Este trabalho apresenta contribuições na interseção entre Ciência da Computação, Educação e Visualização de Dados, propondo: (1) um framework para o design de ferramentas educacionais, (2) um ambiente de programação em blocos para construção de visualizações (PlayData), e (3) um método automatizado para caracterização de trajetórias de aprendizagem usando técnicas de aprendizado de máquina e Epistemic Network Analysis.

Block-based programming has revolutionized programming for kids, and more recently it has also been employed by scientific modeling platforms such as StarLogo and NetTango. Domain-specific block-based modeling is an even newer development that has made computational modeling more accessible to novice learners. However, these environments may also constrain how students express and revise ideas because of the limited set of blocks that are made available. This paper addresses this design trade-off by examining unpacking as a mid-level design strategy for addressing this tension. We designed a modeling environment in which unpackable blocks are domain-specific blocks that can be expanded into an editable internal definition while remaining in block-based form. Drawing on four classroom implementations of a high school biology unit on eutrophication, we analyze how students modified the unpackable blocks while constructing agent-based models of eutrophication. Our analysis focuses on 59 modification episodes based on screen recordings, student artifacts, and artifact-based interviews. Findings show that modifications were organized around two recurring orientations: (1) performance-oriented changes aimed at making models behave as intended, and (2) phenomenon-oriented changes aimed at representing ecological relationships or biological processes more coherently. These orientations were patterned but not deterministic: parameter changes could support phenomenon-oriented reasoning, while code-structure changes could support performance-oriented goals. We argue that as a mid-level design strategy, unpacking could address the tension between accessibility and expressiveness since it turns domain-specific primitives into revisable procedural resources, supporting plural forms of engagement with computational modeling while preserving accessibility.

Este trabalho apresenta contribuições na intersecção entre Ciência da Computação, Educação e Visualização de Dados, com foco no letramento em visualização de dados de estudantes da Educação Básica. São apresentados: (1) um framework para análise e design de ferramentas educacionais de visualização de dados, inspirado em taxonomias da Visualização da Informação; (2) o PlayData, ambiente de programação em blocos open-source para construção de visualizações; (3) método automatizado baseado em aprendizado de máquina para descrição de trajetórias de programação via dados de log coletados no ambiente PlayData; e (4) análise das principais ações (DVP moves) realizadas por aprendizes ao interagir com a ferramenta, com padrões obtidos via Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA).

O PlayData é um ambiente de programação baseado em blocos (PBB) que busca apoiar estudantes do Ensino Fundamental II e Médio na criação de visualizações de dado. Fundamentado na teoria construcionista, o PlayData conecta a liberdade expressiva oferecida por ambientes de programação às abstrações necessárias para facilitar o trabalho com dados em ambientes de PBB. Desenvolvido como uma extensão do Scratch 3.0, a ferramenta introduz blocos específicos que permitem aos usuários importar, manipular e visualizar conjuntos de dados com alta transparência e baixas barreiras de entrada. Este artigo apresenta as motivações teóricas, os princípios de design e as características técnicas do PlayData, bem como exemplos que ilustram como a ferramenta facilita a criação de visualizações não canônicas para refletir interesses e objetivos pessoais dos estudantes. Concluímos com reflexões sobre as limitações da ferramenta e direções para o seu desenvolvimento futuro.

Developing innovative solutions relies heavily on technical skills, creativity, and the collaboration of diverse teams within supportive environments. While these themes are frequently explored in higher education, they are less prevalent in public high schools. This article examines the implementation and management of Maker Environments in public schools in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, highlighting their role in fostering technical and social skills among high school students. Despite global initiatives introducing makerspaces in schools to encourage practical learning and critical skill development, challenges such as inequitable access to technology and the need for continuous teacher training persist. This study describes a program executed in two phases: the first in 2020 with five schools in São Paulo, and the second in 2022, expanding to eleven additional schools in other state regions. The program aimed to create low-cost School Maker Environments using Project- and Problem-Based Learning (PPBL) to promote a hands-on culture and empower youth. The methodology involved selecting schools through a public call, providing initial in-person training, transitioning to virtual meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and offering continuous support through mentoring. Results indicate that the School Maker Environments significantly improved student motivation and engagement, enhancing critical thinking, creativity, autonomy, and collaboration skills. Highlighted projects include technological solutions and social interventions that addressed local community needs, demonstrating the program's impact on practical skill application and community engagement.

This post-doctoral report excerpt provides a reflection and analysis of teaching report, examining the procedural historical timeline of the Continuing Training Program for basic education teachers. This program, which emphasizes Undergraduate Research and Technological Initiation through problem-based and project-based learning, took place in a rural region of São Paulo, Brazil, from 2014 to 2024. The training described, built cooperatively among trainers, tutors, and teachers, provided tools—both technological and non-technological—for communication, interaction, repository, and guidance support. These tools aided teachers in their roles as project advisors, helping students solve real-life problems. The aim is to reflect on the impact of this action on the change in teacher praxis, influenced by the consistent contribution of the University to public schools. By examining documentary data in materials and recordings, listening to and reading teachers’ experiences, and managing selected data, the use of technological resources in the Program was investigated. Positive results were observed among teachers, managers, and students, who were committed to facing the challenge until the end, as the Program touches all sectors of the school community. Some possible variables contributing to the difficulties faced include coping with the necessary rigor, the interdisciplinary perspective, the overall disposition of students, challenges integrating with required curricula, the time needed for guidance, lack of school management support, and other reasons that can be discussed regarding the hardships within a public school.

Introduction: e-Seating is a mobile application developed to assist rehabilitation professionals in decision-making during the prescription of wheelchairs and postural support devices (WPSD). The app provides a structured assessment protocol, aligns with the stages of the prescription process, integrates relevant information, and generates technical reports. Objective: To describe the development and evaluation process of the e-Seating application. Method: This qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study was conducted in three phases, involving 91 participants, including occupational therapists, physical therapists, physiatrists, technicians, wheelchair users, and technology specialists. In phase 1, challenges related to WPSD assessment and prescription were identified, informing the development of the initial prototype. In phase 2, the app was tested and refined based on feedback collected through four iterative versions. In phase 3, technology experts assessed the app's usability. Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and heuristic evaluations. Data analysis followed a qualitative approach. Results: Phase 1 revealed a lack of systematization in WPSD assessment and prescription, communication gaps between professionals and technicians, and limited user participation. In phase 2, feedback from rehabilitation professionals contributed to improvements in each app version. In phase 3, usability testing informed refinements to the app's technical and functional features. Conclusion: The study led to the development of a structured framework for WPSD assessment and prescription, offering comprehensive support throughout the prescription process.

Interest in data science education is growing as data becomes more prevalent in our daily lives and plays a central role in making informed decisions and understanding the world. Due to the interdisciplinary nature and broad scope of the field, further research is essential to unravel how K-12 students can effectively interact with data through productive learning experiences. This is particularly true in data visualization activities, in which students must employ a variety of skills to effectively extract and communicate data insights. In this study, we describe key actions involved in creating data visualizations using a block-based programming environment (PlayData). Based on qualitative video analysis, we identified six core data visualization programming moves: program creation, selection of parameters, output inspection, data inspection, program rearrangement, and visual design. Then, using learning analytics techniques and Epistemic Network Analysis, we developed a method for automatically categorizing and characterizing those moves based on fine-grained log data collected from the environment, which allowed the identification of patterns in students' trajectories. We found that students' work is distributed across several micro-tasks, each involving distinct types of interaction with the environment and holding a unique value in the process of engaging in programming, data analysis, and visual design. As students progress, there is a transition among these moves, suggesting the need for activities that ensure comprehensive exposure to all of them. Our study presents two main contributions: a novel approach to automatically categorize and describe learning trajectories in open-ended programming tasks and insights into how K-12 students engage with those tasks in a data-related context, laying a foundation for better supporting learning and research in this emergent area.

