Fundación Sadosky

Fundacion Sadosky's vision is innovation in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a driving force for the country's development.

The mission is both to generate more and better science and to strengthen and enhance the productive structure, working on the articulation between the scientific-technological system and the productive structure in the field of computing and telecommunications, generating a positive impact on society and in the development possibilities of the country.

She leads the development team that maintains Pilas Bloques (educational software). Defining new functionalities and improving those that already exist in order to continue motivating users to learn programming.
For this purpose, she establishes the requirements of the educational software, supervises the effective compliance with the development deadlines and supervises, in technical terms, the quality of the software development in progress and for its effective use in the classroom.

As a team we have fluid communication and the ability to organize the tasks to be carried out.
We are also flexible when working with new challenges that are not planned.

Pilas Bloques is an application to teach and learn to program using blocks in a simple and fun way. 

In Argentina didn't exist a solution designed for the context of the country and the region to accompany the didactic sequences conceived for the classroom that were created in manuals and booklets for teaching Computer Science, developed by Program.AR (Fundación Sadosky initiative).

That's why we work:

• for inclusive education, that is why Pilas Bloques is free and can be downloaded and used without the need for the internet. Although it was developed entirely in Spanish, today it is also available in English and Portuguese, and soon in other languages.
• thinking about school. That is why Pilas Bloques accompanies didactic sequences designed for the classroom, expressed in manuals and booklets for teaching Computer Science, developed by Program.AR. The application comes installed on the Huayra operating system developed by the Argentine State for the school.
• for situated and meaningful learning, where students can have a leading role. That is why Pilas Bloques's challenges are organized in sequences of increasing complexity and invite students to solve a specific problem in a carefully limited environment, without offering them all the concepts or steps to solve it. It gives them time for exploration so that later, together with their teachers, they can revisit the different solution strategies, the difficulties and successes, and build the fundamental ideas.
• from Argentina for the collaborative and sovereign construction of knowledge, that is why the application is free software (it can be adapted and modified according to the needs of the country or region) and its characters reflect the Argentine flora and fauna. These characteristics do not prevent its use from being welcomed and encouraged in other countries in the region and the world.
• to promote among students the construction of knowledge that allows them to understand, appropriate and transform digital and computational technology, to participate critically in the contemporary world. Pilas Bloques does not hope to train professionals in the area, but rather seeks to show girls, boys and adolescents the world of programming by taking the first steps in understanding the fundamental ideas.

Pilas Bloques is an application that seeks to bring girls, boys and adolescents closer to the world of programming by taking the first steps in understanding the fundamental ideas. Developed in Argentina especially for the classroom, it can be used freely. It can also be downloaded and offers the possibility of accessing its challenges without the need to connect to the internet. It is developed as a free software and is currently part of two manuals for primary school teachers developed by Fundación Sadosky.

Pilas Bloques activities are organized in a sequence of ascending complexity that invites to solve specific problems with characters that reflect the Argentine flora and fauna. The proposal has more than 142 challenges that are organized into two groups, one for the 1st cycle of primary school and another for the 2nd cycle of primary school onwards, with options linked to the knowledge of algorithms and programs, procedures, repetitions, numerical sensors and sequential programs, among a wide variety of alternatives. It also has the possibility to create your own activities and share them.

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We collect data from teachers who are part of a community created around the development of free software in Argentina and use Pilas Bloques in theri classes.

Precisely because in-depth studies have not been carried out, we need to do so with the expectation of growing in challenges and didactic proposals for the school and the different mandatory educational levels.

There are two questions that we would like to clarify:

1. When not in presence of a teacher, do students really improve their learning using Pilas Bloques?

2. Do AI will give better feedback to the students using Pilas Bloques?

Currently Pilas Bloques provides feedback on the solution performed by the student through simple checks, such as number of lines of code or existence and absence of certain commands; leaving unanalyzed more abstract and equally important concepts such as the ability to divide into subtasks, or the correct use of certain commands. The automated feedback provided by Pilas Bloques performs static code analysis using modern algorithms but with a structured programming basis. 

So, we believe that the inclusion of algorithms based on the processing of large amounts of data such as those used by Artificial Intelligence are the next step in the development of quality feedback and a self-adaptive tool. 

We would love to make a pilot in a school with the new AI feedback features.

We can keep improving Pilas Bloques so more children could access to the world of programming. Creating more didactic material to offer the schools and improving more and more the AI feedback component.