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Introduction of scientific and cultural aspects of Computer Science (CS) (called "Computational Thinking" - CT) in K-12 education is fundamental. We focus on three crucial areas. 1. Historical, philosophical, and pedagogical aspects. What are the big ideas of CS we must teach? What are the historical and pedagogical contexts in which CT emerged, and why are relevant? What is the relationship between learning theories (e.g., constructivism) and teaching approaches (e.g., plugged and unplugged)? 2. Cognitive aspects. What is the sentiment of generalist teachers not trained to teach CS? What misconceptions do they hold about concepts like CT and "coding"? 3. Affective and motivational aspects. What is the impact of personal beliefs about intelligence (mindset) and about CS ability? What the role of teaching approaches? This research has been conducted both through historical and philosophical argumentation, and through quantitative and qualitative studies (both on nationwide samples and small significant ones), in particular through the lens of (often exaggerated) claims about transfer from CS to other skills. Four important claims are substantiated. 1. CS should be introduced in K-12 as a tool to understand and act in our digital world, and to use the power of computation for meaningful learning. CT is the conceptual sediment of that learning. We designed a curriculum proposal in this direction. 2. The expressions CT (useful to distantiate from digital literacy) and "coding" can cause misconceptions among teachers, who focus mainly on transfer to general thinking skills. Both disciplinary and pedagogical teacher training is hence needed. 3. Some plugged and unplugged teaching tools have intrinsic constructivist characteristics that can facilitate CS learning, as shown with proposed activities. 4. Growth mindset is not automatically fostered by CS, while not studying CS can foster fixed beliefs. Growth mindset can be fostered by creative computing, leveraging on its constructivist aspects.

International audience; This poster illustrates how we redesigned the CS1 course for Math undergraduates to be held online but reflecting the face-to-face (F2F) experience as much as possible. We describe the course structure and the strategies we implemented to maintain the benefits of a synchronous experience. We present the positive and negative aspects that emerged from the students' opinion analysis. We highlight what worked, what did not, and what can be improved to strengthen the perception of a F2F experience and mitigate the "presence paradox" we found: although students are enthusiastic about the online format, most would still prefer a F2F course.

The pervasiveness of Computer Science (CS) in today’s digital society and the extensive use of computational methods in other sciences call for its introduction in the school curriculum. Hence, Computer Science Education is becoming more and more relevant. In CS K-12 education, computational thinking (CT) is one of the abused buzzwords: different stakeholders (media, educators, politicians) give it different meanings, some more oriented to CS, others more linked to its interdisciplinary value. The expression was introduced by two leading researchers, Jeannette Wing (in 2006) and Seymour Papert (much early, in 1980), each of them stressing different aspects of a common theme. This paper will use a historical approach to review, discuss, and put in context these first two educational and epistemological approaches to CT. We will relate them to today’s context and evaluate what aspects are still relevant for CS K-12 education. Of the two, particular interest is devoted to “Papert’s CT,” which is the lesser-known and the lesser-studied. We will conclude that “Wing’s CT” and “Papert’s CT,” when correctly understood, are both relevant to today’s computer science education. From Wing, we should retain computer science’s centrality, CT being the (scientific and cultural) substratum of the technical competencies. Under this interpretation, CT is a lens and a set of categories for understanding the algorithmic fabric of today’s world. From Papert, we should retain the constructionist idea that only a social and affective involvement of students into the technical content will make programming an interdisciplinary tool for learning (also) other disciplines. We will also discuss the often quoted (and often unverified) claim that CT automatically “transfers” to other broad 21st century skills. Our analysis will be relevant for educators and scholars to recognize and avoid misconceptions and build on the two core roots of CT.

International audience; We describe how we redesigned, because of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the CS1 course for Math undergraduates to be held online yet reflecting the face-to-face (F2F) experience as much as possible. We present the course structure, the IT tools we used, and the strategies we implemented to preserve the benefits of a synchronous experience. We discuss the positive and negative aspects that emerged from the students' opinion qualitative analysis. We use the COI framework as a lens to explain what worked, what did not, and what can be improved to strengthen the perception of a F2F experience and mitigate the "presence paradox" we found: despite students being enthusiastic about the online format, most would still prefer a F2F course.

National audience; In questo lavoro risaliamo alle origini dell'espressione "pensiero computazionale", calandola nel contesto originale (la teoria costruttivista di Seymour Papert) che ha portato a coniarla. Analizziamo poi le eredità di tale contesto (apprendimento creativo e informatica creativa), per trarne utili princìpi, validi ancora oggi. Presentiamo poi un esempio (i club di programmazione CoderDojo) in cui tali princìpi sono visibili. Concludiamo osservando che l'origine dell'espressione mette in luce aspetti culturali diversi (ma non necessariamente contrapposti) rispetto a quelli cui di solito si fa riferimento oggi parlando di pensiero computazionale.

