Developing pupils' algorithmic thinking with Lego Mindstorms in primary school

摘要

Today, the computer science is practically omnipresent and its powerful influence can be felt in the economy, science and some other fields that we tackle on a day-to-day basis. Due to the fact that our society is becoming more and more reliant on computer science, it would be reasonable to rethink about educating children in primary schools and manner of passing them the knowledge from this profession.udThe optional elective subject computer science has brought the Slovenian schools a change. The shift has been made into the direction of teaching skills are more basic. During the subject course, the pupils do not learn how to use hardware or software, however, they do get informed about computer concepts and processes. The goals of the subject are based mostly on developing the computational thinking. udIn my diploma paper I described the activities with the help of an accessory - Lego Mindstorms EV3 - that can at the primary school pupils encourage the development of the algorithmic thinking. The algorithmic thinking is classified as a key concept of the computational thinking. A Lego Mindstorms EV3 set and its significant component parts, which pupils use to build robots, are presented. udThe activities were tried out at a summer school LegoPy, organized by the Faculty of Computer and Information Science at the University of Ljubljana. In the empirical research I was establishing whether the activities are appropriate for teaching of programming. I was also interested in the pupils’ attitude towards teaching with a Lego Mindstorms set.ud