Workshops are distinguished meeting points for getting and providing information about the ongoing work in our relevant fields and covering current topics preferably in practical informatics at all school levels. This year, ISSEP hosts a total of 7 workshops for teachers and reseachers.
There are four free workshops during the morning and three in the afternoon. Attending multiple worshops is allowed. The following outlines the workshop titles, after which each workshop is briefly described.
Monday morning
Monday afternoon
Note: schedule changed
Registration
Register to the workshops at https://www.lyyti.in/issep-2017-workshops. Workshops are free for all.
Organizer: Sini Riikonen (University of Helsinki, Finland; Innokas Network)
The Innokas Network guides and encourages students, teachers, school administrators and other stakeholders to be creative and innovative using available technology. At the ISSEP 2017 Conference, Innokas comes to share and create experiences for teaching programming with robotics and the GoGo board.
"The GoGo Board is a low-cost open-source hardware device for educational robotics, scientific experiments, and environmental sensing. Children can use the board to construct robots, measure and log environmental data, conduct scientific investigations, create game controllers, build interactive art installations, and much more" -- http://gogoboard.org
The workshop starts at 9AM at the Kumpula Campus. Maximum participants 20 -- some laptops are available at the premises, but you can also bring your own! The language of the workshop will be English. However, if all participants are Finnish-speaking, the workshop will be given in Finnish.
Organizers: Gerald Futschek (TU Wien, Austria) and Michael Weigend (University of Münster, Germany)
Tim Bell et al. created a set of cooperative activities to learn computer science in a playful way. It has turned out that concepts like binary numbers, picture encoding and so on can be understood even by young children.
The workshop introduces participants to unplugged learning arrangements on Computer Science (CS) that can be used at schools in all grades. The activities do not require computers (they are "unplugged") but everyday material that can be found in any classroom like paper, pencil, Lego and furniture. The goal is to inspire and involve the learners in such a way that they get an idea of CS concepts on a concrete operational level. Practical experience from unplugged activities may be a basis for a better and deeper understanding of theoretical concepts. The participants of the workshop perform, create and discuss game-like collaborative activities on CS covering main facets of computational thinking.
The workshop consists of four parts. After a short introduction, the participants have the opportunity to try out unplugged activities. Then they are encouraged to create their own arrangements or find variants or improvements of the given ones. At the end everybody presents her or his result and we discuss the involved educational theory. This is in line with the CS Unplugged philosophy.
Organizer: Jacqueline Staub (Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich)
One crucial responsibility of today's school is to prime and prepare young pupils such that they develop a deep understanding of technology and don't simply graduate as passive users and mere consumers of computers. Moreover they should acquire essential skills that equip them to actively influence and shape their environment to their wishes. Computer science education serves a vital role in fostering childrens' algorithmic thinking and problem solving skills, as exemplified by the task of programming. This form of learning is constructive, enriches creativity and teaches precision.
More than twelve years ago, the chair of information technology and education at ETH Zurich started introducing fifth and sixth grade primary school pupils and their teachers to programming in Logo. Using a curriculum and purpose-built programming environment, we have gathered extensive experience from hundreds of schools across Switzerland and even beyond its borders. This workshop is catered towards educators and people interested in how to introduce computer science to novices. We will present the didactic approach behind our programming curriculum and shed light on finer points of how it is tailored to the emotional and mental abilities of a young target audience. Our discussion will highlight the importance of modular design and demonstrate how to teach this concept in the context of a spiral curriculum. Participants gain practical insights into the curriculum along with first-hand information about its didactic structure and the observed effect on the children.
Workshop agenda:
The workshop starts at 9AM at the Kumpula Campus and it's duration is 75 minutes. Maximum participants 20 -- some laptops are available at the premises, but you can also bring your own! The language of the workshop will be English.
Organizer: Henrik Nygren, Antti Leinonen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Cancelled
University of Helsinki has offered free open online introductory programming courses to Finnish high-schools since 2012. Students who perform well and are interested in studying computer science are invited to an interview, which may lead to an admission to the University of Helsinki.
In this workshop, teachers will learn the basics of using an automated assessment system called Test My Code that can be used for hosting your own programming courses. Existing courses are also offered as course templates, which can be used to create private courses with personalized timelines.
