Informatics in Education

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) topics into K–12 school curricula is a relatively new but crucial challenge faced by education systems worldwide. Attempts to address this challenge are hindered by a serious lack of curriculum materials and tools to aid teachers in teaching AI. This article introduces the theoretical foundations and design principles for implementing co-design projects in AI education, empirically tested in 12 Finnish classrooms. The article describes a project where 4th- and 7th-graders (N = 213) explored the basics of AI by creating their own AI-driven applications. Additionally, a framework for distributed scaffolding is presented, aiming to foster children's agency, understanding, creativity, and ethical awareness in the age of AI.

Machine Learning (ML) is becoming increasingly present in our lives. Thus, it is important to introduce ML already in High School, enabling young people to become conscious users and creators of intelligent solutions. Yet, as typically ML is taught only in higher education, there is still a lack of knowledge on how to properly teach younger students. Therefore, in this systematic literature review, we analyze findings on teaching ML in High School with regard to content, pedagogical strategy, and technology. Results show that High School students were able to understand and apply basic ML concepts, algorithms and tasks. Pedagogical strategies focusing on active problem/project-based hands-on approaches were successful in engaging students and demonstrated positive learning effects. Visual as well as text-based programming environments supported students to build ML models in an effective way. Yet, the review also identified the need for more rigorous evaluations on how to teach ML.

C++ is the most commonly used language in introductory and intermediate programming courses in Bulgarian universities. In recent years this language has developed greatly. Its abstractions are more flexible and affordable than ever before. Such great number of changes are related to the launch of the new standard (known as C++11) that we have grounds to consider it even a new language. It is inevitable to reflect all these changes in training courses and this prompted us to consider not only some updating of academic curricula but also a comprehensive reorganization of our programming courses. So, in this article we share our successes and difficulties in this direction.

Teaching object-oriented programming (OOP) is related to many difficulties. There is no single view on their causes among the university teachers. The results of applying various methods of teaching - with early or late introduction of the objects, are controversial too.

Conventional wisdom attributes the lack of effective technology use in classrooms to a shortage of professional development or poorly run professional development. At the same time, logo-like learning environments require teachers to develop more expertise not only in technology but also in pedagogy.