<p>This thesis explores new approaches to making and playing with programming materials, especially the forms provided with screen-based digital media. Designing with these media expressions can be very attractive to children, but they are usually not made available to them in the same degree as are physical materials.</p><p>Inspired by children's play with physical materials, this work includes design explorations of how different resources alter, scaffold and support children in activities of making dynamic, screen-based systems. How tangibles turn the activity of programming into a more physical, social and collaborative activity is emphasised. A specific outcome concerns the importance of considering 'offline' and socially oriented action when designing tangible technologies. The work includes the design of a tangible programming system, Patcher, with which groups of children can program systems displayed on a large screen surface.</p><p>The character of children's programming is conceptualised through the notion of a digital patchwork, emphasising (1) children's programming as media-sensitive design, (2) making programming more concrete by combining and reusing readily available programming constructs, and (3) the use of tangibles for social interaction.</p>

This thesis explores new approaches to making and playing with programming materials, especially the forms provided with screen-based digital media. Designing with these media expressions can be very attractive to children, but they are usually not made available to them in the same degree as are physical materials. Inspired by children's play with physical materials, this work includes design explorations of how different resources alter, scaffold and support children in activities of making dynamic, screen-based systems. How tangibles turn the activity of programming into a more physical, social and collaborative activity is emphasised. A specific outcome concerns the importance of considering 'offline' and socially oriented action when designing tangible technologies. The work includes the design of a tangible programming system, Patcher, with which groups of children can program systems displayed on a large screen surface. The character of children's programming is conceptualised through the notion of a digital patchwork, emphasising (1) children's programming as media-sensitive design, (2) making programming more concrete by combining and reusing readily available programming constructs, and (3) the use of tangibles for social interaction.

The presented diploma thesis examines the possibilities of developing algorithmic thinking in primary school pupils. Algorithmic thinking is a necessary tool for effective analysis of the problem and the creation of a procedure for its subsequent repeatable solution. The main research topic of this work is effective and efficient ways of developing algorithmic thinking, especially how to formulate a problem and how to develop algorithmic thinking with the greatest effect in the educational process. The work summarizes various ways of developing algorithmic thinking and the approach to its teaching. The concepts of computer thinking, algorithmic thinking, algorithm and algorithmization are defined and analyzed. Furthermore, contemporary means of developing algorithmic thinking described in the literature are specified. They are then critically evaluated and at the end of the theoretical part the most suitable set of means is selected and the way of their use is proposed. Action research was carried out in the circle of informatics at the primary school in Prague. The verification of the effectiveness of the selected instruments took place during fifteen sixty-minute lessons. The focus of this research lies in increasing the quality of pedagogical practice of the teacher, in the development of his didactic...

This thesis deals with development of algorithmic thinking and teaching programming in elementary school. It focuses on available ways and tools suitable for classes. The practical part of the thesis is focused on children's programming language Scratch, which is one of the tools designed to be used for teaching. The main goal is to create comprehensive collections of tasks that develop algorithmic thinking of pupils aged 9 - 10 years. The tasks get more complex gradually so that the pupils don't need any previous programming experience. Also they are designed so that they can be solved without the assistance of a teacher. All the tasks were checked against a set of pupils in the given age range. The collection of tasks is also made available as a web presentation for the ease of further use.