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Today, computing has become increasingly influential in our day-to-day lives. Due to this importance, computing needs to be popularized in K-12 giving students the opportunity to learn basic computing competencies. Integrating computer education into school requires trained teachers, however, currently such teachers are scarce. Therefore, some initiatives aim at integrating computer education in an interdisciplinary way, training in-service teachers from other areas. In this context, this article presents the result of a systematic mapping study aiming on the identification of existing instructional units for training in-service teachers and their characteristics. As a result, 16 instructional units (IUs) were found. Most UIs focus on teaching algorithms and programming, with few also covering pedagogical and technological knowledge. The encountered IUs vary largely in terms of teaching mode, duration. We also observed, due to a scarcity of information on how the IUs were developed the necessity for further research in this area. However, the results demonstrate also first indications of the viability and the positive contribution of in-service teacher training for computer education, contributing to the popularization of computing competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

App Inventor is a blocks-based programming environment that allows any end-user to create mobile applications. It is frequently used in order to teach computing in K-12 through the development of mobile apps. Although learning computing with App Inventor has been investigated from different points of view, a question that remains is whether the visual design of the user interfaces (UI) of the applications developed with App Inventor is adequate, being one of the major success factors of a mobile application. Therefore, this article analyzes the visual design of the user interfaces of 88,861 apps from the App Inventor gallery in relation to its compliance with style guides through an automated source code analysis, as well as its aesthetics based on a survey with 95 participants assessing 110 UIs. The results show that most UIs do not comply to design guidelines and do not have visual aesthetics. Therefore, it seems important to cover not only programming concepts, but also UI design in computing education when developing mobile applications. The results of this analysis can drive the development and improvement of instructional units and the App Inventor environment, thus contributing to the development of applications with better UI design and increasing their chances of having success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]