Carrie Antoniazzi from Science World, joined our EdTech 431 class to share the wonders of computational thinking….without computers. Now this is one of those things that can take a minute to wrap your head around, computational thinking sounds like something that needs a computer, so how does it work when there is not one?
Computational thinking involves specific language and steps, whether it is being used for a computer program or to solve a problem. As a class, there was a lot of discussion and testing to see if the ideas and commands needed to make a computer program work could also be used to solve a problem, and it turns out they can. Carrie presented brain puzzles and the class worked on them, demonstrating how problem solving skills are transferable across disciplines.
The other piece of learning that was so powerful that took place, was the importance of specificity or clarity. When testing out theories and ideas there needs to be a clear starting point and starting step, there cannot be an assumption of knowledge! This is huge! As educators, we cannot assume that our students know something simply because they ‘should’ have learned it the year before and so need to be clear on where we are starting.
So where does the knowledge gained from using computational thinking without computers go next?