In the field of education, there has been recent attention and call for transdisciplinary approaches related to learning mathematics and programming in schools. Despite the advent of theory and tools for such an approach, there is still a lack of a common ground and implicitness in the understanding of what exactly this would entail amongst teachers and curriculum designers. In this paper, we present a theoretical discussion in the light of our ongoing efforts to develop a more elaborated and precise language representing educational and epistemological values for integrating mathematics and programming. Accordingly, we provide an overview of our previous research efforts in this field followed by an elaborated example describing our approach. We conclude with a discussion addressing the pedagogical potential of our proposed ideas compared to the previous ones. © 2020, The Education University of Hong Kong. All rights reserved.

Many countries and governments have laid down a national strategy for digitalization in schools with the intent to strengthen both pupils' and teachers’ digital competences. Computational Thinking (CT) can be regarded as a central ingredient of teaching and learning in the XXI century and should be part of these competences. The Swedish government has recently launched a national strategy for digitalization in schools stating that CT and programming should be integrated in many school subjects. Thus, one particular challenge that needs to be addressed is the one related to teachers' competencies and skills related to programming. Since 2016, The National Agency of Education has been working together with several Swedish universities on developing academic courses in the field of CT and programming for in-service teachers. One challenge we are exploring in this paper is the one related to teachers' perceptions and competencies related to programming. As part of our on-going efforts in the course “Introduction to Programming for Elementary Teachers” offered to in-service teachers we have analyzed data we collected representing teachers´ perceptions on CT and programming before the start of the course. We applied sentiment mining and word counting on 127 texts generated by the teachers. We examine their perceptions and cluster them accordingly in order to understand how teachers perceived different aspects related to CT education. By doing so, we lay down the foundations on how to tailor competence development efforts in this field so that they fit teachers´ need. We expect these efforts will lead to the development of a model enabling to identify teachers´ current perceptions in order to plan future actions that can increase their Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

In recent years, educational practitioners and learning technologists have been designing, developing and deploying a wide range of innovative environments to enhance meaningful, seamless and exciting learning experiences. In these learning environments, students may interact as individuals or in groups across several learning spaces, while utilizing various technologies that support different contexts of use. However, despite these efforts and progress in this field, there are still a number of technical challenges associated with software architecture issues related to how to implement tools that support seamless learning. In this chapter, we describe our ongoing research related to the design, development and deployment of different software solutions to support seamless learning activities across a variety of settings. Here, we examine and propose a candidate software architecture that is inspired by our implementation of seamless learning activities. In particular, we direct our efforts towards enhancing and facilitating these activities by supporting the reuse and remixing of digital content generated by learners and teachers. The features of the proposed architecture also support the reusability and interoperability of software components and micro-services for different interactions. We address architectural challenges identified in activities we have carried out during the last five years. Three different use cases of seamless learning activities in different subject areas are analysed and the supporting technical and software solutions examined, in order to identify and extract the salient features and functional requirements of the proposed architecture. In addition, we use these cases to examine, analyse and propose new and refined ways to cope with challenges related to the activities that need to be implemented for seamless learning flow. We present and discuss our results describing an architecture capable of supporting meaningful, appealing and seamless learning experiences that are independent of subject matter, context of use and supporting technological solutions. © 2019, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The term Computational Thinking is closely related to efforts connected to teach a systematic and well-structured way of problem solving that includes a set of tools and techniques used in Computer Science. While substantial research in this field has shown promising outcomes concerning distinct intervention programs and teaching initiatives, the term Computational Thinking itself requires to be revised in order to get a wider consensus about its meaning and purpose. This paper contributes to the ongoing quest concerning the definition of the term by starting with a fundamental perspective on computational theory and corresponding concepts in order to describe the theoretical building blocks of a systematic view to further elaborate on an approach for teaching and learning about Computational Thinking. Additionally, based on this foundational effort, more advanced concepts are presented and discussed in order to better understand this domain. Finally, the paper identifies and discusses a set of relevant challenges taking a cognitive psychology perspective on Computational Thinking.

In this paper, we describe our ongoing research focused on identifying requirements for designing, developing and deploying an environment capable to enhance educational activities relying on videos contributed by students. We present a joint effort conducted by researchers from three countries bringing their results from previous efforts focused on the interplay between learning and technology for optimizing the pedagogical exploitation of online videos. In order to reach these goals, we use data collected from 204 students where they shared their experiences and insights based on their experiences while using videos for their own learning. The presented research illustrates the transformation of these students' insights into actual system requirements. These requirements are collected and examined in order to be used for the design, development, evaluation and refinement of an existing system while aiming to deploy a mature environment enabling an optimized experience of on-line videos in. educational settings. Last but not least, we discuss the benefits of our approach in the light of benefits and future challenges to incorporate videos in educational activities supported by a software architecture that relies on web technologies. Finally, we summarize and discuss our efforts in the light of future research while aiming to practice future deployment of such architecture. In these future iterations, we discuss new stakeholders possibly assisting in identifying new requirements and contributing with innovative ideas for best optimization of videos supported by TEL environments offering meaningful and appealing learning.

