Uma linguagem visual e metodologias para resolução de problemas fundamentadas no pensamento computacional

Abstract

The languages that surround students outside of school, day to day life, through TV, videos, animations, games, applications and mobile devices, are often visual and multimedia languages, bringing texts, images, sounds, videos, emojis and animations. Besides, the technologies inserted in our daily life change the ways of thinking and solving problems. Consequently, these changes also modify the skills needed for 21st century education. Several authors agree that many of these skills can be developed through Computational Thinking (CT). Jeannette Wing described the CT as a problem solving process, based on Computer Science, capable of promoting the skills of abstraction, decomposition, automation, analysis, among others, and that can be applied in any area of knowledge. Many works are being done in the area, and many propose to solve problems through programming. Although this method has been shown to be effective for the development of many of the CT’s skills, it requires that the solution of problems is, in general, given at a low level of abstraction. Often, the focus ends up being more on syntactic description and on learning language commands than on strategies for solving problems. The goal of this work is to propose a visual specification language with a high level of abstraction and a set of methodologies that are based on the techniques proposed by the CT, such as refinement, decomposition, composition, abstraction and generalization, allowing these problem solving strategies can be applied at various levels of education and in different areas of knowledge. Finally, case studies were carried out to evaluate language and methodologies. In one of the studies, a problem was presented to be solved with the proposed visual language and with natural language. The study showed that students who used visual language to solve the problem, arrived at a solution with a greater level of detail and accuracy.