The Appropriateness of Scratch and App Inventor as Educational Environments for Teaching Introductory Programming in Primary and Secondary Education

Stamatios Papadakis, Michail Kalogiannakis, Vasileios Orfanakis and Nicholas Zaranis
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Stamatios Papadakis: Secondary Education Teacher, Crete, Greece
Michail Kalogiannakis: Department of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, University of Crete, Crete, Greece
Vasileios Orfanakis: Secondary Education Teacher, Crete, Greece
Nicholas Zaranis: Department of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, University of Crete, Crete, Greece

International Journal of Web-Based Learning and Teaching Technologies (IJWLTT), 2017, vol. 12, issue 4, 58-77

Abstract: Teaching programming is a complex task. The task is even more challenging for introductory modules. There is an ongoing debate in the teaching community over the best approach to teaching introductory programming. Visual block-based programming environments allow school students to create their own programs in ways that are more accessible than in textual programming environments. These environments designed for education allow students to program without the obstacle of syntax errors (errors in typing commands) found in traditional text-based languages. In this paper, the authors focus on the use of App Inventor and Scratch as blocks-based programming environments designed explicitly with novices in mind. In the authors' analysis, both Novice Programming Environments (NPEs) seemed to be attractive platforms for introducing fundamental concepts in computer programming and both look appealing for both majors and non-majors.

Date: 2017
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