From 12–15 October 2026, Lukas Lehner and Klaus Nigsch of the LTeD Research Lab attended CMSC 2026 at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova, Italy.
Lukas Lehner presented our paper From Pantomime to Bitomime – A CS Unplugged Approach to Binary Encoding and Decoding in Primary Education. The paper introduces a CS Unplugged workshop designed to teach children aged 7–10 to binary encoding and decoding through a progressive abstraction approach. By combining embodied interaction, tactile and symbolic codes, and code verification exercises, the workshop – as carried out regularly in the TU Wien Informatics eduLAB and reaching more than 400 students in total – guides students from intuitive, iconic representations towards the concept of binary encoding. The workshop experiences highlight the potential of embodied and tactile activities to make abstract computing concepts more accessible to primary school students. At the same time, the transition to binary representations remains a conceptual challenge that calls for explicit scaffolding and reflection. The paper contributes practical insights into the design of age-appropriate learning experiences for computer science education.
Attending CMSC 2026 provided a valuable opportunity to share experiences, discuss approaches to computer science education, and exchange ideas with the international research community.
Checkout the paper: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-38887-2_8.
