INFORMATICS – A CHILD’S PLAY?!

Informatics or computer science contents are often considered as “difficult”, at school as well as in University courses. This may be due to different reasons, e.g. to the topics themselves or to the way of teaching. What can be done in order to make it easier to understand for students of all ages? This paper about an Austrian project for primary and secondary schools – “Informatics – A Child’s Play” – shows one possible way: the use of games, animations and simulations. The project is partly based on successful projects like “Computer Science Unplugged” or “Informatik erLeben (Experiencing Informatics)”. Like these initiatives, it teaches computer science topics in a playful way, where children slip into the role of hardware components, parts of programs or data. But, the new project “Informatics – A Child’s Play” goes further: New teaching units and material are developed and, this is the essential novelty, the children themselves design and test games, quizzes, puzzles and riddles. Furthermore, they act as peer tutors or peer teachers and explain different topics to their classmates, to younger children as well as to elderly people. This paper describes the project, which is still in the pilot phase, as well as some experiences and results gained up to now.