Report of a Workshop on the Pedagogical Aspects of Computational Thinking (2011) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
4 Summaries of Individual Presentations
4 Summaries of Individual Presentations
Pages 65-132
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 65... ...
• What are plausible paths and activities for teaching the most important computational thinking concepts? Presenters: Robert Tinker, Concord Consortium Mitch Resnick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology John Jungck, Beloit College, BioQUEST Idit Caperton, World Wide Workshop Committee respondent: Uri Wilensky 65
|
From page 66... ...
Tinker's view is that science is the right focus because modern science often uses computational models that are based on scientific principles and whose use depends on visualizations. Understanding these models requires computational thinking -- scientific models and visualizations allow students to visualize the computations that are going on in near real time.
|
From page 67... ...
Another option is to use an existing piece of software in which the student can manipulate important parameters. 4.1.3 Mitch Resnick, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mitch Resnick of the MIT Media Lab said that computational thinkers must be able to use computational media to create, build, and invent solutions to problems.
|
From page 68... ...
He argued that computer science classes often overemphasize computational thinking concepts (such as recursion) at the expense of helping students develop computational thinking capaci ties for design and social cooperation.
|
From page 69... ...
Some will spend a lot of time continuing to work on the same types of projects, over and over. You might think that they are stuck, but there's a lot of things happening in their minds, and suddenly they'll start working on new types of projects and ideas." Resnick and his colleagues are working on many new initiatives to support the development of computational thinking through Scratch, including an online community (called ScratchEd)
|
From page 70... ...
focuses on bioinformatics. The BEDROCK project requires students to use a supercomputer tool 1 The Biological ESTEEM Collection, website, BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, http:// bioquest.org/esteem/index.php.
|
From page 71... ...
BIRDD helps students generate questions and look at, for instance, whether character displacement happens when the species co-occur or when they inhabit different islands. To illustrate the special relationship between biology on one hand and mathematics and computation on the other, Jungck noted 10 equations that have driven substantial amounts of biological research and for which numerous educational materials have been developed:3 1.
|
From page 72... ...
that "computers have changed biology forever, even if most biologists don't yet realize it." Educationally, he stressed the work of di Sessa, Parnafes, and others who emphasize the importance of engaging students in constructing, revising, inventing, inspect ing, critiquing, and using rich visualizations for promoting conceptual understanding. 4.1.5 Idit Caperton, World Wide Workshop, Globaloria Idit Caperton described Globaloria as a platform, a transformative social media learning network, with a comprehensive hybrid course (online/in class)
|
From page 73... ...
. The Globaloria approach emphasizes constructionist collaboration 5 The canonical examples of such research are Idit Caperton, 1991, Children Designers, and Idit Caperton and Seymour Papert, 1991, Constructionism, both published by Ablex, Norwood, New Jersey 6 Caperton recommended repeating the use of Globaloria year after year for greater effects on computational thinking in learners.
|
From page 74... ...
Finally, Caperton described research she and colleagues conducted on the impact of implementing models of Globaloria for fostering com putational thinking and inventiveness among low-income rural students and low-income minority urban schoolchildren: (1) Model 1 in 45 schools throughout the public school system in 20 counties in the state of West
|
From page 75... ...
She provided an overview of selected research results7 and shared video case studies.8 Caperton argued that these were powerful demonstrations of plausible paths and activities for teaching computational thinking concepts to low-income rural and urban students of underserved communities. 4.2 COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AND TECHNOLOGY 4.2.1 Questions Addressed • What are the relevant lessons learned and best practices for improving computational thinking in K-12 education?
|
From page 76... ...
(Panoff further noted that engaging in computational think ing is a partial remedy to misconceptions about quantity.) Panoff described an exploration based on quantitative reasoning that addressed computational thinking and algorithmic thinking.
|
From page 77... ...
Finally, she will write a model that calls for the use of slider bars to change parameters. Pedagogically useful computational models are accurately implemented and provide appropriate data visualization tools.
|
From page 78... ...
Uzzo further argued that the computational thinking needed to engage in e-science includes a number of often-neglected concepts: • Complexity. Practitioners need to know when the e-science paradigm for doing scientific research is (and is not)
|
From page 79... ...
