Supporting Physically Active CS-Ed for Children: Exploring the Design of Physical Play Friendly Coding Blocks

In this work, we share our design exploration of coding blocks to incorporate physical play into programming kits for children's computing education. First, we cover the tradition of experiential learning in computing education, with descriptions of where physical play fits into that practice. Next, we describe children's programming workshops to explore how physical play could be incorporated into coding kits. From these workshops, we recommend a set of coding blocks for physical play divided into four categories: (1) motion sensing, (2) sound sensing, (3) proximity sensing, and (4) gameplay information. These coding blocks for the first time systematically present physical play friendly programming commands, supplementing previous works on developing coding tools to combine physical play and coding for children. Finally, we describe our implementation of these coding blocks on the micro:bit-a low-cost widely distributed computer science educational kit-and describe the results of a functionality test with nine graduate design students.