Software tangible: Metáforas, representaciones visuales y actividades de apoyo didáctico para la enseñanza en construcción de software

Introduction: From the experience in the teachinglearning process of the first levels of analysis, design, construction and execution of algorithms, the difficulty of illustrating and understanding intangible concepts has been detected. Generating analogies or other kinds of conceptual resources to contribute to the imagination or the abstraction students require to understand the basic elements of programming, turns out to be a challenge for teachers. Objective: Define a set of visual representations and metaphors to establish a base for the development of didactic materials, software applications and pertinent activities to provide support to teaching and learning in programming. Materials and methods: Based on some pedagogical theories and on the revision of similar projects, some representations, metaphors and proposals of meaningful learning activities were defined from a first selection of programming concepts. Results: Teaching experiences were shared and several activities to be developed in class were formalized. Those activities were carried out by the teachers involved in the work line called Tangible Software. A set of physical and software tools for didactic support was developed under a constant definition of common visual representations. Conclusion: The use of visual representations, metaphors, instruments and meaningful learning activities supports the generation of the necessary abstractions that contribute for understanding the intangible concepts of programming and of the execution of algorithms.