Standard software as microworld?

Abstract

Traditionally programming is considered to be a core content of informatics education. Just as traditional is the discussion of how to teach programming at school. One major aspect seems to be the choice of a suitable software tool allowing to focus on the basic concepts and avoiding tool-specific overhead at the same time. Therefore, special learning environments (so called microworlds) have been developed, designed to reduce the complexity learners are confronted with. But - in most cases - these microworlds are a sort of isolated solution and call for a shift to "real" programming environments later on. The contrary approach is to downsize professional programming or (to be more general) software environments to the needs of the learner, which appears to be almost impossible due to the complexity of current software. This paper discusses how this might be achieved though by concentrating on programmable spread-sheet software. It points at possible didactic and methodical benefits by teaching programming this way and presents a list of criteria that can be helpful in deciding the relevance of software-tools for informatics classes. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.