The integration of ICT into the lives of every citizen requires their informed and thoughtful use. Understanding what governs technologies, mastering them, whether in everyday or professional life, requires learning from an early age. If we want to guarantee equity among young people, the answer lies in the education system, which must propose activities to achieve these objectives. However, current educational programmes are only beginning to put emphasis on developing these skills. Computational and Algorithmic Thinking (CAT) is the ability to grasp complex problems, to break them down and to propose partially or fully automated solutions. The related skills can be worked on as early as pre-school education. However, teachers still need to be trained to design and conduct such learning activities in their classrooms. For this reason, the PIAF project brings together researchers from four European countries in order to develop various types of activities that will support teachers in the implementation of activities related to the development of computational thinking among young people, starting in fundamental school. A conceptual framework and a common reference framework of competencies, validated by different actors (researchers, teachers, education system managers), will be defined. Building on inputs and experiences from different but complementary national contexts will provide greater validity to the creation of meaningful activities for learners, designed through a participatory design process. During the 10 seminars and symposia that will be organised throughout the project, nearly 300 teachers from the 4 countries involved and from different school levels will be led to master a variety of materials and computer languages adapted to fundamental schools. IThe target groups of these seminars are (1) higher education teachers (mainly those who train future teachers), (2) future teachers who will be able to experiment activities during their training periods in fundamental school classes, (3) in service teachers (from nursery school to 1st secondary level included) and (4) trainers/facilitators from other contexts (e.g. homework school, youth centre, etc.). Involved in a participary design process, volunteers will develop and experiment with their students meaningful activities to understand concepts and transversal processes related to programming and algorithms. The sharing of experiences, the participatory design of educational activities/resources involving actors from different institutional levels and complementary expertise (computer science, techno-pedagogy), the field testing will provide a solid basis for laying the foundations of a shared training programme, freely available to the European Union. The results of this work could also serve as a basis for the creation of a cross-border curriculum for the initial and in-service training of teachers on the issues referred to here. Evaluation and self-evaluation tools will be created to measure, on the one hand, the development of representations and skills acquired by those trained in terms of competencies in PIA, transversal or in other disciplines (depending on the projects addressed) and, on the other hand, the appropriation and acceptability of the techno-pedagogical innovations resulting from the transfer to the field following participation in the PIAF project. Field testing of these activities will result in pedagogical scenarios, multilingual resources and assessment tools that are well tested and shareable with the educational community and will be freely available via an online portal.
The integration of information and communication technologies into the lives of all citizens requires informed and thoughtful use. Understanding what governs technologies and mastering them, whether in everyday life or in a professional context, requires learning from an early age. If we want to ensure equity between young people, the answer lies in the education system, which must offer activities that enable these objectives to be achieved. Current school curricula are only beginning to focus on the development of these skills. The PIAF project (Computational and Algorithmic Thinking in Basic Education) aims to develop Computational and Algorithmic Thinking (CAT) skills among pupils aged 5 to 12. CAT is the ability to understand complex problems, break them down into sub-problems and propose partially or fully automatic solutions. However, teachers need to be trained to design and conduct such learning activities in their classrooms. The project has brought together researchers from four European countries to develop different types of resources (competencies framework, pedagogical scenarios and didactic resources) that will help teachers to implement activities related to the development of computational thinking in young people, starting from pre-school. These different resources are generally available in three languages (FR, DE, EN) and have been created through a participatory design process. Indeed, different actors (researchers, teachers, students from the partner universities) have reviewed, participated in the creation of these resources and/or field-tested some of them. Following an analysis of the existing resources, the different partners of the project first created a competences referential in CAT dedicated to basic education pupils. Two other resources (a glossary and an example document) were also produced to enable teachers/trainers to understand each competence. These documents were reviewed by teachers and researchers who then provided feedback for improvement. Pedagogical scenarios are also available. Some of these were created during training seminars organised by the different partners' countries. During these seminars, the learners (students from the partner universities and/or researchers) had the opportunity to discover the referential of competencies, plugged and unplugged activities and/or other resources (the scenario canvas, evaluation items, resource analysis guide, etc). They were accompanied in the creation of a pedagogical scenario. Some of them experimented their scenrios in clasrooms. Other scenarios were designed by the partners, in an interdisciplinary approach (techno-pedagogy and computer science). Some of them have been field-tested by teachers. Different types of didactic resources (e.g. videos on educational robotics, "Blocky" programming interface, evaluation items, guide for analysing (un)plugged resources, video on methodological benchmarks, etc.) were created. In addition to the training seminars, seven dissemination events were organised in the partners' countries to present the project, its progress and results. Connected and remote workshops were also organised. Several profiles (e.g. researchers, primary school teachers, headmasters, higher education teachers, pedagogical advisors, facilitators) participated in these events. These dissemination seminars also allowed us to recruit some people who were interested in testing the pedagogical scenarios created. These events and the team's participation in other dissemination events (e.g. conferences) contributed to the creation/expansion of a network of people interested in the subject. The sharing of experiences, the participatory design of educational activities/resources involving actors of different levels and with complementary experiences (computer sciences, techno-pedagogy, reserachers, teachers), the scope of the experimentation have provided a solid basis for the development of the foundations of training programmes, freely available for the European Union. The results of this work could also serve as a basis for the creation of international initial and in-service teacher training courses on the themes proposed here.