Type: Practitioner
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present advice for researchers and curriculum developers who are getting started working with computer science in elementary schools. The authors seek to provide practical tips for people who are interested in teaching computer science and who are creating material for computer science curricula.
Findings: In conducting computer science education research or developing materials, having a collaborative team that includes computer scientists, teachers, and educational researchers helps to create a successful experience.
Recommendations: When working in elementary computer science classrooms it is important that those who are involved take care to attend to language issues, and pay special attention to the curriculum itself as well as the development environment and classroom atmosphere. These authors make several recommendations for the programming language and environment, teacher and materials, working with schools, working in the classrooms and recommendations for feedback. Some of the highlighted recommendations are as follows: create student experts in the classroom who will serve as computer ambassadors for their peers. Another recommendation included finding school partners with existing relationships with local schools.