It must facilitate interoperability between applica tions used by researchers, and it must provide easy-to-use tools for pro cessing, manipulating, and combining multiple data types. In discussion, Al Aho noted that "the software world of today is largely a Tower of Babel with lots of incompatible infrastructures and a lot of expense regarding who pays, who collects the data, who maintains the data, who maintains and evolves the software." To illustrate the tools necessary, Uzzo discussed the idea of a "mac roscope" and an existing tool called the FreeSpace Manager.
|
From page 80... ...
To support collaborative data sharing involving multiple data types and streaming, the University of Illinois at Chicago is developing the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) , a central element of which is the FreeSpace Manager.15 SAGE is a physical room whose walls are made from seamless ultra-high-resolution displays fed by data streamed over ultra-high-speed networks from distantly located visualization and storage servers.
|
From page 81... ...
He further suggested that informal learning institutions may be in the best position to advance the cause of e-science because these institutions have an opportunity to move computational thinking beyond the traditional bounds of today's computer science by helping to close the gap between science as a research activity and learning about science. These institutions are also in a good position to conduct learning research around this topic and then to integrate such research into professional development and curriculum development for K-12 formal education.
|
From page 82... ...
-- Balance structure with exploration. It is important to encourage authentic interest, but also to provide enough structure to encourage games that include computational thinking concepts.
|
From page 83... ...
Denner reported that they faced a number of challenges in their middle school efforts to promote computational thinking among students in both high- and low-resourced schools. Chal lenges included mundane issues such as difficulties with hardware and software and with Internet access.
|
From page 84... ...
A typical prediction is that the cup will become mostly blue or mostly yellow depending on the color of the bead first chosen. What happens in fact is that for any given cup, the percentage of blue beads converges to a fixed fraction, but the fraction is different for different cups.
|
From page 85... ...
A third example provided by Gross involved descriptive statistics using personal data. The question posed to students is what happens to one's height overnight.
|
From page 86... ...
• How do computers and programming fit into computational thinking? • What are plausible paths and activities for teaching the most important computational thinking concepts?
|
From page 87... ...
The EiE project is developing an elementary school curriculum to help students learn about engineering. It integrates engineering with topics in elementary school science.
|
From page 88... ...
It is well known that many elementary school teachers are TABLE 4.1 Correspondences Between Elementary Science and Engineering Corresponding Topic from Elementary Technological Device or Science Program Engineering Specialty Process Water Environmental Water filters Insects and plants Agricultural Pollinators Wind and weather Mechanical Windmills Simple machines Industrial Chip factory design Earth materials Materials Walls Balance and forces Civil Bridges Sound Acoustical Sound representation Organisms Bioengineering Model membranes Electricity Electrical Alarm circuits Solids and liquids Chemical Playdough process Landforms Geotechnical Bridge sitting Plants Package Plant package Magnetism Transportation Maglev vehicle Energy Sustainable Solar cooker Solar system Aerospace Parachute Rocks and minerals Materials Replicate an artifact Floating and sinking Oceans Submersible Ecosystems Environmental Oil spill remediation Human body Biomedical Knee brace Light Optical Lighting system
|
From page 89... ...
Cunningham also noted the importance of articulating how new con tent and skills are responsive to existing educational standards, such as those from the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA) Standards for Technological Literacy, the National Science Education Standards from the National Academy of Sciences, and the math standards from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
|
From page 90... ...
The storybooks are an essential element of context-setting, but it is important to contextualize the entire learning experience and not just the beginning. Cunningham closed by pointing out that some of the lessons above for introducing engineering into elementary school also applied to middle schools and high schools.
|
From page 91... ...
Regarding the infrastructure needed for teaching computational thinking, Martin said that present trends point to the disappearance of the computer "as computer" in the future -- the computer will become increasingly invisible. If so, teachers of computational thinking will have to find pedagogical approaches that do not necessarily depend on the computer per se.
|
From page 92... ...
