Yongju JeonKorea National University of Education

yyongju@knue.ac.kr

A Mobile Programming Course Based on Computational Thinking Process for Ele-

mentary IT-Gifted Students

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U.S.ACSTA StandardsCode.org

Republic of KoreaSW National CurriculumsPrivate SW edu. Programs(Samsung, Naver, etc.)

U.KComputing National Curriculums

IntroductionBringing Creative and Computational Thinking into the educa-tional contents and environments became one of the most im-portant global issues to gain national competitiveness and 21th century skills

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Introduction

Wing (2006, 2008) and the CSTA Standards Task Force (2011)

- simply learning how to program along with the programming lan-guage syntax does not necessarily develop competencies in CT

- CT is a creative problem solving process that encourages students to move toward a more powerful and creative use of ICT

In this research…

- examined previous works on CT to identify the essential stages in CT process

- developed a jQuery Mobile programming course that follows the identified CT process and applied to IT-gifted students in the fifth and sixth year of primary school

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The Study

CT as a Creative Problem Solving Methodology

- Two A’s of CT : abstraction and automation(Wing 2008) “Computing is the automation of our abstractions, and conse-quently CT is choosing the right abstractions and choosing the right computer for the task.”

- CT is “An approach to solving problems in a way that can be im-plemented with a computer.”(Barr & Stephenson, 2011)

- CT is “a problem solving methodology that can interweave com-puter science with all disciplines, providing a distinctive means of analyzing and developing solutions to problems that can be solved computationally.”

(CSTA Standards Task Force, 2011)

- “Today’s Creative Problem Solving framework calls for thoughtful and deliberate choices in which problem solvers select and use the methods and tools that will be most appropriate and helpful for their task.”

(Isaksen & Treffinger, 2005)

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The Study

Three stages of CT-Process for creative problem solving

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The Study

Mobile Programming Course with jQuery Mobile (JQM)

- jQuery Mobile is a cross-platform framework for creating mobile web applications (web apps) accessible on all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices

- jQuery Mobile simplifies and enhances the development of mobile web apps by integrating HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and jQuery UI into one framework.

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The Study

JQM Programming Course based on CT-Process

Weeks Contents

1Basic instruction to use the editor

(Editplus3) and the FTP application.What is a web app?

2  Creating a basic page template with jQuery Mobile

3Learning about the UI components of jQuery Mobile to format contents and create lists, navigation bars, and but-

tons

4 Designing the structure of web app

5 Implementing a web app based on design6

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The Experiment

Figure 2 :

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The Experiment

Figure 3 :

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The Experiment

Figure 4 :

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Conclusions

Its ultimate goal was to cultivate students’ Creative problem solving ability as well as programming knowledge.

Made students have Confidence, motivation and ambition to become a SW developer.

Working with pre-built widgets and layouts of JQM,11-12-year-old Students could produce web apps with 3-week’s learning.

CT process-oriented mobile Programming course

jQuery Mobile based Programming course

We suggest that JQM is an effective tool to teach young students basic programming skills. (like scratch, app inventor, etc…)

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Yongju JeonKorea National University of Education

yyongju@knue.ac.kr

Thank you