Coding the Conversation: SchoolBot Development
03/09/25
As part of the EU Code Week, students of Gimnazija Vukovar participated in two educational activities focused on developing digital competencies through the creation of educational chatbots. The activities were conducted within the regular computer science curriculum and involved work in two programming environments – Scratch and Pickcode. The goal was to introduce high school students to the concept of conversational interfaces, the basics of algorithmic thinking, and the creation of their own digital products through creative and problem-oriented tasks. Developing chatbots enabled students to learn about variables, conditional statements, and loops through interactive programming, while also enhancing their communication skills and logical reasoning. This article presents the context of implementation, compares the educational potential of the selected tools, and highlights the contribution of such activities to the development of digital literacy in secondary education.
Creating a Chatbot in Scratch
Scratch is a visual programming environment that enables easy learning of fundamental programming concepts through block-based commands. The activity began with an introduction to different types of chatbots – from those based on rules to advanced models powered by large language models (LLMs). Students explored three main categories: rule-based chatbots, which execute precisely defined commands (What Is a Rule-Based Chatbot?), AI chatbots that rely on recognizing user intent (How Do AI Chatbots Work?), and LLM-powered chatbots, such as ChatGPT and Copilot, capable of communicating in natural language thanks to machine learning algorithms (What Is ChatGPT? Explaining the Viral AI Chatbot).
In the practical part of the activity, students developed their own SchoolBot – a school-themed chatbot designed to interact with users and simulate everyday communication within a school context. Each student (or team) defined the purpose of their bot (e.g., a class schedule assistant, a school rules informer, or a fun conversation partner during breaks), shaped its personality (friendly, humorous, serious), and planned its conversation flow. This planning included defining greetings, standard and unexpected user queries, response logic, and how the bot would handle unpredictable inputs. Students were encouraged to sketch their dialogue flow using paper or digital tools.
The technical phase involved setting up a project in Scratch, selecting and customizing a character (Sprite) to represent the chatbot, adding a background, and enabling interaction using blocks such as “ask and wait,” “answer,” “join,” conditional statements (if-else), and loops. Students used variables to store user inputs (e.g., name, favorite subjects, school activities), allowing their bots to personalize conversations. Beyond the basic functionality, students expanded their bots by adding sounds, visual effects (costumes), randomized responses, or animations—enhancing the chatbot’s dynamism and authenticity.
Throughout the process, students developed essential skills such as planning user interaction, thinking from the user’s perspective, and identifying user needs—all crucial for designing user interfaces and interactive applications. The activity concluded with student presentations of their finished SchoolBots, followed by peer feedback, self-reflection, and evaluation of challenges, successes, and opportunities for improvement.
Creating a Chatbot in Pickcode
The second activity took place in Pickcode, a modern educational platform for learning programming. Students worked in Pickcode VL (Visual Language) – an experimental programming language within the Pickcode platform, designed as a transitional step between visual programming (such as Scratch) and text-based coding in languages like Python. While Scratch allows students to program by dragging blocks and Python requires manual typing, Pickcode VL enables students to build code by clicking on predefined elements – offering a structure similar to real coding without the need to write syntax manually. The introductory video Pickcode – Getting Started with Chat served as a visual overview of the platform’s functionalities, after which students accessed the Chatbot Basics (Pickcode VL) lesson via the Intro to Pickcode menu.
The platform’s key advantage lies in reducing frustration related to typing and syntax errors. Students select commands such as call, var, set, if, and while by clicking, which helps them understand and apply fundamental programming structures like variables, conditionals, and loops in a way that closely resembles real-world coding – while still being supported by a visual interface.
During the activity, students developed a basic chatbot that introduces itself to the user, asks questions, stores responses, and reacts logically. The chatbot was programmed to use a loop that continues the conversation until the user types an exit phrase such as “Goodbye.” After mastering the basics, students had the opportunity to move on to more complex tasks from the Intermediate Chatbots section. Projects such as Trivia Game, Activity Suggester, Restaurant Bot, and Movie Rating Chatbot allowed them to further develop their understanding of logical structures, code flow, and user interaction.
Student Experience and Educational Impact
Both activities demonstrated a high motivational potential, with students showing strong interest in designing dialogues and developing user interactions, which significantly contributed to the enhancement of their communication and digital literacy skills. Scratch proved to be an intuitive and accessible tool that enabled students to easily enter the world of programming, while Pickcode presented a more challenging step toward understanding the structure of real programming languages. The combination of these two tools allowed for differentiated instruction, adaptation to varying levels of prior knowledge, and the development of collaborative skills through teamwork. Final presentations of the created chatbots encouraged constructive discussion and reflection on the learning process, and the very act of building chatbots proved to be a highly effective way to foster logical and algorithmic thinking, digital skills, creativity, and problem-solving abilities. Additional value stems from the fact that these activities were conducted within the framework of the Code Week initiative, through which students were recognized as active creators of digital content within the broader European community.
Contribution to EU Code Week
By participating in EU Code Week, students from Gimnazija Vukovar connected their classroom learning with broader European educational trends. The Code Week initiative provided additional context and motivation, and the activities were officially registered on the Code Week event map, thereby reinforcing students’ awareness of being part of a wider digital learning community. These activities demonstrated that creativity-based projects and the development of original digital solutions are highly effective in fostering STEM competencies.
Authors: Sanja Pavlović Šijanović, Leading Teacher Croatia and Davor Šijanović, Gymnasium Vukovar
