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Engaging in physical computing activities involving both hard- ware and software provides a hands-on introduction to computer science. The move to remote learning for primary and secondary schools during the 2020-2021 school year due to COVID-19 made implementing physical computing activities especially challenging. However, it is important that these activities are not simply eliminated from the curriculum. This paper explores how a unit centered around students investigating how programmable sensors that can support data-driven scientific inquiry was collaboratively adapted for remote instruction. A case study of one teacher’s experience implementing the unit with a group of middle school students (ages 11 to 14) in her STEM elective class examines how her students could still engage in computational thinking practices around data and programming. The discussion includes both the challenges and unexpected affordances of engaging in physical computing activities remotely that emerged from her implementation. 

This article describes a professional development (PD) model, the CT-Integration Cycle, that supports teachers in learning to integrate computational thinking (CT) and computer science principles into their middle school science and STEM instruction. The PD model outlined here includes collaborative design (codesign; Voogt et al., 2015) of curricular units aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that use programmable sensors. Specifically, teachers can develop or modify curricular materials to ensure a focus on coherent, student-driven instruction through the investigation of scientific phenomena that are relevant to students and integrate CT and sensor technology. Teachers can implement these storylines and collaboratively reflect on their instructional practices and student learning. Throughout this process, teachers may develop expertise in CT-integrated science instruction as they plan and use instructional practices aligned with the NGSS and foreground CT. This paper describes an examination of a group of five middle school teachers’ experiences during one iteration of the CT-Integration Cycle, including their learning, planning, implementation, and reflection on a unit they codesigned. Throughout their participation in the PD, the teachers expanded their capacity to engage deeply with CT practices and thoughtfully facilitated a CT-integrated unit with their students. 

This article describes a professional development (PD) model, the CT- Integration Cycle, that supports teachers in learning to integrate computational thinking (CT) and computer science principles into their middle school science and STEM instruction. The PD model outlined here includes collaborative design (codesign; Voogt et al., 2015) of curricular units aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that use programmable sensors. Specifically, teachers can develop or modify curricular materials to ensure a focus on coherent, student-driven instruction through the investigation of scientific phenomena that are relevant to students and integrate CT and sensor technology. Teachers can implement these storylines and collaboratively reflect on their instructional practices and student learning. Throughout this process, teachers may develop expertise in CT-integrated science instruction as they plan and use instructional practices aligned with the NGSS and foreground CT. This paper describes an examination of a group of five middle school teachers’ experiences during one iteration of the CT- Integration Cycle, including their learning, planning, implementation, and reflection on a unit they codesigned. Throughout their participation in the PD, the teachers expanded their capacity to engage deeply with CT practices and thoughtfully facilitated a CT-integrated unit with their students. 

We describe a professional development model that supports teachers to integrate computational thinking (CT) and computer science principles into middle school science and STEM classes. The model includes the collaborative design (co-design) (Voogt et al., 2015) of storylines or curricular units aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) that utilize programmable sensors such as those contained on the micro:bit. Teachers spend several workshops co-designing CT-integrated storylines and preparing to implement them with their own students. As part of this process, teachers develop or modify curricular materials to ensure a focus on coherent, student driven instruction through the investigation of scientific phenomena that are relevant to the students and utilize sensor technology. Teachers implement the storylines and meet to collaboratively reflect on their instructional practices as well as their students’ learning. Throughout this cyclical, multi-year process, teachers develop expertise in CT-integrated science instruction as they plan for and use instructional practices that align with three dimension science teaching and foreground computational thinking. Throughout the professional learning process, teachers alternate between wearing their “student hats” and their “teacher hats”, in order to maintain both a student and teacher perspective as they co-design and reflect on their implementation of CT-integrated units. This paper illustrates two teachers’ experiences of the professional development process over a two-year period, including their learning, planning, implementation, and reflection on two co-designed units. 

This paper describes the design and classroom implementation of a week-long unit that aims to integrate computational thinking (CT) into middle school science classes using programmable sensor technology. The goals of this sensor immersion unit are to help students understand why and how to use sensor and visualization technology as a powerful data-driven tool for scientific inquiry in ways that align with modern scientific practice. The sensor immersion unit is anchored in the investigation of classroom data where students engage with the sensor technology to ask questions about and design displays of the collected data. Students first generate questions about how data data displays work and then proceed through a set of programming exercises to help them understand how to collect and display data collected from their classrooms by building their own mini data displays. Throughout the unit students draw and update their hand drawn models representing their current understanding of how the data displays work. The sensor immersion unit was implemented by ten middle school science teachers during the 2019/2020 school year. Student drawn models of the classroom data displays from four of these teachers were analyzed to examine students’ understandings in four areas: func- tion of sensor components, process models of data flow, design of data displays, and control of the display. Students showed the best understanding when describing sensor components. Students exhibited greater confusion when describing the process of how data streams moved through displays and how programming controlled the data displays.