ABSTRACT
Torino is a tangible programming environment designed for teaching the computational thinking curriculum in the UK to children who are blind or low vision (henceforth, just children) in an inclusive setting. In this paper we describe the experience of children in Bangalore, India, when Torino was introduced to them as a toy for creating and sharing stories, songs and music. We conducted 12 play sessions with 12 children (4 girls and 8 boys) with diverse backgrounds belonging to three different schools for the blind. We briefly present the reasons for play being central to our effort of bringing computational thinking to children who are blind and low vision in India, and share some experiences of the children and some insights that we have gathered so far: Children not only enjoyed every session, they rapidly moved from playing with pre-created examples, to making changes, to demanding that their favorite stories be told. In observing such play, we could infer that they have grasped the basic concepts of computational thinking? flow of control, variables, loops? though not articulated in that vocabulary.
- 2014. World Health Organization. Universal Eye Health: A Global Action Plan 2014--19. https://www.who.int/blindness/AP2014_19_English.pdf.(2014).Google Scholar
- 2015. Computing Our Future. Computer programming and coding: Priorities, school curricula and initiatives across Europe. http://fcl.eun.org/documents/10180/ 14689/Computing+our+future_final.pdf/ 746e36b1-e1a6--4bf1--8105-ea27c0d2bbe0 . (2015).Google Scholar
- 2016. Computer programming seen as key to Japan place in fourth industrial revolution. Japan Times. https://bit.ly/2JnLwrJ . (2016).Google Scholar
- 2017. CSpathshala. Curriculum. https://cspathshala.org/ . (2017).Google Scholar
- 2018. EuropeanSchoolnet launches its first study visit on Computational Thinking in Norway and Sweden. EuropeanSchoolnet. http://www.eun.org/news/detail?articleId=1845581 . (2018).Google Scholar
- 2019. CodeJumper. https://codejumper.com/ . (2019).Google Scholar
- Patrick Bateson, Paul Patrick Gordon Bateson, and Paul Martin. 2013. Play, playfulness, creativity and innovation . Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
- Jeffrey P. Bigham, Maxwell B. Aller, Jeremy T. Brudvik, Jessica O. Leung, Lindsay A. Yazzolino, and Richard E. Ladner. 2008. Inspiring Blind High School Students to Pursue Computer Science with Instant Messaging Chatbots. In Proceedings of the 39th SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '08) . ACM, New York, NY, USA, 449--453. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1352135.1352287Google ScholarDigital Library
- S Bocconi, A Chioccariello, G Dettori, A Ferrari, K Engelhardt, P Kampylis, and Y Punie. 2016. Exploring the field of computational thinking as a 21st century skill. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Education and New Learning TechnologiesJuly 2016Barcelona, Spain Page . 4725--4733.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Stefania Bocconi, Augusto Chioccariello, and Jeffrey Earp. 2018. The Nordic approach to introducing Computational Thinking and programming in compulsory education. Report prepared for the Nordic@ BETT2018 Steering Group. doi: https://doi. org/10.17471/54007 (2018).Google Scholar
- Elizabeth Bonawitz, Patrick Shafto, Hyowon Gweon, Noah D Goodman, Elizabeth Spelke, and Laura Schulz. 2011. The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery. Cognition 120, 3 (2011), 322--330.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Michael E. Caspersen, Judith Gal-Ezer, Enrico Nardelli, Jan Vahrenhold, and Mirko Westermeier. 2018. The CECE Report: Creating a Map of Informatics in European Schools. In Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '18) . ACM, New York, NY, USA, 916--917. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159633Google ScholarDigital Library
- Anita Ghai. 2019. Rethinking disability in India . Routledge India.Google Scholar
- Gwen Gordon. 2014. Well Played: The Origins and Future of Playfulness. American Journal of Play 6, 2 (2014), 234--266.Google Scholar
- Peter Gray. 2013. Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life . Basic Books.Google Scholar
- Shaun K. Kane and Jeffrey P. Bigham. 2014. Tracking @Stemxcomet: Teaching Programming to Blind Students via 3D Printing, Crisis Management, and Twitter. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '14) . ACM, New York, NY, USA, 247--252. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2538975Google ScholarDigital Library
- Stephanie Ludi and Tom Reichlmayr. 2011. The use of robotics to promote computing to pre-college students with visual impairments. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) 11, 3 (2011), 20.Google Scholar
- Regina M Milteer, Kenneth R Ginsburg, Deborah Ann Mulligan, and others. 2012. The importance of play in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child bond: Focus on children in poverty. Pediatrics 129, 1 (2012), e204--e213.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Cecily Morrison, Nicolas Villar, Anja Thieme, Zahra Ashktorab, Eloise Taysom, Oscar Salandin, Daniel Cletheroe, Greg Saul, Alan F Blackwell, Darren Edge, and others. 2018. Torino: A tangible programming language inclusive of children with visual disabilities. Human--Computer Interaction (2018), 1--49.Google Scholar
- Michael Palmer. 2011. Disability and poverty: A conceptual review. Journal of Disability Policy Studies 21, 4 (2011), 210--218.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Peter Seow, Chee-Kit Looi, Meng-Leong How, Bimlesh Wadhwa, and Long-Kai Wu. 2019. Educational Policy and Implementation of Computational Thinking and Programming: Case Study of Singapore. In Computational Thinking Education . Springer, 345--361.Google Scholar
- Andreas M. Stefik, Christopher Hundhausen, and Derrick Smith. 2011. On the Design of an Educational Infrastructure for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Computer Science. In Proceedings of the 42Nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '11) . ACM, New York, NY, USA, 571--576. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1953163.1953323Google ScholarDigital Library
- Anja Thieme, Cecily Morrison, Nicolas Villar, Martin Grayson, and Siân Lindley. 2017. Enabling Collaboration in Learning Computer Programming Inclusive of Children with Vision Impairments. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '17) . ACM, New York, NY, USA, 739--752. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064689Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Computational Thinking as Play: Experiences of Children who are Blind or Low Vision in India
Recommendations
Implementation of Unplugged Teaching Activities to Foster Computational Thinking Skills in Primary School from a Gender Perspective
TEEM'19: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing MulticulturalityThe participation of girls and women is fundamental in solving problems that the society demands. Currently, the figures indicate a deficit of female presence in the STEM context, which implies the loss of the talent of the female collective. The school,...
Teaching how to teach computational thinking
ITiCSE 2018: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science EducationComputational Thinking is argued to be an essential skill for the workforce of the 21st century. As a skill, Computational Thinking should be taught in all schools, employing computational ideas integrated into other disciplines. Up until now, questions ...
Understanding Children's Free Play in Primary Schools
C&T '19: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Communities & Technologies - Transforming CommunitiesVarious technologies (e.g., tablets, toolkits, and digital toys) are used in schools. However, they are often designed to introduce new play practices for serving pre-defined learning purposes. In this study, we are interested in constructive play 'in ...
Comments