A Tangible Programming Tool for Children to Cultivate Computational Thinking

Game and creation are activities which have good potential for computational thinking skills. In this paper we present T-Maze, an economical tangible programming tool for children aged 5–9 to build computer programs in maze games by placing wooden blocks. Through the use of computer vision technolog...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Danli Wang, Tingting Wang, Zhen Liu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2014-01-01
Series:The Scientific World Journal
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/428080
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Summary:Game and creation are activities which have good potential for computational thinking skills. In this paper we present T-Maze, an economical tangible programming tool for children aged 5–9 to build computer programs in maze games by placing wooden blocks. Through the use of computer vision technology, T-Maze provides a live programming interface with real-time graphical and voice feedback. We conducted a user study with 7 children using T-Maze to play two levels of maze-escape games and create their own mazes. The results show that T-Maze is not only easy to use, but also has the potential to help children cultivate computational thinking like abstraction, problem decomposition, and creativity.
ISSN:2356-6140
1537-744X