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Learning complex systems with story-building in scratch

Published: 21 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Complex systems are difficult for many students to understand. But new technologies are promising tools for helping students learn about systems thinking. In this paper, I present a case study of a middle school student creating stories in Scratch to learn about programming and complex systems. I discuss his learning in relation to the affordances of the Scratch activities and the student's abilities and goals. Results show that while the student did learn about programming, the linearity of stories in Scratch did not afford opportunities for learning about interconnections in complex systems.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    IDC '15: Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
    June 2015
    488 pages
    ISBN:9781450335904
    DOI:10.1145/2771839
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    Published: 21 June 2015

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    Author Tags

    1. affordances
    2. education
    3. programming
    4. systems thinking

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    IDC '15: Interaction Design and Children
    June 21 - 24, 2015
    Massachusetts, Boston

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    IDC '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 24 of 103 submissions, 23%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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