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The future of teaching programming is on mobile devices

Published: 03 July 2012 Publication History

Abstract

From paper to computers, the way that we have been writing down thoughts and performing symbolic computations has been constantly evolving. Teaching methods closely follow this trend, leveraging existing technology to make teaching more effective and preparing students for their later careers with the available technology. Right now, in 2012, we are in the middle of another technology shift: instead of using PCs and laptops, mobile devices are becoming more prevalent for most everyday computing tasks. In fact, never before in human history were incredibly powerful and versatile computing devices such as smartphones available and adopted so broadly. We propose that computer programming, and thus the teaching of programming, can and should be done directly on the mobile devices themselves, without the need for a separate PC or laptop to write code. Programming on smartphones that we carry around with us at all times means instant gratification for students, as they can show their games and applications to their friends, and it means that students can do their homework or additional practicing at all times. We describe TouchDevelop, a novel mobile programming environment, and call out challenges that need to be overcome and opportunities that it creates.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '12: Proceedings of the 17th ACM annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
July 2012
424 pages
ISBN:9781450312462
DOI:10.1145/2325296
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 03 July 2012

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Author Tags

  1. cloud
  2. evolution
  3. mobile devices
  4. touchscreen
  5. type inference

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Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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  • (2024)Impact of Mobile Coding Apps on Student Autonomous Learning in Tertiary Education: A Case Study2024 6th International Conference on Computer Science and Technologies in Education (CSTE)10.1109/CSTE62025.2024.00009(11-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2024
  • (2023)Analysis of Syntactic Errors of Novice Python Programmers in a Nigeria UniversityIntelligent Computing10.1007/978-3-031-37963-5_20(285-295)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2023
  • (2022)Self Regulated Learning: Integrasi Pembelajaran Kelas Awal melalui Aplikasi Mobile Seamless LearningJurnal Obsesi : Jurnal Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini10.31004/obsesi.v6i5.26436:5(4773-4782)Online publication date: 28-Jun-2022
  • (2020)Learning Diaries—A Valuable Companion of Mobile Learning for Higher Education in Software EngineeringInternet of Things, Infrastructures and Mobile Applications10.1007/978-3-030-49932-7_86(930-937)Online publication date: 10-Sep-2020
  • (2019)Keep Calm and Code on Your PhoneProceedings of the 8th Computer Science Education Research Conference10.1145/3375258.3375260(9-14)Online publication date: 18-Nov-2019
  • (2019)Mobile Devices in Programming ContextsProceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3322276.3322323(1109-1122)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2019
  • (2019)Smart Tuition Finder: An Educational App and SDGs2019 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Education (TALE)10.1109/TALE48000.2019.9225881(1-6)Online publication date: Dec-2019
  • (2019)A Semantic Platform for Developing Data-Intensive Mobile Apps2019 IEEE 13th International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC)10.1109/ICOSC.2019.8665641(71-78)Online publication date: Jan-2019
  • (2019)Can Fragmentation Learning Promote Students’ Deep Learning in C Programming?Foundations and Trends in Smart Learning10.1007/978-981-13-6908-7_7(51-60)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2019
  • (2019)Smart Mobile Learning Environment for Programming Education in Nigeria: Adaptivity and Context-Aware FeaturesIntelligent Computing10.1007/978-3-030-22868-2_71(1061-1077)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2019
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