Teaching ideas

Physical computing in computer science lessons (WS25/26)

As part of the Computer Science Didactics course in the Digital Basic Education and Computer Science teacher training programme, students developed several physical computing projects for use in schools. The aim of the exercise was to design practical learning settings in which programming, hardware and didactic concepts are combined in a meaningful way.

Physical computing offers particular potential for teaching: the interactivity of physical devices increases pupils' motivation , while at the same time encouraging creativity and collaborative teamwork. This makes learning processes more lively, as abstract programming concepts are directly linked to real objects and concrete actions.

The results are impressive: Both block-based programming environments and script-based programming, for example with Python, were used. These were combined with different hardware platforms such as micro:bit, Arduino and various sensors and actuators.

The projects developed include

An alarm system with a vibration sensor,
an automated watering system that uses a water sensor to measure the moisture content of a flower pot and pumps in water as required,
a noise level light that monitors the background noise in the classroom,
a welcome robot that waves to arriving pupils via a motion sensor,
an ambient light to measure the relative humidity,
a learning brightness traffic light,
a robotics course,
a self-built game console controller,
and many other creative project ideas.