Description: this course, addressed to teachers of both primary and junior secondary schools, aims at providing knowledge and skills in order to effectively use in a classroom both coding with Scratch and mBlock, and propose a few applications using Makey Makey and mBot, so as to develop an interaction between computer, outside world, and robotics. The course of 28 hours is divided in this way: four 3-hour frontal lessons (12 hours), six hours of personal elaboration by the participants, seven hours of trial in the classrooms, and the last 3-hour frontal lesson, in which the teachers will be able to present their own classroom experiences during the school year. The course is completely free. The personal computers are provided by the school in which the course takes place.

Specific and cross-cutting fields: “Development of digital culture and education to the media” + “Teaching single disciplines envisaged by the educational system”.

Cross-cutting fields: “Educational innovation and digital teaching” + “Teaching for skills and cross-sectoral skills”.

Goals: acquire technical and methodological skills in order to bring coding in the classroom, as well as examples of educational robotics.

Programme: all 3-hour meetings are held in the school which decides to implement the course.

  • I MEETING:introduction to computational thought. Goals of the course. Presentation of the programming environment. Download and install Scratch. Interface of Scratch. Terms of the working environment: stage, sprite, script. Performing a single command. Sequence of executions. Programming: cycles, conditional expressions, variable lists, operators, messages. Using sounds and costumes. The Scratch community. Sharing and remixing projects.
  • II MEETING: using the pen. Cloning the sprite. Using blocks.
  • III MEETING: revising preceding lessons. Introducing the projects which can be brought into the classroom and making each course participant realize the project itself.
  • VI MEETING: presenting simple applications of interaction between personal computer and outside world, by using common objects and Makey Makey. Introducing mBot and mBlock. Elements of robot programming: connection, movement, checking sensors and programming its behaviour in the presence of an obstacle and a path.
  • V MEETING: restitution with the presentation of the classroom activities.

Skill Mapping:

Technological skills: develop a computational thought and learn programming with Scratch. Acquire knowledge and skills in order to propose pupils a few projects to be carried out together in the course of the school year. Acquire problem solving skills, applied to coding.

Logical-mathematical skills: logic, maths, apparently difficult projects, such as interaction, iteration, sequentiality of a series of operations are all skills which are easily referable to experiences proposed in already presented projects.

Social skills: all the projects proposed are focussed upon the development of team-working.

Targets: primary school teachers + junior secondary school teachers

Types of final assessments: restitution meeting, with the presentation of the activities carried out during the school year

Duration: 28 hours

Necessary attendance: 21 hours

Teacher’s Card: NO

Cost: free

Contact: maura.sandri@inaf.it

Mode of course delivery: classroom – frontal lessons, classroom – working groups

Materials and technologies: video-projector, personal computers, makey makey, mbot

Person in charge for Speakers/Trainers/Facilitators: Maura Sandri