With such an infrastructure, Martin's goal is to make the underlying technology as transparent as possible to students, and thus "computational thinking" can be sneaked into student activities without intimidating them so that the computer is "a tool like a pencil, no big deal at all, an extension of your hands." 4.3.4 Ursula Wolz, College of New Jersey Ursula Wolz described the use of journalism education and the language arts as vehicles for exploring computational thinking in a pro gram at the Fisher Middle School in Ewing, New Jersey.17 Paraphrasing Gerald Sussman's statements at the first NRC Workshop on Computa tional Thinking,18 she began her presentation by arguing that computational thinking requires first and foremost a language through which to express that thinking. Languages can be natural or formal.
|
From page 93... ...
Further, 21st century literacy will require facility with as yet unimagined modes of expression that involve computational thinking. The extracurricular program her project developed reinforces language arts skills and computational thinking by providing a collaborative model for a 21st century newsroom.
|
From page 94... ...
21 Ursula Wolz, Kim Pearson, Monisha Pulimood, Meredith Stone, and Mary Switzer, 2011, "Computational Thinking and Expository Writing in the Middle School: A Novel Approach to Broadening Participation in Computing," ACM Transactions on Computing Education, forthcoming.
|
From page 95... ...
He pointed to the NRC report on the first workshop on computational thinking and the lack of consensus on what it is, and suggested that it is no different asking any computer scientist -- ask 10 different computer scientists what computer science is and you'll get multiple different answers. So, he asked, "How can we advance the cause of a discipline that we don't understand?
|
From page 96... ...
He further noted that discrete mathematics and logic are rich sources of examples and material for computational thinking, and thus that discrete mathematics and logic are the foundational mathematics for computational thinking, useful for reasoning about computational processes. Thus, Henderson would start with computational thinking activities in pre-K (e.g., reversing the two cars)
|
From page 97... ...
• How do cognitive learning theory and education theory guide the design of instruction intended to foster computational thinking? Presenters: Deanna Kuhn, Columbia University Matthew Stone, Rutgers University Jim Slotta, University of Toronto Joyce Malyn-Smith, Education Development Center, Inc.
|
From page 98... ...
," they tend to say, "Yes, that means the mouse must be big." Premature closure also sometimes occurs when children are presented with confirming evidence. Children often stop the inquiry at this point, not realizing that the inquiry remains unfinished and that confirming evidence is not sufficient to rule out competing hypotheses.25 Mitch Resnick has made a similar argument that not just kids but also adults are onecause thinkers -- that even adults identify one cause (of potentially many)
|
From page 99... ...
:1364-1366. 27 Deanna Kuhn and Susan Pearsall, 2000, "Developmental Origins of Scientific Thinking," Journal of Cognition and Development 1:113-129.
|
From page 100... ...
Stone emphasized the importance of three key ideas in teaching com putational thinking: • The universality of computing devices. Universality explains why it can ultimately be easier to design a machine that does many things (or everything)
|
From page 101... ...
WISE provides embedded assessments of student conceptual understanding of the inquiry processes they use, and it support teachers in adopting pedagogical practices that facilitate inquiry approaches to science education. Slotta described WISE as a largely successful educational innovation for inquiry that was adopted by tens of thousands of students and teachers.
|
From page 102... ...
It retains most SAIL elements, such as portals for managing user groups and the XML structures, as well as some of the metadata, and adds a new presentation layer. SAIL has been used in a number of other science education efforts as well.
|
From page 103... ...
that requires coverage of a particular body of subject matter, orchestrating the proceedings in a knowledge community and connecting them to specific learning objectives presents extraordinary challenges. This complex orchestration of people, materials, resources, groups, conditions, and so on requires a sophisticated technology framework to support it.
|
From page 104... ...
That is, these environments focus student attention on inquiry, reflection, and collaboration around subject-matter content, rather than on how to interact with the technologies per se -- the technology thus becomes more trans parent and more invisible to the student. 4.4.5 Joyce Malyn-Smith, Education Development Center, Inc., ITEST Learning Resource Center Joyce Malyn-Smith from the Education Development Center, Inc., began by noting the importance of designing and managing both schoolbased and informal learning environments.
|
From page 105... ...
But this itera tive process just doesn't fit in a school curriculum packed with hundreds of discrete topics that are connected loosely at best. Time allocations that allow for depth and complexity are part of the culture change needed for computational thinking to take root.
|
From page 106... ...
