard to Learning Computational Thinking Concepts

Monitoring Students’ Perceptions in an App Inventor School Course

Digital Student Conference Platform Implementation: The case study of the “Research Project” course

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