How to teach programming and computational thinking?

It was the main question of the homonymous webinar, organized by the Faculty of Education of the Catholic University, which featured a masterful talk by international expert Francisco Vico.

Since the advent of modern computers and their massive access in the population, the teaching of computer skills has been present in the educational debate. More recently, in 2019, the Ministry of Education, through its Innovation Center, developed the National Plan for Digital Languages what are you looking for introduce the country's teachers to the concepts of computational thinking, ability that was recently integrated into the school curriculum.

These are "advances in the training of students in a language of increasing importance in school and daily life," he said. Pilar Cox, substitute dean of the Faculty of Education UC, who opened the webinar “How to teach programming and computational thinking?”, organized by the unit on Friday, July 8. However, he added, there is still a lot to be done since teaching programming implies, too, challenges of gender and class, traversed by a strong digital divide in Chile and Latin America.

How to advance to incorporate new didactics of programming and computational thinking in Chile? And what is needed to implement these skills in schools? He academic at the University of Malaga, Francisco Vico, answered these questions in his keynote talk.

a timid advance

According to Francisco Vico, main speaker of the webinar “How to teach programming and computational thinking?”, little progress has been made in teaching programming: “Attempts to include computer literacy have been timid, since there has been no continuity or insistence on a specific line at the Ibero-American level”. Proof of the above is that “the rate of computer literacy, or of people who know how to program, is 1% in the region. And, even more worrying, of that percentage, nine out of ten are men, that is, there is a huge gender gap"He added.

According to the academic, learning how technologies work allows strengthening the capacity of solve problems, competition present in the national resume: "Thinking computationally gives a new way of approaching problems, but programming, in addition to this, allows you to solve many of them in practice." Besides, It has great value for the economy of the countries, he added, since it allows training more competitive professionals in the areas of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and integrated arts), "jobs that women are not being able to access due to the gender gap."

teach programming

For Vico, facing these challenges requires promoting the teaching of programming and computational thinking, which he compared to teaching driving, where with certain basic notions it is possible to control the steering wheel. “The car tells you how to drive it,” he explained.

What is programming? According to the expert of the Malaga University, programming is not building robots, applications, websites, printing in 3D, driving drones, etc. Although these skills have programming components, "they mislead the background, of what really matters that is to learn a language. Teaching programming is a very basic language, has explicit and clear syntax and elementary computational structures, and mastery of this syntax must be taught. When a boy or girl knows this and is able to combine it to solve problems, she knows how to program,” she said.

Y What is needed to enhance the teaching of computational thinking? "Political will, trained educators, knowledgeable about technology and programming bases, and greater access to computers," said the expert. Also, he summarized five basic elements to introduce programming in school environments:

1. Understand the programming language as the most close to human language. Make it like reading a text, without further abstractions, and make it possible to understand a program without prior explanations.
2. Generate scientific evidence and design a curriculum based on previous classroom experiences.
3. Toast access to computers and software that allow the development of programming, from the most basic concepts to the most advanced.
4. Data sovereignty. When teaching programming in a general way, the teaching metadata must be stored in the country that generates it, according to its own regulations.
5. And have a accredited teaching staff for programming that achieves the necessary motivation for their students to acquire the skills.

The meeting was also attended by Martín Cáceres, Director of Innovation Center of the Ministry of Education, Claudia Jana, Education Manager of Kodea Foundation, Maria Jose Seckel, academic of the Faculty of Education of the Catholic University of the Holy Conception, and Alvaro Salinas, Director of Observatory of Digital Educational Practices.

Relive the talk here: