Research On Cultivation Of Junior High School Students' Computational Thinking Based On App Inventor

With the rapid development of the times,computational thinking has gradually become the core competence of students in the 21 st century.It is a basic skill that must be mastered in addition to reading,writing,and calculation.In 2017,the Ministry of Education promulgated the "General High School Information Technology Curriculum Standards(2017 Version)",which included computational thinking as one of the core literacy of the information technology discipline.It believes that computational thinking refers to the method which individuals using in the field of computer science and a series of thinking activities in the process of forming a problem solution.At the same time,the paper also put forward the academic requirements for computational thinking,that is,students can design and express simple algorithms according to the needs of problem solving;master the basic knowledge of a programming language,use the programming language to implement simple algorithms and solve practical problems problem.It can be seen from this that cultivating students' computational thinking through programming is an important way and the focus of research.The "Basic Education Information Technology Curriculum Standards(2012Version)" document states: "Students should be able to get a preliminary understanding of programming concepts,processes,and methods with the help of a visual object-oriented programming language;they can design algorithms and program from simple life problems,understand the status and role of algorithms and programming in solving problems,and appreciate the value of algorithms ".Programming design is the largest and most popular computing practice among modern computing technologies that students can access first and most easily.It is of great significance to train students' computational thinking.However,because most of the programming languages that junior high school students are exposed to are Visual Basic,the more abstract codes and grammatical rules have brought difficulties to effectively train students' computing thinking.App Inventor,as an online open visual programming,achieving mobile application development by clicking and dragging code blocks.It has the characteristics such as constructing development environment easily,simpleoperation and fun.It plays an important role in training computational thinking.Therefore,this study takes “Can App Inventor effectively train junior high school students' computational thinking?” as the research problem,and uses App Inventor visual programming as the teaching content,based on App Inventor to study how to effectively train junior high school students' computational thinking,in order to promote the development of App Inventor and computational thinking.This research first analyzes the domestic and foreign literature on computational thinking training and App Inventor through the literature research method,defines the concepts of computational thinking,App Inventor and so on.Based on this,it proposes the feasibility analysis of using App Inventor to train junior high school students' computational thinking and provides relevant theoretical basis for subsequent research.Then understand and analyze the current situation of junior high school students' computational thinking training through questionnaire survey.On the basis of the above research and under the guidance of constructivism learning theory,children's cognitive development theory,learning by doing theory and other theories,the teaching based on App Inventor to train computational thinking in junior high school students is designed and constructed a teaching model that incorporates the core elements of computational thinking and the content of the three-dimensional framework of computational thinking.Through the quasi-experimental research method,the experiment was conducted on 24 students in the first grade of the J middle school in Guangzhou,to test the feasibility and effectiveness of the App Inventor course for training students' computational thinking.Finally,the questionnaire survey method was used to measure the students' computational thinking level,and the interview method was used to interview the students in the experimental class and the teachers in the subject.The analysis of data such as the Computational Thinking Scale and teacher-student interviews showed that App Inventor's teaching can effectively improve students' computational thinking from the overall level of computational thinking and the dimensions of creativity,algorithmic thinking,critical thinking,collaboration,and problem solving,and teachers and students also have good satisfaction with App Inventor courses.Therefore,the feasibility and effectiveness of training junior high school students' computational thinking based on App Inventor are verified,which can play a positive role in the training of junior high school students' computational thinking.