Since 2012, “the mechanism of measurement and control by programs” has become required in junior high school in the subject “Technology and Home Economics” in Japan. In order to enrich and fulfill the purpose of class activities for that...
moreSince 2012, “the mechanism of measurement and control by programs” has become required in junior high school in the subject “Technology and Home Economics” in Japan. In order to enrich and fulfill the purpose of class activities for that topic, we designed additional functionality in our programming environment “PEN” for simulating “LilyPad Arduino” microcontroller boards on the screen. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of that simulator and report the results of practical lessons that we conducted with female university students. We compared the outcomes of two groups of learners: (1) those who finished with a graphics programming environment on the screen in 2013, and (2) those who proceeded to program microcontrollers with this learning environment in 2014. The latter group showed quite positive reactions. They could feel some degree of success in programming.
