A Playful Programming Products Vs. Programming Concepts Matrix
Benjamin Brink Allsopp · VBN Forskningsportal (Aalborg Universitet) · 2017
A number of Danish primary schools are involved in pilot studies where 1st to 9th grade students work with Scratch and Lego MindStorms in STEM subjects. These games may become part of the curriculum at these schools. Recent research identifies a category of games and toys that support learning to computer program: playful programming. This research also describes a project to bring together different stakeholders (developers, educators, parents and researchers) with a common vocabulary for describing, developing, teaching with and comparing these playful programming products and develops a model of supported programming concepts that can be used to differentiate these products. The model includes programming concepts like operators, procedures, encapsulation, variables and events, but also identifies numerous specialization and sub-specializations of these concepts. This paper aims to use this model to provide educators and researchers involved in pilot studies with an overview of which programming concepts various playful programming products exercise (a playful programming products vs. programming concepts matrix). We also add additional concept specializations and expand on the descriptions of concepts included in the model. Finally we consider how this work can be used to support a crowed-sourced playful programming research program.