Programação Tangível no Mundo Físico: TaPrEC + Sphero.

Despite being familiar with consuming digital media and interacting with new technology, only a minority of students are challenged to create their own technological projects. Computational Thinking is a concept and tool that can help the students to learn some important strategies regarding planning and problem-solving, including technological solutions. One way to introduce young children to the Computational Thinking is through tangible programming environments. Usually, these environments exploit the tangibility at the entrance, i.e., in the construction phase of the program, through Tangible Interfaces. In this paper, we seek to explore the tangibility of the TaPrEC, a tangible programming environment, by extending it to the execution phase, providing feedback in the physical world. We present the integration of TaPrEC with Sphero, a robotic ball that connects to other devices. To evaluate this new system, we conducted 6 workshops with teachers and children in a learning space. The workshops results are encouraging and suggest new possibilities for tangible environments that expand computational thinking skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]