Frodi - Discover coding : Hur kan man introducera programmering för barn i åldrarna 6-8 år?

Sammanfattning: This report is about coding and programming for children in the Swedish primary school. Even though we live in an increasingly digitalized world, programming is not available as a subject in the Swedish school. Sweden has relatively good access to computers and the Internet, yet we are already lag behind in terms of knowledge when it comes to programming. My thesis is a proposal on how to introduce computational thinking and programming for children in primary schools in a simple, analogous manner, without the need for PCs or tablets. To best be able to answer the question: How can you introduce computational thinking for children between 6 and 8 years old, I have conducted interviews with children, teachers and programmers. The project has been carried out in Umeå during ten weeks. Observations and interviews were conducted in Stockholm, at Mälarhöjden’s school and in Malmö at FooCafé. The workshop I held with teachers revealed that the availability of computers and tablets in primary school is not very good, something that complicated the teaching of programming. Another important factor that emerged is that teachers today have no proven methods nor materials to teach programming, all responsibility for teaching programming is solely on the teachers and their dedication to the subject. Teachers would like to see a material that is ready to use, the situation now creates reluctance from teachers, which means that other organizations step in and take over the school’s role. The problem with that is that these organizations do not manage to meet the demand, waiting lists for CoderDojo or Barnhack (Nonprofit organizations) is over one year. The basis for this work was that the product was not allowed to require that there is a computer or internet access available in the children’s homes. During the process I also took the decision that the product should not require a computer or tablet at all because the teachers expressed a great desire for a material that did not need to be used with a computer to function, but basically is plug and play.