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2 What Is Computational Thinking?
Pages 7-32

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From page 7...
... Section 2.4 examines computational thinking from the perspective of automating computational abstractions. Section 2.5 looks at computational thinking as a cognitive tool set for certain kinds of intellectual endeavor.
From page 8...
... . Wing's presentation at the workshop made prominent mention of the "shotgun" approach to sequencing the human genome as a powerful example of how computational thinking might be useful outside the traditional domain of computer science.
From page 9...
... Drawing on their own intuitive notions of computational thinking, workshop participants offered a number of additional examples of com putational thinking in context. For instance, when a device (computer, cell phone, or printer)
From page 10...
... , Uri Wilensky offered a caution -- that "it is not necessarily the case that the best way to enter into something is to enter it in the way that an expert already understands it." For those in attendance at the workshop, he noted that "if one is already an expert in computer science, it's easy to forget what it's like to enter into the field." He did not argue that the expli cation effort was wasted or inappropriate, only that as a community "we should be careful about the process of bringing a lot of people, in a wide spread way, into computational thinking. We should do more than present to students expert ways of thinking computationally -- attention must be paid to the developmental understanding of students." Roy Pea made a similar point when he cautioned workshop participants against focusing on the prototypes for computational thinking provided by experts in the field, because such prototypes "may lead us away from the professed goal of everyday computational thinking." 2.2 COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AS A RANGE OF CONCEPTS, APPLICATIONS, TOOLS, AND SKILL SETS Over the course of the workshop discussion, several participants described computational thinking as a collection of mental tools and con cepts from computer science that help people to solve problems, design systems, and understand human behavior.
From page 11...
... Rather, Lee argued, computational thinking is fundamentally about expanding human mental capabilities through abstract tools that help manage complexity and allow for automation of tasks. Andrew McGettrick supported this view, but went further in saying that computational "thinking" had to involve actual capability and competency with technological artifacts in addition to thought processes.
From page 12...
... some kind of computational thinking they need to be able to do in order to manipulate that tool to be able to use it for their domain." • Robert Constable would eschew static definitions of computational thinking -- rather than a finite set of skills and thought processes, computational thinking is an open-ended and growing list of concepts that reflects the dynamic nature of technology and human learning, and that combines elements of all the descriptions of computational thinking outlined above such as "automating intellectual processes" and "studying information processes," among others. What makes computational thinking especially relevant is that computers can execute our "computational thoughts" and that "computers have become partners and collaborators" in dis covery.
From page 13...
... Roy Pea argued that "as soon as we think about the origins of computational thinking and computational literacies, programming has been at the heartland of the definition and the abstractions that are created as step-by-step algorithmic procedures." Ursula Wolz supported the view that computational thinking is as essential a skill as reading, writing, and other basic language arts skills, pointing out that "programming is a language for expressing ideas. You have to learn how to read and write that language in order to be able to think in that language." Mitchel Resnick concurred, arguing that "computational thinking is more than program ming, but only in the same way that language literacy is more than writing.
From page 14...
... Owen Astra chan argued that "computational literacy will allow civilization to think BOX 2.2 The Role of Programming in FITness The 1999 NRC report Being Fluent with Information Technology addressed the role of programming in achieving fluency with information technology (what that report called FITness)
From page 15...
... By computational literacy, I do not mean a casual familiarity with a machine that computes." Gerald Sussman built the "computational thinking-as-basic-language" metaphor by citing the process of composing poetry as an exercise in computational thinking. A poet's task or problem is to produce a mechanism that induces an emotion in the reader of the poem.
From page 16...
... Despite its novelty, accessing digital information is, according to Fox "still a part of this modeling and representing, something that we do uniquely and have newer ways to explain and enrich." 2.4 COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AS THE AUTOMATION OF ABSTRACTIONS A number of workshop participants supported the claim that compu tational thinking focuses on the process of creating and managing abstractions, and defining relationships between layers of abstraction. Robert Constable pointed out that although physics and mathematics are also centrally concerned with abstraction, what is different in computational thinking is that the layers of abstraction are tightly connected in ways that in the natural sciences they cannot yet be connected.
From page 17...
