Estimulando o pensamento computacional com jogos digitais: uma abordagem utilizando Scratch

Abstract

Digital games are representations of more abstract games through computational resources. Applying digital games as a methodological resource in the teaching and learning processes is a way for making classroom more attractive, fun, effective, and less tiring for students. This is why games favor the development of social skills and are motivational tools by offering challenging and engaging situations for students. This work proposes to do experiments with simplified digital games developed in the Scratch tool in order to develop computational thinking in the Elementary School children. Such games were developed with code loopholes to simulate bugs, requiring children a debugging task to understand the existing problem and to program a solution to make the games work as expected. These experiments were carried out with children from the 4th and 5th grades of the Núcleo de Educação da Infância (NEI) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, obtaining very promising results.