Hardly any child today grows up without mobile devices. However, some teachers only have a rudimentary understanding of how computers and the internet work. IT didactics expert Ira Diethelm and her team want to change this and are developing freely available teaching materials.
Whether at school, doing homework, chatting with friends or playing games: Digital media are part of everyday life for most children and young people. However, they often know very little about how smartphones and tablets work or how the internet is organised. This could change with more IT lessons in schools. Computing Science has long been in the shadows, but more and more Federal States are now introducing it as a compulsory subject.
Prof Dr Ira Diethelm welcomes this development. However, she also points out that only a few universities offer a teacher training programme in Computing Science. As a result, many teachers are not teaching the subject and have to learn teaching content and methods on their own.
Teaching aids for free download
Diethelm had these non-specialist teachers in particular in mind when she started the project "IT2School - Discovering IT together" in 2014. The project was funded and initiated by Wissensfabrik - Unternehmen für Deutschland e.V., an association of around 130 companies that are committed to more comprehensive teaching in the STEM subjects - mathematics, computing science, natural sciences and technology. The Wissensfabrik had already launched other teaching materials with the aim of making these lessons more vivid and practical.
IT2School was not only the Wissensfabrik's first project on teaching computer science, but also the first to make its results freely available online as Open Educational Resources (OER). Teachers can download them as Word or PDF documents and adapt and distribute them themselves as required. "We want to reach as many teachers as possible and make it easy for them to work with the materials," explains Diethelm.
From internet models to artificial intelligence
24 teaching modules have been created so far and new ones are being added all the time. They cover topics as diverse as programming, 3D printing, robotics and, most recently, artificial intelligence. Each module contains materials for several lessons: didactic concepts and suggestions for lesson planning for teachers, worksheets for pupils.
For some modules, school classes need additional materials, such as the "Calliope" minicomputer, which makes it easy to learn programming. However, Diethelm also took care to make it as easy as possible to get started by keeping the cost of the materials low. Among other things, the project includes a cardboard game about how the internet works and a teaching module in which the children and young people communicate with each other by blinking or moving their arms. "Secret languages can be a good starting point for pupils to understand how encryption works in Computing Science," says Diethelm. "In addition, the teaching units can be prepared for the teachers without much effort."
To develop the modules, Diethelm and her team drew on findings from teaching-learning research and their own research results: for example, they analysed how computer science teachers plan their lessons and what ideas students have about the Internet.
The materials are currently being used at more than 500 schools across Germany. Whether Computing Science is a compulsory subject or not and what content is included in the curriculum varies from Federal State to Federal State - Lower Saxony, for example, has just introduced Computing Science as a compulsory subject for the tenth year throughout the state in the current school year. This is why Diethelm and her team did not orientate themselves on a specific curriculum. Instead, they focussed on three basic principles of Computing Science that appear in most curricula: Digitalisation, automation and networking. These are the methods used to display, store, process and transport information in different systems.
Lessons for the dinner table
Diethelm discussed the attractiveness and dissemination of the materials in depth with teachers and the Knowledge Factory team. "We asked ourselves: What could inspire the pupils so much that they would talk about it with their families in the evening?" says Diethelm. IT2School focuses on tangible results that the children and young people can present to others, for example at the school festival. For example, the project team designed a learning unit in which pupils use a 3D printer to make flowers or pencil holders or play the piano on fruit. "Our aim is for the young people to creatively co-design IT systems themselves and produce something they are proud of," explains Diethelm.
She describes the fact that pupils understand how computers and the internet work and learn basic programming skills as a cultural technique, comparable to reading, writing or arithmetic. And just as German lessons do not end with learning to read, she believes that computer science lessons must be about more than just using computer programs or rules of behaviour on the Internet.
Basic knowledge of Computing Science is not only needed to understand how search engines work or data protection notices, but also to get an idea of political issues such as the introduction of upload filters, restrictions on net neutrality or data retention or the influence of AI systems, for example in automatic grading. Diethelm is convinced that you can only judge what you understand. This is why computer science lessons are so important in light of current challenges. "Imagine if we had to hold the climate debate without people having geography or chemistry lessons at school."
Diethelm observes that coronavirus has led to a rethink - not only in terms of the technical equipment in schools, but also with regard to the importance of computer science lessons. She remembers a training course for teachers that she gave at the beginning of the pandemic. The timing - Maundy Thursday at 7 pm - was anything but ideal. Nevertheless, more than a thousand people took part in the online event. "Digitalisation and Computing Science as a subject were important topics even before the pandemic. But the fact that everyone had to deal with them intensively at the same time gave a huge boost to development," she summarises.
This article was first published in 2022 in the "Research notes" blog of the transfer project "Innovative University Jade-Oldenburg! (IHJO)". This is an updated version.
