Beginner programmers can develop an intuitive understanding of programming by leveraging the motivating field of multimedia to visually inspect outputs and experiment with different ways to solve problems. This paper presents MediaLib, a Python library designed to facilitate multimedia programming and lessen the cognitive load associated with programming for novice programmers. In addition, we designed an official MediaLib website which contains the library itself, two tutorials, and clear documentation. The tutorial clearly presents the learning objectives of each lesson and contains exercises related to MediaLib. We designed these exercises to help students gain knowledge incrementally, without requiring in-depth maths knowledge.

Teaching introductory programing in university is a challenging task, involving high heterogeneity of students' skills, need to balance theoretical and practical tasks, and the recent, quick-paced move towards the hybrid classroom. We outline the requirements and design of a novel agile tool for semi-linear presentations that can deliver individualized content, trace students' activity and support dynamic formation of groups.

Boardgames exist that explicitly address Computational Thinking (CT for short) concepts and practices. Some are actual games, while others are more akin to gamified learning activities. And since CT has been formalized only recently, many existing boardgames unknowingly might support aspects of CT. To help educators and game practitioners navigate this complex landscape, we analyze a selected sample of analog games, and propose to categorize their features with respect to CT concepts and practices. The main contribution of this paper is a novel way to identify potential CT-relevant games, that leverages on the authors’ experience with digital and analog games, playful and game-based learning. Although limited, this approach appears promising and practical for CT teachers and game designers interested in adapting existing games to the classroom or developing better CT-supporting boardgames.

In this paper, we argue for the need of new kinds of visual, digital game authoring tools. The main goal for this project is to reconceptualization the programming of interactive digital contents, to minimize the coding aspects, and focus instead on the creative and design-like parts, leveraging on a tangible metaphor, so to empower teachers and pupils to create digital interactive content, expanding the creative affordances offered by digital games. The resulting tool is called Stick&Click, it is based on findings from our past research, and it targets the pedagogical practice of editing games that is currently common in Danish primary schools. The study is organized according to the research through design approach, and centers around user needs and experience. We discuss our explorations of the computational model behind Stick&Click, requirements and design principles, and alternative ways to visualize its user interface.

This paper discusses findings from two studies and aims at raising awareness about the missed opportunities caused by the little adoption of non-linear narrative in learning and assessment activities. Data gathered from a longitudinal study about museum learning practice and from a semester-long investigation, conducted with circa 60 Multimedia design students, reveal that non-linear narrative is seen as difficult to create and can be met by scepticism. On the other hand, adoption of non-linear narratives as pedagogical material and as students' assignments, elicits dialogue, critical reflections, and designerly forms of learning. However, non-linearity appears to clash with current assessment techniques, as institutional requirements demand linear narratives in education, both in relation to pedagogical material (textbooks) as well as students' assessment (essays and dissertations). Even the latest developments in presentation tools do not offer valid support for non-linear stories. An alternative approach is proposed here, that aims at easing authoring, use and assessment of non-linear narratives by means of a pattern language and measures of non-linearity inspired by social network analysis.

Having worked with transposition of domain knowledge in digital and card games, we propose a novel approach for enabling groups of primary school pupils to express their shared understanding of a topic, the group can represent their knowledge by creating a trading card game (with custom cards and rules) instead of using diagrammatical formalisms. A kit and a special design method have been devised to simplify the creation of card games, bringing the task in within the capabilities of pupils. The process of designing card games represents in itself a form of group reflection in action. The resulting card games serve as boundary objects among learners and instructors (or other participating adults, in informal contexts). The games reify the group knowledge, making it tangible and playable: each of these games can be seen as a simulation or a presentation of knowledge, for the benefit of new learners or for assessment. Studies are currently being conducted to investigate the full potential our new knowledge, and how to improve our kit further.

To gain a better understanding of the process through which technology users become technology creators, we designed a paper-based, tangible Turing Machine and introduced it to 54 teenage students. The information collected through tinkering tasks and a questionnaire is discussed both via statistics and qualitative analysis. This initial study suggests that simple paper tangibles and tinkering have a place in future, technology-enhanced learning, and that central technological concepts can be discussed on the basis of low-cost tabletop-like games. We also notice a general interest in the historical development of technologies, that seems to enhance motivation and participation.

C-cards are an easy-to-reify, graphical formalism capable of expressing computational systems, discrete both in time and in space. The main goal of the project aims at scaling-down the learning complexity of Computer Science core contents. We argue that our cards present many dimensions of flexibility, resulting in a highly customizable learning object, that gives teachers and pedagogues freedom with respect to reification and deployment strategies. The correlation between the c-cards game and children's soft skills is also discussed.

The paper proposes a new way of introducing music to 8 to 10 year-old children, by adopting a recent educational tool for teaching Computer Science. Our proposal builds on computational cards (or c-cards), a playful and intuitive mind-tool, that has been applied to a variety of Computer Science concepts. Here a simple extension to c-cards is presented, that enables pupils to build and play with tangible musical machine.

The computational card (c-cards for short) project is a study and realization of an educational tool based on playing cards. C-cards are an educational tool to introduce children 8 to 10 (or older) to the concept of computation, seen as manipulation of symbols. The game provides teachers and learners with a physical, tangible metaphor for exploring core concepts of computer science, such as deterministic and probabilistic state machines, frequencies and probability distributions, and the central elements of Shannon's information theory, like information, communication, errors and error detection. Our idea is implemented both with paper cards and by an editor/simulator software (a prototype realized in javascript). We also designed the structure of a course in (theoretical) computer science, based on c-cards, and we will test it this summer.

In this paper we propose the structure of an exploratory course in theoretical computer science intended for a broad range of students (and especially kids). The course is built on computational cards, a simple paper toy, in which playing cards are computational elements; computing machines can be defined, built and animated in a concrete way by disposing cards and moving objectified symbols on top of them, following formal rules. We provide details and examples of the kind of exercises to be used in such a course. Advantages of c-cards and motivations behind the course are also discussed.