Design and development of a low-cost tangible programming environment for children

Abstract

There are many studies that demonstrate that contact with programming has a positive impact on the development of children's cognitive and socio-emotional skills. Programming has been discussed as a way to stimulate the development of computational thinking in children. However, there are barriers to learning programming; one of them is the fact that most existing programming languages are based on abstractions in the form of texts and symbols that are difficult for them to understand. A potentially easier way to introduce children to programming is Tangible Interfaces. The Tangible Interfaces approach proposes to embed computational elements in concrete materials, creating a didactic resource that combines the advantages of physical manipulation with the multimedia interaction provided by technology.