Reprinted from the PEG page, a programming education project promoted by CANVAS.

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At the Human Interface Symposium held on September 6, Professor Kazuhiro Abe, a visiting professor at
Aoyama Gakuin University, led a
workshop titled “Learning and Practicing Facilitation for Enjoyable Programming,” with
support from CANVAS.
https://www.his.gr.jp/event/his2016_kousyuu.html

In the morning, we attended a training session at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, where the symposium was being held.
This time, the session featured a lecture on using Scratch Junior as a teaching tool to design and
implement an environment where
children can enjoy programming.

After that, we moved to Kyoyo Elementary School, which incorporates programming into its regular curriculum, and put into practice what we had designed that morning for first-graders who had just started learning to
code. The first-graders who
participated had only just begun learning to code. They
all peered at the tablets with great curiosity.

The participants were divided into six groups, and a group leader from each group facilitated the session.
• A group that worked on creating a story
• A group that worked freely, brainstorming ideas with friends to create a soccer game together
• A group that created an animation featuring their own faces, and so on.

For all the first-graders, the 45 minutes flew by as they had so much fun.During the debriefing session with the
symposium participants,
there were reflections and concerns—
such as how things didn’t quite go according to plan and what creative approaches could be used to keep the
children engaged. However, it was clear that once the children found
something they thought was fun, they eagerly began experimenting with the blocks on their own and sharing their discoveries
with their friends.

We will continue to provide children with programming experiences through collaboration with a wide range of partners.