Computational thinking (CT) development has been receiving considerable attention in academic discussions. In this work, we propose a methodology for conducting computational thinking activities. The results from a case study involving educators and children from 8 to 11 years old shows that they were pleased when engaging in the development of activities following a methodology that encourages the reflection about what they should do and about what results they are achieving. Some challenges were identified, as well as the need of addressing them to reach acceptance of this kind of methodology by both children and educators. Our next step will concern the evaluation of the use of this methodology, together with educators, in the planning of CT-related activities.

O artigo aborda a aproximação entre a academia e a rede municipal de ensino, através de uma pesquisa de doutorado do Instituto de Computação da Universidade Estadual de Campinas junto às coordenadoras dos Centros de Educação Infantil que atuam na Rede Municipal de Vinhedo-SP. Através desta parceria, foi proposta uma formação aos educadores da rede municipal, fundamentada em um framework que tem como base os conceitos da Aprendizagem Criativa, promovendo um conjunto de reflexões, debates e experiências a respeito de conceitos preexistentes na Educação Infantil que puderam ser alinhados com aqueles que apresentaram-se como novidade, entre eles, o ciclo de Aprendizagem Criativa, o pensamento computacional e as atividades envolvendo tecnologia. A formação continuada dos educadores da Educação Infantil proporcionou o design de 3 atividades seguindo os princípios da Aprendizagem Criativa, as quais foram aplicadas com 54 crianças (5 e 6 anos de idade) que participam da educação infantil de uma das escolas da rede municipal.

The adoption of Hands-On/Heads-In activities associated with computational thinking (CT) development has received considerable attention in academic discussions. While the subject of CT is not new, the proposal of environments to support educators in the design and conduction of activities in educational contexts are hardly discussed in the mainstream literature. Hands-on/Heads-In activities are an essential aspect of Constructionism, proposed by Seymour Papert in the 80's and still worked on by his colleagues and followers in different types of practices. In this work, we contribute with the proposal of a framework to support the design of educational practices based on the principles of Constructionism and Creative Learning, in which Hands-On/Heads-In activities underlie the use of technology.

Portable devices have been experimented for data acquisition in different domains, e.g., logistics and census data acquisition. Nevertheless, their large-scale adoption depends on the development of effective applications with a careful interaction design. In this work, we revisit existing strategies for mobile application design and evaluation and use the Semiotic Ladder from Organizational Semiotics as an artifact to organize a set of guidelines. We propose a set of semiotic-informed guidelines with questions for evaluation of mobile application interfaces. We also propose a methodology for the evaluation of mobile application interfaces based on the proposed guidelines set. We demonstrate the use of the proposed methodology in the evaluation of four mobile application interfaces designed for phenological data acquisition in the field.

Portable devices have been experimented for data acquisition in different domains, e.g., logistics and census data acquisition. Nevertheless, their large-scale adoption depends on the development of effective applications with a careful interaction design. In this paper, we revisit existing interface design strategies and propose a guideline composed of semiotic-informed rules and questions for mobile user interface design. We demonstrate the use of the guideline in the evaluation of mobile application interfaces proposed for phenological data acquisition in the field.