As for content, Malyn-Smith argued the need for clarity regarding what computational thinking is about. In the absence of such clarity, "it will be impossible to get any consistency in schools because people won't understand what the topic is about, or people will interpret its definition as seen through only their individual lens." She added that effective nationwide teaching of computational thinking requires a stra tegic approach based on clear definitions and illustrations rather than a scattershot set of examples.
|
From page 107... ...
Grades 5-8 would also focus on computational thinking literacy but would fold in career exploration and learning about computational thinking skills for various STEM careers. Grades 9-10 would address computational thinking for all careers -- students could explore and experiment with computational thinking in a variety of different contexts.
|
From page 108... ...
Last, she argued that the number of students who initially pursue computer science majors in college usually reflects the number of students who later graduate with a degree in the discipline. To increase the pool of computer scientists, it is necessary to provide high school students with opportunities for computer science education so that they enter college already interested in the discipline.
|
From page 109... ...
In addition to the curriculum development component, Cuny noted other challenges as well, such as getting the new curriculum into the schools, teacher preparation and ongoing professional development, and so on. She particularly called attention to the current patchwork of state standards, credit issues, and certification requirements -- in her words, "they are a mess." Cuny and her colleagues are working with the Asso ciation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
|
From page 110... ...
She noted that as difficult as it is to train teachers who are already teaching computer science to teach even more computing to an increasingly rigorous standard, training science teachers who have little or no incentive to do so is even harder. In the long run, there is value in integrating computing into STEM education, but for now the CS 10K project serves as a kind of discipline-specific "race to the top." 4.5 EDUCATING THE EDUCATORS 4.5.1 Questions Addressed • What are the goals for teachers and educators to bring computational thinking into classrooms effectively?
|
From page 111... ...
instructional framework and aligned with the state and national science standards set forth in a number of works,34 and it has been adopted by the school district in which the project has been operated. 35 Williams argued that learning about genetic inheritance in middle school is a particularly interesting prospect because, although there is ample research at the secondary level indicating that students have many non-normative ideas about the topic, research is needed on middle and upper elementary school students' understanding of genetics concepts.
|
From page 112... ...
Erikson, 1980, "Children's Belief and Inherited Characteristics," Journal of Biological Education 14:137-146; and Grady Venville, Susan J Gribble, and Jennifer Donovan, 2005, "An Exploration of Young Children's Understandings of Genetics Concepts from Ontological and Epistemological Perspectives," Science Education 89:614-633.
|
From page 113... ...
:3-15; Jodie Galosy, Jamie Mikeska, Jeffrey Rozelle, and Suzanne Wilson, 2008, "Characterizing New Science Teacher Support: A Prerequisite for Linking Professional Development to Teacher Knowledge and Practice," paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York, March 2008; Suzanne Wilson and Jennifer Berne, 1999, "Teacher Learning and the Acquisition of Professional Knowledge: An Examination of Research on Contemporary Professional Development," Review of Research in Education 24(1) :173-209; NRC, 1996, National Science Education Standards, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?
|
From page 114... ...
In one example, Williams explained that she worked with a former English teacher who had recently moved to science education. The teacher's discomfort with the technology associated with the project seemed to stem more from "the fact that she doesn't feel as confident with the science in general, and .
|
From page 115... ...
, teachers reported that this simula tion-based approach enabled them to teach ecology in their middle school science classrooms more effectively. With this experience behind them, the teachers were more receptive to teaching programming.
|
From page 116... ...
On the basis of essays written or posters created by students that describe how runoff affects lake ecology, Allan and Erickson believe that students learn to make fairly sophisticated mental models of the lake ecosystem. Allan and Erickson also described the "Program a Bunny" environment.
|
From page 117... ...
They believe that learning ecology through the use of agent-based simu lations combined with an agent-based programming challenge provided their middle school students with a rich learning environment for com putational thinking. 4.5.4 Danny Edelson, National Geographic Society Danny Edelson oversees the National Geographic Society's broadbased efforts to improve geographic education in the United States and around the world.43 He characterized the efforts as building "geoliteracy," the ability to reason effectively about far-reaching decisions -- the decisions that affect other people and places that members of 21st century society routinely face.
|
From page 118... ...
