Teaching CS Middle School Camps in a Virtual World

In this poster, we report our experiences with implementing two virtual computer science camps for middle school children. The camps use a two-part curriculum: One designed for 6th grade students using computer science concepts from familiar unplugged games, and the other targeted at 7th grade students using a domain-specific teaching language designed for programming board games. We use the camps to pilot the curricular material and provide teachers with practical training to deliver the curriculum virtually. Due to the teachers' commitment to finding successful strategies for delivering the curriculum online, the unplugged and programming activities worked surprisingly well in the remote environment. Overall, we found the use of well-known, unplugged games to be effective in preparing students to think algorithmically, and students were able to successfully code small programs for simple games in a new, functional, text-based language.