In this thesis I address challenges related to the design, development anddeployment of web and mobile technologies used to support CollaborativeSeamless Learning (CSL) activities practiced across a variety of learningcontexts. The scientific publications at the core of this thesis offer adescription of the research I have performed over the last five years, andcomprise studies involving several hundred users.My research efforts included the elicitations of the requirements for and thedesign of a number of web and mobile tools to support collaborative seamlesslearning activities. A web-based environment called CeLS was developed tosupport the orchestration of CSL activities. It was then expanded to integratemobile solutions, aimed to extend the ability of CeLS to support educationalinteractions performed inside as well as outside physical classroom. Thesemobile solutions were designed to implement learning activities that supportdata collection, personal response systems and interaction with mobile videos.The main aim of the research was to investigate how best to design tools andsystems to support students during the enactment of collaborative seamlesslearning activities, and to provide teachers with artifacts to design and assessthose. Special emphasis has been given to the exploration of approaches thatenhance the flow, reusability and sharing of learner-generated content acrossdifferent learning activities. Several studies were conducted in order to validateand assess these ideas and concepts. Various data collection methods wereused to gather data from different stakeholders during the deployment of thedifferent CSL activities. The outcomes were processed and analyzed resultingin a set of recommendations concerning the design, development anddeployment of web and mobile applications to support collaborative seamlesslearning. A software architecture including various web and mobile integratedcomponents used to support innovative CSL activities is also proposed.

Nowadays, teachers and students utilize different ICT devices for conducting innovative and educational activities from anywhere at any time. The enactment of these activities relies on robust communication and computational infrastructures used for supporting technological devices enabling better accessibility to educational resources and pedagogical scaffolds, wherever and whenever necessary. In this paper, we present EDU.Tube: an interactive environment that relies on web and mobile solutions offered to teachers and students for authoring and incorporating educational interactions at specific moments along the time line of occasional YouTube video-clips. The teachers and students could later experience these authored artefacts while interacting from their stationary or mobile devices. We describe our efforts related to the design, deployment and evaluation of an educational activity supported by the EDU.Tube environment. Furthermore, we illustrate the specific teachers’ and students’ efforts practiced along the different phases of this educational activity. The evaluation of this activity and results are presented, followed by a discussion of these findings, as well as some recommendations for future research efforts further elaborating on EDU.Tube’s aspects in relation to learning analytics.

In recent years, hardware for the production and consumption of virtual reality content has reached level of prices that make it affordable to everyone. Accordingly, schools and universities are showing increased interest in implementations of virtual reality technologies for supporting their innovative educational activities. Hence, this paper presents a flexible architecture for supporting the development of virtual reality learning scenarios conveniently deployed for educational purposes. We also suggest an example of such educational scenario for medical purposes deployable with the suggested architecture. In addition, we developed and used a questionnaire answered by 17 medical students in order to derive additional requirements for refining such scenarios. Then, we present these efforts while aiming at deployments usable also for additional domains. Finally, we summarize and mention aspects we will address in our coming efforts while deploying such activities.

Complex multi-stage pedagogical activities may address different planes (temporal, social, physical) by different pedagogical strategies. Since there is no comprehensive technological support for all possible pedagogical practices, activity phases may be supported by different technologies, adapted to the specific needs of the stage. As a result, the implementation of such activities would be technologically “fragmented” since data collected with one system will not be available for immediate use in another environment.  The technological fragmentation may not only obstruct the enactment of such activities, but even discourage teachers and prevent them from designing rich pedagogical experiences supported by different technologies.  Therefore, in order to provide a seamless learning experience, there is a need to ensure continuous data flow between the activity phases enacted with different technologies.  This chapter presents our ongoing efforts to cope with the challenge of integrating various TEL environments in order to support the design and implementation of cross context, multi-stage collaborative activities.

In recent years, teachers have increasingly started to conduct pedagogical activitiesto promote different kinds of learning interactions supported by rich media. The deployment ofsuch activities is becoming common practice as teachers and students own technological meanssupporting them along such educational interactions. Such activities could be carried out inindoor settings while using regular computers. In addition, these activities could be alsoconducted from anywhere at any time while using smartphones and tablets. In this paper, wedescribe a multiphase pedagogical activity requiring students to author and later peer- assesseducational interactions incorporated to videos in YouTube. We describe the EDU.Tubeenvironment enabling them to create, share and consume such educational and rich mediaactivities across technological environments. We then detail a plan for the implementation of aneducational strategy taking place in 3 different classes dealing with diverse materials addressingcomputer science related topics. We also provide an evaluation presenting students' insights andfeedbacks resulting from the experienced activity. We discuss and elaborate on these outcomesin order to analyze them as concerns that could be applied to a further deployment of theEDU.Tube environment. Finally, we suggest that these set of concerns could be useful alsowhile designing and developing other technological environments offered for authoringeducational interactions supported by rich media aimed to empower teachers' pedagogicalpractice.