Fostering computational thinking skills with a tangible blocks programming environment

Computational Thinking has recently returned into the limelight as an essential skill to have for both the general public and disciplines outside Computer Science. It encapsulates those thinking skills integral to solving complex problems using a computer, thus widely applicable in our technological society. Several public initiatives such as the Hour of Code successfully introduced it to millions of people of different ages and backgrounds, mostly using Blocks Programming Environments like Scratch that lower the barriers of programming and facilitate learning. In this paper we present our arguments for fostering Computational Thinking skills using a Blocks Programming Environment augmented with a Tangible User Interface, namely by exploiting objects whose interactions with the physical environment are mapped to digital actions performed on the system. Our demonstration includes a working prototype implementing our Tangible Blocks Programming Environment called TAPAS.