The Micro:Vote project is designed as an introduction to text-based programming through a 12-week project aimed at 11 to 13 year olds. The project is designed as a School-University partnership whose aim is to highlight the role of creativity and social impact in computing through the design of digital voting posters using the BBC micro:bit and MicroPython. Adopting a Design Studio approach, the project scaffolds students in the creation of a physical computing voting system and informative poster, to gather responses on an issue of social importance within the community. Through the lens of Human-Computer Interaction, students investigate the role of computing in activism and learn to implement data and control structures.
Educational-resources Downloads
This zip contains the supplemental materials for this article.
- Panayiotis Koutsabasis, Spyros Vosinakis, Modestos Stavrakis, and Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos. 2018. Teaching HCI with a studio approach. Proceedings of the 22nd Pan-Hellenic Conference on Informatics - PCI '18: 282--287. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Yolanda Jacobs Reimer and Sarah A. Douglas. 2003. Teaching HCI Design With the Studio Approach. Computer Science Education 13, 3: 191--205. Google ScholarCross Ref
- Megan Venn-Wycherley and A. Kharrufa. 2019. HOPE for Computing Education: Towards the Infrastructuring of Support for University-School Partnerships. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: 1--13.Google Scholar
- Megan Venn-Wycherley, Christine Bennett, and Ahmed Kharrufa. 2020. Design Studios for K-12 Computing Education. In Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE '20), 1227--1233. Google ScholarDigital Library
Recommendations
Microsoft touch develop and the BBC micro:bit
ICSE '16: Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering CompanionThe chance to influence the lives of a million children does not come often. Through a partnership between the BBC and several technology companies, a small instructional computing device called the BBC micro:bit will be given to a million children in ...
Teaching with physical computing devices: the BBC micro:bit initiative
WiPSCE '17: Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing EducationThere is a growing interest in small programmable devices that can be used in schools and in extra-curricular contexts to teach computer science. The BBC micro:bit is one such device; through a collaborative venture, micro:bits were recently distributed ...
Design Studios for K-12 Computing Education
SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFollowing the decline of pupil engagement in compulsory computing education (K-12) in the UK, advocates have called for further research into computing-specific pedagogies. Aiming for an improvement in pupil engagement, the subsequent report explores ...