INFORMATICS-LAB: ATTRACTING PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE

Technology has a deep impact on everyday life of most people in today’s society. Informatics is a basic element of this evolution and is. therefore getting more and more important for education, too. To introduce children of all ages to different topics of informatics, the Regional Educational Competence Centre for Informatics in Carinthia, Austria, organized a four-week lasting Informatics-Lab. During their holidays in July 2014, children were able to visit our university, participate in workshops and get a first or a deeper impression of topics like encryption, operating systems, networks or modelling. What distinguished this project from other labs was that the children learned from trainees aged between 16 and 19 years as well as from their peers. Furthermore, trainees and visitors developed new teaching material on their own. This was an important element of the project as it considered different learning concepts like learning by teaching. The lab got positive feedback from both, children and parents. A pre-post comparison showed that the project had positive effects on the interest as well as on the attitude towards informatics. This paper gives some background information about the learning concept and an overview of the activities and stations. Furthermore, the results from an empirical