What is it about?

Did you ever wonder why it is that trying to solve a programming problem with one tool can be simple and elegant but with some other tool essentially impossible? We have explored the notion of affordance in the context of programming with 54 preservice elementary school teachers trying to solve the Hourglass Challenge described in this paper.

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Why is it important?

Using the so-called hourglass challenge to create a very simple simulation shows that some visual programming tools used in schools are not suitable for solving certain problems. Trying to solve the same problem may be simple and elegant with one tool, but complex and frustrating with another tool. Understanding this alignment of problems and tools is key to computational thinking. The hourglass challenge can make this alignment visible.

Perspectives

Working on this paper with my co-author was great fun because it made us also produce this somewhat unusual (cold opening) SIGCSE video: https://youtu.be/MDXtM8qer4I The notion of affordance is somewhat difficult to understand but we both believe the video may help.

Alexander Repenning
School of Education, PH FHNW, Switzerland

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Smacking Screws with Hammers: Experiencing Affordances of Block-based Programming through the Hourglass Challenge, March 2021, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3408877.3432444.
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