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Combining the Power of Python with the Simplicity of Logo for a Sustainable Computer Science Education

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Informatics in Schools: Improvement of Informatics Knowledge and Perception (ISSEP 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9973))

Abstract

Computer science education in K-12 and for non-majors at university often aims at making students confident with computational thinking by introducing them to programming. We are convinced that such programming classes offer a great opportunity to expose students to core concepts of computer science and thereby contribute to a broad and general education.

In this article, we describe our approach and experiences with teaching programming at various levels, namely at primary schools, high schools, and universities. We identify a set of goals that allow us to go beyond the pure teaching of specifics of a given programming language, i. e., syntactical details, and shift the focus towards sustainable topics such as algorithms as problem solving methods and their analysis.

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References

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Acknowledgement

PrimaLogo is a cooperation of our chair, the Hasler Foundation, the Swiss Computer Science Teacher Association, the University of Basel, and the Universities of Teacher Education of Lucerne and of Graubünden. We are deeply grateful to all our project partners, the schools, the teachers, the local political authorities, the dozens of university students who teach and assist at school, and to the young school students for their contribution to the success of our activities.

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Correspondence to Dennis Komm .

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Hromkovič, J., Kohn, T., Komm, D., Serafini, G. (2016). Combining the Power of Python with the Simplicity of Logo for a Sustainable Computer Science Education. In: Brodnik, A., Tort, F. (eds) Informatics in Schools: Improvement of Informatics Knowledge and Perception. ISSEP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9973. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46747-4_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46747-4_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-46746-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-46747-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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