Course Content

The Calliope mini is a star-shaped circuit board which offers a low-threshold introduction to programming. Like Kalliope, the name-giving muse of science, philosophy and epic poetry, the Calliope mini is designed to provide inspiration for new ideas to combine software and hardware in a creative way. The Calliope mini joins the ranks of boards that can be used in different school subjects. Besides the BBC micro:bit, Oxo Card, Arduino & Co, the Calliope mini supports physical computing activities with a  focus on problem-solving and computational thinking skills. Computational Thinking is one of a total of eight fields of competence in digital basic education (Digitale Grundbildung), a compulsory exercise introduced in Austria in the school year 2018/19 at secondary level 1. According to the curriculum of this compulsory exercise,  pupils should learn to design algorithms and to use programming languages in a creative way - i.e. to execute and formulate instructions in order to solve certain problems. 

Since many teachers are now instructed to integrate these contents (that are outside of their subject area) into their lessons, we have developed so-called "workshop examples" that can be included in different school subjects. In this MOOC, these workshop examples are presented and discussed. In the course of 7 weeks, the Calliope mini itself and the corresponding development environment are introduced step by step. Many videos in the MOOC are designed for "young learners" and can be used in class directly. 

Course Goals

The course participants are in a position to

• explain the terms programming, programming language, algorithm and development environment.
• write their own programs for the Calliope mini  (or a similiar board) with a block-based programming language.
  
• use the workshop examples in class.
• adapt the workshop examples for their subjects.
• explain and apply basic programming concepts (e.g. conditions, loops, variables).
• develop new ideas for the cross-curricular use of the Calliope mini (or a similar board)
  

Previous Knowledge

Basics of pedagogy and didactics are assumed.

Programming knowledge is not required, as the course introduces this topic.

Course Procedure

Certificate

For actively participating in the course you will receive an automatic confirmation of participation (certificate) which includes your username, the course title, course duration as well as the hours required to complete the course. We want to point out that this certificate merely confirms that the user answered at least 75% of the self-assessment questions correctly.

Licence

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0