Resurgence of Informatics Education in Schools

Abstract

Five decades ago, computing at several high schools was consistent with the academic and professional world. Nowadays, many countries have started to think about how to establish or re-establish informatics education in schools and how to attract children to learn informatics. Although informatics is not taught as a discipline in many countries, children are invited to participate in different contests and competitions in informatics, programming, or robotics organized all over the world. Educators are interested in motivating students to learn more about informatics, to understand informatics concepts, and to develop computational thinking. This paper discusses informatics education through the recent decades with its main focus on Logo activities and other strategies which support deeper understanding and promote attractive approaches of learning informatics in school. The worldwide Bebras informatics challenge is presented and discussed as an example of connecting formal and non-formal informatics education by using thousands of tasks based on informatics concepts and applying problem-solving strategies. As a case study, the statistical data from the 2017 Lithuanian Bebras challenge is presented and discussed.