The EU-project I SEE aims at facing young’s difficulties in imagining their future from the perspective of STEM education, assuming that STEM disciplines provide both epistemological and technical tools to deal with cross-cutting and societally relevant topics and to scaffold students’ approaches to the future. Within the project, the Italian community designed and implemented an interdisciplinary module on Artificial Intelligence for high school students. The data analysis revealed that the students were intellectually and emotionally engaged by the richness and the interdisciplinarity of this module, which encouraged them to become agents in the present in order to face future challenges.

International audience; The paper presents the Olimpiadi di Problem Solving, a mild and inclusive competition aimed to promote computational thinking and general problem-solving in Italian schools. We describe motivation, teaching strategies behind the initiative, as well as its structure, organization and give some sample of the problems proposed to students. We also present some data that show the broad participation of Italian schools to the initiative, and a preliminary analysis of the results obtained by the students in the last 5 editions, which suggests that the competition fosters deep learning of computational thinking knowledge and skills.

In questo lavoro risaliamo alle origini dell’espressione “pensiero computazionale”, calandola nel contesto originale (la teoria costruttivista di Seymour Paper) che ha portato a coniarla. Analizziamo poi le eredità di tale contesto (apprendimento creativo e informatica creativa), per trarne utili principi, validi ancora oggi. Presentiamo poi un esempio (i club di programmazione CoderDojo) in cui tali principi sono visibili. Concludiamo osservando che l’origine dell’espressione mette in luce aspetti culturali diversi (ma non necessariamente contrapposti) rispetto a quelli cui di solito si fa riferimento oggi parlando di pensiero computazionale

International audience; Although programming is often seen as a key element of constructionist approaches, the research on learning to program through a constructionist strategy is somewhat limited, mostly focusing on how to bring the abstract and formal nature of programming languages into "concrete", possibly tangible objects, graspable even by children with limited abstraction power. We survey the literature in programming education and analyse some programming languages designed to help novices from a constructionist perspective.

National audience; We discuss if and to what extent we need the expression " computational thinking ". We argue that looking for a precise, operational definition could be misleading, and that this expression should not be used everywhere instead of " informatics ". " Computational thinking " , instead, is an instrumental expression which may help in suggesting that informatics is a new and distinct scientific discipline, and in motivating why it should be taught in the schools of any level.; Esaminiamo in che misura sia necessaria l'espressione " pensiero computazionale " ed argomentiamo che può essere controproducente usarla in modo eccessivo insistendo a cercarne una definizione operativamente precisa. Questo termine dovrebbe servire, in modo strumentale, per spiegare sinteticamente perché l'informatica è una disciplina scientifica nuova e distinta dalle altre e perché dovrebbe essere insegnata a scuola a tutti i livelli.

International audience; The term "coding" is more and more used to talk about the diffusion of computer science in school. While computer scientists, computing professionals, and educators consider this term very close or even equivalent to "programming", media tend to use it to describe something new and different from the "old boring CS". We provide here the main results of a large-scale investigation among primary school teachers (N=972) exploring their viewpoint on coding and its relation to programming. We asked to describe what coding is for them: only 40% of the relevant answers used terms explicitly mentioning programming. An additional 19%, while not directly mentioning programming, made reference to an information processing agent executing instructions. An additional small subset of teachers, while considering coding different from programming, described such difference using "tolerable" characterizations. We also analyzed the (sometimes conflicting) misconceptions of teachers trying to explain why coding and programming are different.

International audience; In order to bring informatics, its ideas and ways of thinking of major educational value to all primary and secondary school students, the Italian Inter-universities Consortium for Informatics (CINI), in collaboration with the academic associations who gather together researchers in informatics (GRIN) and computer engineering (GII), has recently proposed a core informatics curriculum for all the levels of compulsory school. This paper summarizes the proposed curriculum, highlights the key underlying motivations, and outlines a possible strategy to ensure that its implementation in schools can be effective.

International audience; This paper reports the results of an investigation involving almost a thousand primary school teachers in Italy, to explore their views on the terms "coding" and "programming", and how they are related to their ideas on "computational thinking". When directly asked "if coding is different from writing programs", roughly 2 out of 3 teachers answered "no". Among the teachers who answered "yes", almost 160 tried to motivate the difference: a few of them gave admissible explanations, while the others showed various misunderstandings , which we classify and discuss. By contrast, when asked about their idea of "what coding is", only 4 out of 10 of the teachers explicitly linked coding to programming, but an additional 2 out of 10 cited an information processing agent executing instructions. The remaining part of the sample did not provide explicit or implicit links between coding and programming. Our investigation shows that untrained teachers hold misconceptions regarding CS and its related terms. Given the general public and media attention on "coding" in schools, currently taught by existing teachers-mostly not appropriately trained, professional development actions fo-cusing on CS scientific principles and methods are therefore a top priority for the effectiveness of CS education in schools.

