Description

What is programming? Programming is writing programs. Programming is the process of writing out the flow of doing something that originally exists in the brain and the process of visualizing the original abstract thinking. The reason our group chose to teach a simple introductory programming course was simple: programming frees our brain and attention to focus on more important things. More importantly, in the future, more and more low-level jobs will be taken over by machines (such as in logistics). If the program can be written in a language that can be understood by the machine, the machine can complete the repetitive work that should be done by human beings, so as to break through the physical limitations of human beings and achieve things that cannot be done originally. Just like a hundred years ago, it was the popularization of household appliances that freed women from heavy domestic work and enabled them to participate in social work. As we all know, machines crush humans in every direction to perform repetitive, manual tasks. Just like no weight lifter can compete with a crane. Programming, in other words, is the physics of the information age. Learning to program is about better understanding and transforming the world in which we live so that we can better survive in the near future. Because even if all the work is replaced by machines and software, the machines and software themselves need to be maintained and upgraded. And, of course, these are people who can program. With the rapid development of technology, one day, programming will become a thinking skill that everyone has to master. So even the very basic knowledge of programming teaching can also bring a good guarantee for the future of students.

Concept analysis

Since the development of technology, people increasingly rely on the convenience brought by smart devices like computers, phones, intelligent recommendation algorithms, etc. Leading to an increasing number of requirements for aspects. Programming is the foundation of all smart technologies. According to Stanford children’s health, abstract logical thinking of 12-18 years old children begins to form[2]. This is the golden stage of learning programming. Writing a good program needs strict logic and requires constant debugging and backtracking. After understanding how programming works, children will unconsciously use programming thinking to analyze, learn and do arrangements, and also have the ability to find the cause of the error. The key to programming is how to divide a huge problem into small pieces then conquer it. During that process, children must think about how to arrange each part together in order to run the program and handle input smoothly, return the right output at the end. This process greatly improves the logic of children’s analysis ability, which also reflects on the real world. Programming can improve children’s patience and care at the same time. Troubleshooting is something every programmer will do no matter how good you are. Missing a comma might result in a big mistake, not to mention certain situations that overlooked logic issues. During the debugging process, children must take good care of every situation and spend lots of time discovering mistakes. Because more people start to rely on modern technology, the future prospects of the programming industries are still very impressive. However, if we directly teach K-12 students to start coding might not work well, they might get bored sitting in front of the computer and type 1 and 0. The motivation of offering complex ideas must be drive-by children’s own interest, curiosity boost children to learn and accept new things. Teachers are responsible to design exercises that can highlight the relevance of maths and science. Recognizing the face, translation between language, fun games and providing interesting experiences to stimulate students’ desire for exploration[1]. Programming in the K-12 level does not directly offer tons of knowledge as an undergraduate. We offer more mindset as programming thinks. Students are not required to fulfil knowing any programming technique, own a laptop is the only requirement. Teachers will provide essential computer knowledge for each student and make sure no one gets behind because of a lack of knowledge. For K-12 students, learning programming is a great way to develop their mindset comprehensively.

Learning Outcome:

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

1. understand the basic logic of programming language
2. understand some simple pseudo-code
3. rewrite or make some changes to the given source code
4. complete a simple programming task as a group

Topics:

Responsibility:

Xinran:         1. Write an overview of your assessment plan.

2.         Introduce Java to students.
3. Write an introduction about how to run the code.
4. An overview of the resource
5. A description and rationale for the learning theory upon which your resource will be based (behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism)
6. A description and rationale for the learning design you chose (inquiry, project-based, direct instruction, etc)

Kewen:        1. Help students when they need help.

2.         Assess students’ presentations.
3. Write an introduction about how to run the code.
4. A description of your learning context (K-12, higher ed, corporate, individual, etc)
5. 2-4 learning outcomes (copied or revised from your blueprint)
6. Brief commentary about each topic and activity

Kaiheng:      1. Write the sample code for students.

2. Assess students’ final code. (Based on the quality)
3. Write an introduction about how to run the code.
4. One interactive activity for each learning outcome/topic based on a resource aligned with that topic (blog post, video, article, etc)
5. An overview of your assessment plan.
6. An overview of your plans to design for inclusion of diverse learners (choose two from the list above, and specify in your resource).

Yanyu:         1. Introduce programming to students

2. Go through the code and make sure the code is not too hard to understand for others. Yanyu is not a computer science student, he can make sure our code is not too hard.
3. A rationale for your technology choices.
4. Links to each peer review of your resource
5. A rationale for why you did or did not incorporate your peers’ recommendations into your final resource
6. A bibliography or reference list of all resources cited and/or required for your learners

References:

[1]Sterling, L. (2016, August 09). Session L: Coding in the curriculum: Fad or foundational? [Paper presentation]. Research Conference 2016 – Improving STEM Learning: What will it take?. https://research.acer.edu.au/research_conference/RC2016/9august/4

[2]Stanford Children’s Health(2019), Cognitive Development in the Teen Years 

https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=cognitive-development-90-P01594

For our Interactive Learning Design, our group found a video on YouTube called What is coding as an introduction of coding. K12 student will have a basic understanding of coding, how we need coding in our life, how does coding work and what does the programmer need to do. To interact with K12 students during this video online might be challenging, but I will provide some activities that will suit the COVID-19 situation.

