Developing the algorithmic skills through word processing and handling spreadsheets
Mária Csernoch, Gyöngyi Bujdosó · University of Debrecen Electronic Archive (University of Debrecen) · 2010
Abstract – Compared to the high number of computer users the proportion of those students who are willing to write programs has dropped seriously. Even those whose curriculum includes programming usually start late and the chance to change their attitude towards programming lessens as they are getting older. A possible solution would be to sneak programming into the primary and secondary education by hiding it behind the scenes of software they use. Students are usually proud of their knowledge of word processing and handling spreadsheets and they think these programs are easy to use. We can thus use these programs to teach algorithms instead of using traditional environments. In this article, through the analysis of a problem, we give examples how we can switch from programming languages to applications and still teach some basic algorithmic skills. Keywords: teaching programming, forming algorithms, spreadsheets, applications. I. INTRODUCTION We all experience that with the increasing number of computers the proportion of those who use programming languages as compared to those who are using application software has dropped seriously. It has become a challenging task to convince average students that they should learn programming. In this novel environment it is the teachers’ responsibility to bring back programming and more importantly developing algorithmic skills in Informatics classes [2]. A well-chosen task by itself can be a good starting point, but beyond the task, the different methods, which can be used to solve the problem, would have more influence on the students. When teaching programming we solve a problem in several different ways and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each solution found. The same can be done to tasks which are wrapped in word processing or handling spreadsheets. Students believe that they are creating a text, a table, and nothing else, but there is a lot more behind the scenes. Here, we present a task from one of the Competitions of Applied Informatics of Hungary [1, 3], and through this task a couple of different possibilities to solve it. To break the task into meaningful smaller parts gives opportunities to get acquainted with basic programming algorithms. In this project Microsoft Word and Excel are used to carry out this selected task, but other software such as Open Office, would be equally acceptable. II. RESULTS The task we will use to demonstrate how word processors and spreadsheets can be used for teaching algorithmic thinking is presented in Fig. 1.