Computer Animation as a Vehicle for Teaching Computational Thinking
Several platforms and programming languages exist nowadays designed and built to help educators introduce kids and youngsters into computational thinking. Some of them employ visual elements as the primary output of code in order to provide an immediate a
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Universidad Francisco Marroquín, 6ta Calle Final Zona 10, Guatemala 01010, Guatemala [email protected] 2 Universidad de Colima, Km. 9 Carretera Colima – Coquimatlán, 28300 Colima, Mexico
Abstract. Several platforms and programming languages exist nowadays designed and built to help educators introduce kids and youngsters into compu‐ tational thinking. Some of them employ visual elements as the primary output of code in order to provide an immediate and engaging feedback for students. Computer animations, digital drawings and videogames are common products in these environments. With the rising popularity of animated films, children and teenagers may find more attractive to enroll in computer animation courses than in computer programming ones. Based in our own experience conducting computer animation workshops, we believe that this interest can be combined with the aforementioned introductory programming environments to introduce students to both computational thinking and computer animation as complemen‐ tary subjects. In this paper we will present a general strategy to accomplish this based on what we call animation patterns. Keywords: Computational thinking · Computer animation · Programming languages · Animation patterns
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Introduction
Introductory programming languages often categorized as first programming environ‐ ments, like Scratch [11], Alice [3] and others, can be used to produce moving images and animated stories that range in quality from the rudimentary to highly complex and elaborated. In fact, children, teenagers and adults enrolled in courses that use these environments end up creating animations even if the purpose of the course was to merely teach them how to program. Producing digital animated films is a task that requires, among others, skills in graphic design and computer programming among others [15, 16]. Several concepts and techniques applied in computer animation are employed by users of first programming environments without realizing that fact. Duration of movements, coordination of several acting agents, change of scenes, interactions between characters, appearance modification, simultaneity, parallel programming, camera movements and several others appear naturally without fancy names in environments like Scratch, Alice, Kodu Game Lab [14], Stencyl [18], and Snap [20]. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016 Published by Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. All Rights Reserved F.J. Mata and A. Pont (Eds.): WITFOR 2016, IFIP AICT 481, pp. 53–59, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-44447-5_6
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L. Morales Díaz and L.S. Gaytán-Lugo
If attendants to computer programming courses that use those environments knew in advance that they would be creating animations and that the skills they learn would actually be of use in a prospective career in computer animation they would feel more motivated to enroll. Knowing only the information the course name provides it is difficult for them to infer that. The importance and effects of choosing a meaningful and attractive
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