In class, we will ask students and teachers to broadcast live classes through ZOOM. During the class, the teacher will share the screen with students and watch the video through the teacher’s screen. The teacher will pause the video to emphasize and explain important video contents. The teacher will also randomly ask questions to ensure that students are paying attention to the class. If one student cannot answer, he/she will ask another student to answer. After getting the correct answer, the students who have not answered the question before will answer it again according to their own understanding.

We hope students can ask questions after watching the video. By default, the teacher will mute students’ microphone, but when the video ends, the teacher will turn on the students’ microphone and let them ask questions.

After the teacher assigns the task, students need to submit the assignment through our forum. The teacher will explain the task requirement and instruction in detail during the video conference, and describe it again in the forum through text. After students are divided into groups, they can hang up the video conference. Each group can discuss according to the video materials and instruction of the topic, and complete the task. The teacher will receive assignments in the forum and give feedback and score within a week. But before that, students need to do peer-review to evaluate at least one tasks from other groups.

In my opinion, the teacher’s workload will be excessive. Answering questions and explaining the course will be conducted in a video conference. However, due to the delay of video conferences and possible situations, the Q&A session may take a relatively long time. For writing evaluations, students will be conducted in groups of 3-4 people, so the teacher does not need to evaluate each student. However, because students also need to discuss remotely, the teacher will need to solve some technical problems in the middle as well. ROY MAO ‘s post also includes that teachers’ workload will be increased base on online activities. Therefore, I think 30-40 people will be more suitable for a class. This way the teacher can give feedback to all groups within a week.

Our group is planning to teach K12 students to write some relatively simple code in English, In our course, students will complete some simple tasks by using  JAVA programming language. The tasks will be playful and practical, so children will not be bored or feel too hard to learn during our course. Children will develop logical thinking and innovative spirit while figuring out our little tasks. This course will also help children to practice their attention span and patience since children might need to try many times to get the desired effect. We do recognize that our learning activity will affect by some unexpected event such as the COVID-19.  Children must stay home and reduce unnecessary travel. Therefore, we most likely will change our learning form to online courses.

In order to ensure that our courses can be carried out normally, we will conduct training and Q&A with staff, teachers, parents and students themselves. Ensure that in different family situations and environments, we can help students solve technical problems and deal with emergencies. Moreover, we will establish a mature examine system to ensure that teachers’ teaching effect will not be reduced by the change to online courses. We will also arrange some Q&A during and after class to check students’ learning outcomes.

Our group plans to let children work together as a team to complete programming tasks. However, due to long-distance teaching, students were unable to discuss face to face. But we decided to let each group exchange ideas online through video calls and file sharing. This method not only solves the difficulties that children cannot communicate with each other but also can summarize everyone’s ideas in the same document remotely.

Online teaching can reduce the potential barriers of incomplete notes and incomplete understanding caused by the failure to keep up with the teacher’s lecture progress. Because the online live broadcast software provides a screen recording function, students can watch the playback video to consolidate the content of the class. If a student miss classes, he/she can also use the playback video to make up for the lesson later.

I think elevators are also an example of universal design. The elevator is not only convenient for those living on high floors and need to take a long time to go downstairs, but also indirectly help people who need to carry heavy objects. This design is an aspiration for learning design. Because online teaching not only allows everyone to contactless study in a special period but also facilitates those office workers who do not have time to go to class in a specific place. They can also get various learning opportunities just stay home.

I am going to share a story in my coop work term.  I am a computer science student, so I need to acquire many skills that I can not learn from the university. So I applied for Co-op, then found a technology company in China, and worked as an intern there. When I first started working, I did encounter a lot of problems that I have never dealt with, both in terms of skills and relationships. I need to learn and apply the skills in a short period of time. For example, I have not studied Android development in school. But because the company was in a tense situation, my team leader let me also learn how to develop Android, so I can help developers a little bit.

My team leader’s suggestion is that I can ask the developer of our group to do some simple programming first. But the developer of our group is not easy to get along with. He is unwilling to share his experience and skills with me. He has always said that I may not be able to learn or go to some simpler things. This makes my situation very embarrassing. But because this is an assigned task, I have to complete it. At the same time, I feel uncomfortable to be looked down upon. So it motivated me to learn more about Android. I bought books about Android and searched resources on the Internet, plus some exercises. Finally, I can write some simple code. At the same time, it has been recognized by the developers of our group.

I agreed that motivation can help people know why they need to learn and how to learn. There are lots of ways to motivate different people, such as doing activities to motivate teenagers when they are learning English as Caroline said. So they will not feel boring when they are learning.