Science and Engineering Fairs (SEFs) play a pivotal role in K-12 education, enabling students to engage in science and engineering practices. Particularly, they allow students to experience authentic and open inquiry processes, by defining which themes, questions and approaches will guide their efforts. This study analyses over 5,000 projects presented at FEBRACE, a national science fair in Brazil, over a span of 20 years, employing topic modelling to identify and examine the predominant themes guiding students' investigations and designs. The findings indicate a diverse range of topics that vary significantly across time, region, and educational settings. We argue these findings illustrate the authentic and open aspects of students' inquiries, highlighting SEFs as spaces for culturally responsive science learning. Furthermore, the methodology employed in this study can serve as a valuable tool for similar analyses in other educational contexts, encouraging further exploration of theme selection and project design in SEFs. Finally, we emphasise the importance of equipping both students and teachers with resources to engage a more diverse range of participants and support the varied interests that students bring to their scientific and engineering endeavours, both within and beyond the context of SEFs.

AbstractAlthough technologies are increasingly present in people’s pockets through powerful smartphones, the development of solutions centered on the user does not always follow this movement, creating a gap, mainly in hardware solutions. At the same time, the role of the modern engineer is rethought as the demands of the industry and the way the population consumes technology are also changing. Furthermore, Future Skills, such as Design Thinking, Real-World Problems Solving, User-Centered Design, and Digital Literacy, are increasingly necessary to connect higher education students with complex social problems and their contexts. This paper analyses and compiles the results of an engineering program to operationalize real-world problem solutions in higher education by a User-Centered Design that aims to approach Future Skills in a Computer Engineering Course. It promotes discussion on a case study with 49 students from a Microcontroller and Internet of Things class, from a Brazilian university, in the year 2020 and during the pandemic period. It was possible to conclude that the program stimulates the development of modern skills and encourages students to design solutions based on people’s real needs. The results also indicate the enhancement of competencies such as Design Thinking, developing in teams, Digital Literacy, design with and for the user, solving complex problems by interacting with real-world issues, and communication skills.

Studies on maker practices as new learning strategies in basic education increased significantly in the last decade, indicating the need for a state-of-the-art survey. This systematic literature review analyzes implementing makerspaces in basic education schools. A search was carried out in databases on the literature referring to the theme between 2014 and 2023. A formal research protocol collected 602 articles. After using exclusions criteria, 123 proceeded to a detailed analysis. This investigation allowed answering the following research questions: How are makerspaces implemented and used in schools? Under what pedagogical aspects are maker practices justified and developed in Basic Education? Results indicate that most mapped works address issues related to maker practices at school and active learning methodologies. Current studies show proposals or exemplify actions with students, broadening the debate on the effectiveness and limitations of maker activities in the school environment. Noteworthy is the importance of teacher training for a better understanding of Maker Education and a greater affinity for using manual, electrical, and digital tools. The social role of the school makerspace as an environment that promotes inclusion, accessibility, diversity, equity, identity, and empowerment is an emerging theme that requires attention. However, there needs to be more information regarding the management and transformation of school spaces to adequately and safely shelter maker practices, coherently connecting the principles of the maker movement to educational ones, indicating that there is still a vast area of research on this subject.

Data science education is a rapidly growing field, motivating the development of several tools aimed at engaging students in data-related activities across all educational levels. Within this landscape, new block-based programming (BBP) environments have been developed to integrate data visualization functionalities. However, the construction of visualizations entails distinct goals and forms of interaction from those typically used in conventional programming, which should be considered in designing those environments. Drawing inspiration from taxonomies within the field of Information Visualization, we derived a framework for the analysis of educational tools in this domain comprising four categories: supported goals, expressiveness, abstraction, and transparency. We situate six existing BBP environments within the design space of the framework and illustrate its application by describing the design of [anonymized tool], a BBP environment developed to address a gap in data visualization tools for young audiences. Our goal is to contribute to a more theoretically grounded discussion on the topic by bridging the gap between well-established research on professional tools for data visualization and the design of related educational environments targeted at middle and high school students.

Disinformation on social media poses both societal and technical challenges. While previous studies have integrated textual information into propagation networks, they have yet to fully leverage the advancements in Transformer-based language models for high-quality contextual text representations. This work investigates the impact of incorporating textual features into Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) for fake news detection. Our experiments demonstrate that contextual representations improve performance by 9.3 ones and 33.8 augmentation degrades performance and increases instability. We expect our methodology to open avenues for further research, and all code is made publicly available.