Teaching informatics for fun and profit

Informatics is often misrepresented as the ability to use computer applications. Instead, it is a full-fledged scientific discipline with its peculiarities and methodology. We believe that a proper introduction to the basic concepts of informatics such as information representation, algorithms, formal languages, and programming can have a positive impact on the effectiveness of secondary education, thus we started designing and implementing special teaching activities to introduce pupils to informatics through a mix of tangible and abstract object manipulations.