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Exploring concurrency on computational thinking tools

Published: 03 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Computational thinking (CT) tools express their designers' perspective on how a selected set of Computer Science concepts should be introduced, typically hiding details to avoid unnecessary complexity. This paper focuses on how concurrency is dealt with by five well-known tools in this domain: Scratch, Alice, AgentSheets, NetLogo and Greenfoot. We present the results of a systematic analysis contrasting their model of concurrent behavior with the corresponding programming interface messages that trigger their users' interpretation and learning of concurrency-related concepts. We present and discuss the conceptualizations that potentially emerge from using these five tools and compare them with established concurrency concepts. Our findings indicate opportunities for an explicit exploration of how some concurrency aspects are implemented in games and simulations built with CT tools. We believe that this might facilitate future learning and comprehension of complex concurrency concepts, considering that the knowledge embedded in these tools can also influence students' understanding of concurrency.

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  • (2024)Computational Thinking ToolsRevolutionizing Curricula Through Computational Thinking, Logic, and Problem Solving10.4018/979-8-3693-1974-1.ch009(151-166)Online publication date: 31-May-2024

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cover image ACM Other conferences
IHC '15: Proceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems
November 2015
514 pages
ISBN:9781450353625
DOI:10.1145/3148456
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 03 November 2015

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Author Tags

  1. computer science education
  2. concurrent programming
  3. programming

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IHC 2015

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Overall Acceptance Rate 331 of 973 submissions, 34%

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  • (2024)Computational Thinking ToolsRevolutionizing Curricula Through Computational Thinking, Logic, and Problem Solving10.4018/979-8-3693-1974-1.ch009(151-166)Online publication date: 31-May-2024

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