• To what extent is this systems view of the world a form of computational thinking in the way it actually plays out in the practice of geog raphy or science or environmental science? • How are these two things supportive of each other?
|
From page 119... ...
community involve constraint satisfaction, sometimes with multiple constraints. For example, Edelson and colleagues developed a high school environmental science course in which one of the challenges was to find an appropriate location for a coal-burning power plant in a region of Wisconsin.
|
From page 120... ...
Robert Panoff noted the importance of understanding limitations in the underlying data. In response, Edelson said that in his view, the issue of discrete versus continuous data is a placeholder for the whole issue of data quality, where it comes from, what you can and should be doing with it, and how you question it.
|
From page 121... ...
His presentation discussed implementations of computational thinking and computer-based modelbuilding activities within the context of a real undergraduate materials science/engineering classroom. He also shared some of his ideas for assessment of student learning under these circumstances.
|
From page 122... ...
Blikstein offered an alternative restructuration based on computational thinking that represents a gas as a collection of molecules moving in a gas cham ber governed by a simple rule: a molecule will move forward until or unless it bumps into another molecule or wall, at which point it will bounce back. This simple rule applied in this agent-based model results in aggregate behavior of the collection of gas molecules that is identical to that described by the formal gas law equations.
|
From page 123... ...
4.6.3 Christina Schwarz, Michigan State University Christina Schwarz, an associate professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University, described her work with elementary and middle school students using scientific modeling and practices. The MoDeLS (Modeling Designs for Learning Science)
|
From page 124... ...
She further noted an overlap between modeling practice and computational thinking, particularly the ideas of abstracting and decom posing systems, testing the model against actual data, and so on. Schwarz argued that models can make important aspects of science accessible by helping students to understand invisible processes, mecha nisms, and components in phenomena.
|
From page 125... ...
Schwarz uses a four-level learning progression to guide the interpretation of student activities. This progression is continually revised and improved based on their assessment outcomes.
|
From page 126... ...
4.6.4 Mike Clancy, University of California, Berkeley Mike Clancy, from the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, addressed the topic of assessment for introductory programming classes. His top-level goals for students could be characterized as knowing when given aspects of computational thinking
|
From page 127... ...
They demonstrate how abstract concepts are manifest in specific situations. They encourage reflection and self-monitoring, and they support collaborative learning and emphasize links among various problem solutions.
|
From page 128... ...
A prerequisite for assessment is a common understanding of the important constructs and concepts of the topic being assessed. In the case of computational thinking, Briggs noted a lack of consensus on its essential elements and commented that even if one isn't willing to put down a thorough definition of what constitutes computa tional thinking, there has to be some common ground on the topic.
|
From page 129... ...
A learning progression can be regarded as an ordered description of a specific student's understanding of a given concept as that student learns more about it; a description of successively more sophisticated understanding of a concept or ways of reasoning in a content domain; and also an ordered description of a typical student's understanding of a given concept as students learn more about it. • Developing a better intellectual understanding of a subject.
|
From page 130... ...
EiE is a curriculum development and improvement effort that develops engineering guides and activities for children in grades 1-5. Assessments of EiE activities are focused on what students learn and measure specific learning objectives.46 Lachapelle noted that there is no existing standard "yardstick" against which to assess student learning about engineering.
|
From page 131... ...
All work products require regular evaluation, including teacher guides, student exercises and activities, the learning goals, and teacher professional development materials and activities. As is usually the case, formative evaluation is used to inform the development and improvement of products and processes.
|
From page 132... ...
Although external evaluators are likely to be more objective in their assessments, they do not have the advantage of an ongoing relationship with the teachers, administrators, and students whom they are engaging and thus may miss subtleties that more familiar evaluators might observe. In her discussion, Lachapelle cautioned that assessments and evalu ations of computational thinking activities and materials require clearly specified learning objectives, which in turn require some community consensus regarding the content of computational thinking -- that is, what is it that the community wants children at various ages to know (from early elementary school to college)
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.