La Guida Coding e Pensiero Computazionale per le ultime tre classi della Scuola Primaria rappresenta un’assoluta novita nel panorama editoriale italiano poiche integra i percorsi disciplinari curricolari, con le attivita di coding e di sviluppo del pensiero computazionale.Un agile strumento per l’insegnante desideroso di innovare la didattica senza rivoluzionare il proprio modo di essere e di lavorare.

Programmazione, coding, sviluppo del pensiero computazionale, tinkering, making sono termini entrati nel linguaggio comune e che riecheggiano insistentemente nei recenti documenti dedicati alla scuola, sempre più chiamata a far fronte alla complessità e a innovarsi. Questo libro intende offrire una panoramica sul significato di tali concetti e dimostrare come il metodo EAS che di per sé permette di migliorare la didattica di qualsiasi argomento funga da eccellente cornice per le attività didattiche volte allo sviluppo del pensiero computazionale (con il quale ha molti punti di intersezione) e alla risoluzione di problemi (problem solving) nella scuola primaria. Didattica attiva, laboratorio, progettazione, inclusione, competenze, pensare come un informatico, creatività sono alcune delle parole chiave del testo, che restituisce al docente la sua professionalità e la responsabilità di operare scelte didattiche consapevoli, lasciando spazio ai ragazzi per un apprendimento attivo e autentico. Il libro è una riflessione sull'opportunità di sperimentare il metodo EAS e le attività di coding e tinkering; inoltre offre ai docenti una ricca documentazione di EAS e strumenti utili, nella scheda dedicata al testo nel sito www.lascuola.it.

International audience; Many advanced countries are recognizing more and more the importance of teaching computing, in some cases even as early as in primary school. "Computational thinking" is the term often used to denote the conceptual core of computer science or "the way a computer scientist thinks", as Wing put it. Such term - given also the lack of a widely accepted definition - has become a "buzzword" meaning different things to different people. We investigated the Italian primary school teachers' conceptions about computational thinking by analyzing the results of a survey (N=972) conducted in the context of "Programma il Futuro" project. Teachers have been asked to provide a definition of computational thinking and to answer three additional related closed-ended questions. The analysis shows that, while almost half of teachers (43.4%) have included in their definitions some fundamental elements of computational thinking, very few (10.8%) have been able to provide an acceptably complete definition. On a more positive note, the majority is aware that computational thinking is not characterized by coding or by the use of information technology.

International audience; In this paper the first two years of activities of "Programma il Futuro" project are described. Its goal is to disseminate among teachers in Italian primary and secondary schools a better awareness of informatics as the scientific basis of digital technologies. The project has adapted Code.org learning material and has introduced it to Italian schools with the support of a dedicated web site. Response has been enthusiastic in terms of participation: in two years more than one million students have been engaged and have completed a total of 10 million hours of informatics in schools. Almost all students found the material useful and were interested, teachers have reported. They have also declared to have experienced high satisfaction and a low level of difficulty. A detailed analysis of quantitative and qualitative data about the project is presented and areas for improvement are identified. One of the most interesting observations appears to corroborate the hypothesis that an exposure to informatics since the early age is important to attract students independently from their gender.

National audience

National audience; Questo capitolo descrive le esperienze svolte da docenti e ricercatori del Dipartimento di Informatica - Scienza e Ingegneria (DISI) dell’Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna nell’ambito di alcuni progetti di disseminazione dei principi di base dell’Informatica (pensiero computazionale) nelle scuole primarie bolognesi.L’approccio che caratterizza i progetti presentati è l’utilizzo, sequenziale o intervallato, di attività sia “unplugged” sia “plugged”. Le prime - svolte senza l’utilizzo di un calcolatore, ma con materiali e oggetti di uso comune - sono state in parte tratte dal libro CS Unplugged, e in parte ideate dagli autori; le seconde hanno fatto uso del linguaggio visuale a blocchi Scratch.Con riferimento alla Proposta di Indicazioni Nazionali per l’Informatica nella Scuola [CINI17], tali attività hanno coperto soprattutto gli ambiti prettamente informatici di rappresentazione dell’informazione (es. numeri binari), algoritmi (es. massimo) e loro descrizione in uno pseudolinguaggio, programmazione; ma non hanno tralasciato quelli di creatività digitale (realizzare un progetto personale con Scratch) e consapevolezza digitale (es. regole di comportamento sulla community online di Scratch).

International audience; The commentaries provide useful questions and responses that help us understand better how unplugged activities serve as scaffolding to engage students in computer science. They help us to consider how activities relate to computational thinking, particularly by connecting the scaffolding in the activities to the limits of computation. This in turn helps us to navigate the somewhat disputed boundary between activities that clearly use computation as it occurs on physical devices, and metaphors that could potentially be misleading.