The workshop starts at 10:30AM at the Kumpula Campus. Maximum participants 20 -- some laptops are available at the premises, but you can also bring your own! The language of the workshop will be English. However, if all participants are Finnish-speaking, the workshop will be given in Finnish.
Organizers: Mikko-Jussi Laakso, Einari Kurvinen, and Erkki Kaila (University of Turku, Finland)
ViLLE is an exercise-based education environment that enables easy learning and teaching of mathematics, programming and other topics. The development is research-based, and the features and the methodology utilized have been thoroughly studied with various setups in the Centre for Learning Analytics at University of Turku. For students, ViLLE offers more than 15 000 carefully designed, motivating and activating exercises for learning mathematics and programming. All exercises are automatically assessed and provide immediate feedback. For teachers, ViLLE provides comprehensive learning analytics that visualize everything the teacher needs to know about their students' learning process -- including automatic detection of misconceptions and real-time analysis of students' progress.
Using ViLLE provides evidence-based, scientifically proven (articles provided at workshop) results for all grades. In the studies conducted in Finland, students using ViLLE improve their learning significantly more. With matching skill levels before the experience, groups using ViLLE achieved at least 20 percent higher scores in the exams conducted at end of the school year. Moreover, the students find ViLLE as highly motivating and fun tool to use. The teachers value especially the large number of exercises, customizability, the possibilities for real differentiation, and the comprehensive statistics and reporting provided by ViLLE.
The workshop is designed for experiencing the possibilities of ViLLE's features in teaching mathematics. In two hours, the following topics are covered:
The workshop starts at 2:00PM at the Kumpula Campus. Maximum participants 20 -- some laptops are available at the premises, but you can also bring your own! The language of the workshop will be English. However, if all participants are Finnish-speaking, the workshop will be given in Finnish.
Organizer: Kristine Lazdina (Google)
CS First is a free program that increases student access and exposure to computer science (CS) education through after-school, in-school, and summer programs. All clubs are run by teachers and/or community volunteers. No computer science experience is necessary to host or volunteer. CS First provides all the training and materials you need to successfully run and lead a CS First club. All training and materials are free and available online.
In this workshop, you will learn what CS First is, how it can be used, and will participate in a hands-on demo. Laptops are expected from the participants, but some are available at the location. If possible, bring headphones with you.
The workshop starts at 2:00PM at the Kumpula Campus. Maximum participants 30. The language of the workshop will be English.
Organizers: Valentina Dagienė (Lithuania), Gerald Futschek (Austria), Jari Koivisto (Finland) and Gabriele Stupurienė (Lithuania)
The Bebras challenge ("majava-kilpailu") on Informatics and Computational Thinking is an education community network which consolidates over 60 countries with the aim to introduce informatics (computer science) concepts to pupils. Bebras tasks are an essential part of the challenge, and they contain concepts of about nearly all areas of basic informatics.
We have created Bebras-like tasks on cards, placing one task per card and short basic information on informatics concepts involved in the task. The card games based on Bebras-like tasks stimulate teachers and pupils to deepen their knowledge in informatics and also inspire cooperation and work together, including collaboration in decision-making, looking for the best solutions, and so on. Informatics concepts are introduced by using inventive storytelling questions. This didactical way is based on constructivist learning approach, when both teachers and pupils could learn through: 1) developing (constructing) tasks, and 2) analysing their solutions and explaining the essence of these tasks and why it's informatics (deconstructing).
This workshop addresses all primary school teachers who would like to introduce computational thinking for pupils using interesting tasks as well as educationists and education scientists who are interested in how school students can learn informatics (computer science or computing) concepts through Bebras-like tasks presented on the cards.
In the workshop the participants will learn more about the Bebras Challenge, how the tasks are created, which kind of tasks were produced, what are the effects on learning and teaching. Participants practically will try to deconstruct the Bebras tasks and find what informatics concepts are hidden. The participants will experience wow-effects while solving Bebras tasks and how thinking is directed to solving strategies that are typical for informatics and computational thinking. We will discuss how the Bebras Challenge should be performed in a school context and how the teachers may use the Bebras tasks in their teaching activities.
Discussion will include but is not limited to:
Bebras task cards (in Finnish) will be also given to the workshop participants.
The workshop starts at 2:00PM at the Kumpula Campus. Maximum participants 20. The language of the workshop will be English.
Register to the workshops at https://www.lyyti.in/issep-2017-workshops. Workshops are free for all.