O uso do OctoStudio para o ensino de pensamento computacional no ensino fundamental

Abstract

The Standards on Computing in Basic Education (Ministério da Educação, 2022b) provide general guidelines for the inclusion of computer science education in Brazil. Among the challenges for implementing this area of education is the lack of access to computers for students in public schools to practice the proposed content. One way to solve this problem is to use OctoStudio, a programming teaching application available for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, which are more accessible to these students. Thus, this research investigates the effectiveness of using the OctoStudio application for teaching Computational Thinking, aligned with the mathematics discipline, in a sixth-grade class in a public elementary school. To this end, this work describes the implementation of a course, structured according to the suggestions of the Standards on Computing in Basic Education, with the objective of working on skills in the Computational Thinking axis aligned with the content of the mathematics discipline. For data collection, questionnaires were applied to identify the students’ profile, especially their access to computers, the internet, and smartphones, and their prior knowledge of computing. The questionnaires also identified student satisfaction with the use of OctoStudio and the knowledge acquired after the course, with the aim of analyzing the method and the tool applied. The results indicate that OctoStudio was evaluated by the course students as a learning facilitator and fun, and that most students reported that they were able to program and that they are interested in learning more about programming.