... 2.5 COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AS A COGNITIvE TOOL David Moursund saw computational thinking as how to think about tools, a view inspired by Donald Norman and David Perkins. In 1988, Norman wrote The Design of Eeryday Things,3 which talks about "the design of everyday objects and affordances -- not just physical capabilities of the actor, but also their goals, plans, and values, and so on." An example of affordances created through technology innovation is mass communication through the creation of the printing press, radio, television, and so on.
From page 18...
... . ." Roy Pea concurred -- "If you actually look at what people do when they're doing computational thinking, as an ethnographer, you see them 4 David Perkins, 1992, Smart Schools: Better Thinking and Learning for Eery Child.
From page 19...
... SOURCE: Adaptation by David Figure 2-1 redrawn as vectors Moursund (workshop presenter) , University of Oregon, from David Perkins, 1992, Smart Schools: Better Thinking and Learning for Eery Child, New York: The Free Press.
From page 20...
... Joshua Danish presented an example of young students engaging in computational thinking concepts without using computers in a project on honeybees -- specifically to understand and represent the process honeybees use to collect nectar for honey. This process involves a beehive sending out scouts to locate flowers with nectar; these scouts then return to the hive and do a "dance" to communicate the location of the nectar to the other bees.
From page 21...
... and process bees use to find nectar, collect nectar, and then communicate the location of the nectar to the hive. Next, the children were asked to engage in "participatory modeling" of the bees collecting nectar, an idea first introduced as such by Uri Wilensky and Mitchel Resnick.5 Children produced a skit in which they represented flowers and bees and proceeded to demonstrate how a bee goes about collecting nectar.
From page 22...
... A second example of computational thinking in a non-IT context was provided by Ursula Wolz, who reported on an effort to teach computational thinking skills to middle school students through the journalistic use of interactive media. She described the project as focusing on a "nondidactic collaborative model of problem solving." Journalism provides an attractive context for students who do not consider themselves technically inclined.
From page 23...
... They also successfully used the computing environment used to support the course to collaborate, write, edit, and publish multimedia stories as part of the journalism process. A third example of computational thinking without computers was provided by Tim Bell, who described the Computer Science Unplugged Project.6 His talk included a couple of illustrations: • User interfaces.
From page 24...
... of computational thinking because it encapsulates the idea of how information can be passed in different paths through intermediate nodes to a specified final destination. A third example of computational thinking without the use of technology per se was provided in a personal anecdote from Owen Astrachan.
From page 25...
... The illustration Collins offered was a low-tech experiment in develop ing representational competence in fourth graders who were asked to "find representations for the heights" of various fast-growing plants. The children were broken up into several groups, and each group of kids would try to come up with its own representations.
From page 26...
... This skill is essential in undergraduate programs, useful in everyday life, and grow ing in importance in precollege courses. In this view computers and other computational devices enable computational thinking.
From page 27...
... It's about the community and the culture that's around you that allows you to have the ideas." Allan Collins related collaboration to the notion of computational thinking as a fundamental skill analogous to reading and writing literacy. He pointed out that developing reading and writing literacy is not simply a matter of technical skills, but also arguably entails a social community.
From page 28...
... (By contrast, he noted that one can know a great deal about computational thinking and computing concepts without knowing much about computers beyond how to get on the Internet and use an Internet browser.) Along with a number of other workshop participants, Gerald Sussman argued that computational thinking was also not equivalent to computer science.
From page 29...
... That shift in perspective allows us to see computation in nature." Other participants felt that computational thinking was the outcome of a natural evolution in our understanding of computer science. For example, Peter Denning suggested that computational thinking is not the same as previous conceptions of computer science, but rather another instantiation of the discipline (Box 2.3)
From page 30...
... 0 REPORT OF A WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL THINKING BOX 2.4 On the Relationship Between Computational Thinking and Fluency with Information Technology A person who is highly capable of computational thinking -- a computational thinker -- is one who has adopted the thinking habits and reasoning methods of computer scientists. A person who is fluent with information technology is one who has adopted a specific menu of facts, concepts, and thinking habits of computer scientists.
From page 31...
... • The general public is increasingly exposed to and literate with the skills of how to use information technology, thus eliminating the need for much formal instruction in skills. Computational thinking, which to first order comprises FITness without the skills component, becomes the emerging focus of formal education.
From page 32...
...  REPORT OF A WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL THINKING I would like to propose that this is actually a three-dimensional problem. We have aspects of computational thinking or computing, we have the other disciplines that we are talking about connecting with, and we have pedagogy, the different levels and so forth.


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