Online Scratch Programming With Compulsory School Children During COVID-19 Lockdown: An Italian Case Study

In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 health emergency caused all Italian schools to close from March to the end of the school year. An intervention was organized with the aim of offering primary and lower secondary teachers the possibility to organize remote coding activities with their students. Nine workshops were held to introduce teachers to the Scratch online programming environment, and then a coding day was organized involving students from the last year of primary and lower secondary schools. The chosen activities proved to be motivating to the students, favoring social interactions and participation, and increasing their interest in coding. Teachers were positively impressed by the ease with which their students managed programming in Scratch, but some of them felt that they did not master programming well enough to autonomously support class activities. A longer teacher training period is needed.