Creating a fairy tale through computer coding: a didactic experiment with Scratch

• Main Author: Gabriele Catani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Bologna 2020-05-01
• Series: Italiano a scuola
• Subjects: didattica della scrittura; coding; pensiero computazionale; morfologia della fiaba; scuola secondaria di primo grado
• Online Access: https://italianoascuola.unibo.it/article/view/10895

This study examines the repercussions of computer coding activities, introduced several years ago in the Italian schools, for linguistic education. In particular, the article describes an experiment conducted in a lower secondary school, where a fairy tale, which had already been analysed by Propp as a linguistic algorithm, was coded in its single events by using a programming language with blocks in the programming environment Scratch. Subsequently, the instructions contained in the source code in blocks were “translated” into Italian and turned into a narrative by the students.