Week 5 - Digital - Computational Thinking 11 December 2018

Computational Thinking

In his book 'Mindstorms', Seymour Papert (1980) stated that 'when a child learns to program, the process of learning is transformed. It becomes more active and self-directed. In particular, the knowledge is acquired for a recognizable personal purpose. The child does something with it. The new knowledge is a source of power and is experienced as such from the moment it begins to form in the child's mind." (p.21)

Computational Thinking is a problem solving process. It is a fundamental skill for everyone, and involves solving problems, designing solutions and systems to solve open ended problems based on multiple variables. We illustrate the concept in this week's session with the following quotes:

“Everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.” (Steve Jobs, cited in Sen, 1995)

"Computational thinking is a way humans solve problems; it is not trying to get humans to think like computers." (Wing, 2006)

"Computational thinking is taking an approach to solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behaviour that draws on concepts fundamental to computing." (Wing, 2006)

According to Google (n.d.), Computational Thinking Means Solving problems by using:

• Decomposition: Breaking down data, processes, or problems into smaller, manageable parts
• Pattern Recognition: Observing patterns, trends, and regularities in data
• Abstraction: Identifying the general principles that generate these patterns
• Algorithm Design: Developing the step by step instructions for solving this and similar problems

Scratch for Computational Thinking

Last week we used Scratch with Makey Makey. This week we will be using Scratch for computational thinking. 

Pair Programming

Pair programming is a common technique in agile software development. One member of the pair is the ‘driver’ (does the typing, and focuses on tactics) while the other is the ‘navigator’ (can review and suggest, and focuses on strategy). When pair programming you should change your roles within the pair on a regular basis, and also change your partner on a regular basis.

"This combined effort, which requires frequent role changes between the two developers, and changes of pairing, has been argued to provide benefits such as improved team discipline, cohesion and morale, better code, a more resilient work flow and creation of better solutions. It raises the working knowledge of the entire code base by all the developers, and enables mentoring of team members" (Parsons, Ryu & Lal, 2008).

Scratch Examples 

With Scratch examples you can click the 'See Inside' button to see how the code was written and, if you want to, you can make a copy to modify yourself by pressing the 'Remix' button. This example shows repetition and selection

Celebrating 50 Years of Kids Coding

This Google Doodle (on the Google homepage) is a short coding game to celebrate 50 years of kids coding.

Digital Curriculum

The draft digital curriculum (MoE, 2017) emphasises computational thinking. We will be looking at part of this document in the session (pages 17-19).

References:

Carnegie Mellon University. (n.d.). Center for Computational Thinking. Retrieved from https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/

Google. (n.d.). What is Computational Thinking? Computational Thinking for Educators. Retrieved from https://computationalthinkingcourse.withgoogle.com/unit?lesson=8&unit=1

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books.

Parsons, D., Ryu, H. & Lal R. (2008). Better, Not More Expensive, Faster? The Perceived Effects of Pair Programming in Survey Data. In Proceedings 19th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, Christchurch, New Zealand. Retrieved from http://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1020&context=acis2008

Sen P. (1995). Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, Retrieved from: https://itunes.apple.com/au/movie/steve-jobs-the-lost-interview/id632407040

MoE. (2017). Digital Technologies Hangarau Matihiko. Retrieved from https://education.govt.nz/ministry-of-education/consultations-and-reviews/digital-technology-consultation/

Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33-35.