Estudo do uso da linguagem de blocos scratch no ensino do pensamento computacional

Abstract

Because of the great advancement and constant integration of society in the areas of technology and development, computing is present in almost all work segments, especially when it comes to programming. However, even the technological devices being present in the daily lives of a considerable part of the population, it does not have the skills to develop applications, to perfect them or to create them. Therefore, in order to develop the skills that allow the student to improve or create new applications and functionalities, it is necessary to integrate the learners with the techniques of computational thinking. Thus, this research presents a study of the block programming language with Scratch to promote the teaching of computational thinking techniques, applied through a semi - classroom course guided through video lessons. For this, a separate educational material was elaborated in six modules, containing in each module videos and questionnaires. For the accomplishment of this study, activities were applied to evaluate the performance and questionnaires of motivations to analyze the stimuli caused in the participants in each module of the experiment. The study was applied in 5 different classes, all of them from the 1st period and members of the Federal University of Paraná (UTFPR), in Campo Mourão campus. In order to evaluate the performance of students in relation to the concepts of computational thinking that will be presented in video lessons, using as a tool the Scratch platform for the development of the evaluated activities. The results showed that the performance of the participants presented results that were considered satisfactory both in the activities of the weeks and in the presented concepts, while also remaining motivated during the phases of the experiment. This may indicate a strong positive indication of the influence of programming in blocks with Scratch, in teaching / learning programming concepts and Software Engineering.