ABSTRACT
Promoting productive student talk and computational collaboration in small group work is challenging, especially during COVID-19 induced remote learning. This paper describes a case study of one middle school teacher's participation in a professional learning community and implementations of a physical computing unit where students created data displays to collect and analyze environmental data. The focal teacher implemented the unit twice with astonishingly better results in the second iteration. We discuss lessons from how she participated in a professional learning cycle that used reflection, adaptive support and co-designed tools that helped achieve her vision for student collaboration. © 2022 International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Engaging in physical computing activities involving both hardware and software provides a hands-on introduction to computer science. The move to remote learning for primary and secondary schools during the 2020-2021 school year due to COVID-19 made implementing physical computing activities especially challenging. However, it is important that these activities are not simply eliminated from the curriculum. This paper explores how a unit centered around students investigating how programmable sensors that can support data-driven scientific inquiry was collaboratively adapted for remote instruction. A case study of one teacher's experience implementing the unit with a group of middle school students (ages 11 to 14) in her STEM elective class examines how her students could still engage in computational thinking practices around data and programming. The discussion includes both the challenges and unexpected affordances of engaging in physical computing activities remotely that emerged from her implementation. © 2021 ACM.