The Pinocchioverse can easily adapted for any medium. In the following, the tools that could be used to adapt the programming language defined by the Pinocchioverse could be taught in class, and after that, first practical activites are given in form of a exercise books, games and stories.
Programs & Tools
For the marble runs themselves, there does not yet exist a specific tool, nor a physical gagdet to apply it in class, however, material can be crafted easily and there is a great computer simulation, called MarbleWorld, in which marble runs can be created easily, even with some logic elements already in the program (they are, however, not enough to fully support MarblePunk, the programming language defined by the Pinocchioverse).
The following videos show marble runs that implement the sorting algorithm “Bubble Sort” in MarblePunk.
On top of that, since marble runs in the Pinocchioverse are basically a 3D-variant of Flowcharts, they could easily be integrated in a curriculum in which coding is taught based on Flowcharts.
For this, the tool “Flowgorithm” could be used, as shown in the following example:
And building on that, more advanced languages could be taught, like for example Python:
(from https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-program-for-bubble-sort/)
So, the curriculum and tools used for teaching programming and CS concepts, could be something like the following:
- Playing with actual marble races
- Coding with Marbles/Marble-based coding, e.g. with MarblePunk in MarbleWorld
- Flowcharts (with Flowgorithm)
- Python (with ?)
That means, the Pinocchioverse and MarblePunk can also easily be integrated in existing CS curricula. It also means that it establishes a path into computer science, from something physical that everbody knows to actual programming, which has not yet been satisfactorily done before.
Teaching material
The following exercise book gives a first impression what might be possible with the Pinocchioverse to teach computer science concepts through stories (it can also serve an introduction to the Pinocchioverse).
The next exercise book contains activities that can be used in class. It sets the focus on the programming language, which the Pinocchioverse defines.
The next exercise book contains activities that can be used in class but it is still work in progress. Basing itself on the world introduced in the last exercise book, it follows the marble revolution further through different ages of development and teaches children concepts of abstraction by letting them witness an alternative history of the digital age:
Games
The following card game can teach children about programming with marbles in a playful way. The card game is a physical version of the populer programmer game “code golf”, in which tasks are tried to be solved with as little code as possible (in this case: with as little marble track pieces as possible).
Earlier version:
Introduction-Story
Below you will find the introductory story from the first document as a separate file. It can for example be used as a general introdcation to the Pinocchioverse to then go on to any medium for which the Pinocchioverse has been adapted.
Cooking Recipes
The following can be used for teaching children programming based on cooking recipes:
The Pinocchioverse 