Computational Thinking Is All Around Us (and at TCEA also)

Participants in today's Computational Thinking workshop. They are working collaboratively in groups on an unplugged activity at a table.

Earlier today, my colleague Lauren Boucher and I presented a session titled “Solving the Puzzle:  Putting the Pieces Together Via Computational Thinking” at TCEA in Austin.  TCEA is designed to support educators in Texas and beyond in implementing digital tools and instructional technology to support and transform student learning.  Those attending definitely gave us a warm “Lone Star State” welcome and blew us away with their interest in our session and collaboration with others.  Computational Thinking provides our students with the opportunity to develop strategies and processes to solve problems in an efficient manner that yields results.  

This session is rooted in the Office of Digital Teaching & Learning commitment to provide resources to North Carolina educators to meet the state’s new computer science education graduation requirement.  

As an educator who has dabbled in various aspects of computer science, I realize that many educators often lack exposure and experience in Computational Thinking which is the foundation that leads into a successful Computer Science experience.  We were delighted to debut this session to our Texas friends at this year’s TCEA Convention and Exposition.

Computational Thinking involves “using special thinking patterns and processes to pose and solve problems” (taken from the book “Computational Thinking { and Coding } for Every Student” by Jane Krauss and Kiki Prottsman).  Based on my experience, many educators often do not realize how much Computational Thinking that they use in their classrooms, especially in the K-5 classroom.  During this session, we provided relevant connections to the work that teachers do in their classroom that actually represent Computational Thinking.

One of key learnings involved focusing on the four pillars of Computational Thinking:  

• Algorithm
• Decomposition
• Pattern Recognition
• Abstraction

Lauren and I wanted to ensure that those attending the session understood what these pillars are and could recognize when they applied them during several of the activities in the session.  Throughout the presentation, we asked participants to recognize and share when they used one of the four pillars in the session.  

We equated algorithms to a set of directions that would be followed for a recipe.  We wanted to ensure that we taught the vocabulary in a relevant and contextual way that connected in an authentic manner to the lives of our students.  The reality is that elements of their four pillars and Computational Thinking are embedded in the world of our students.  

Decomposition, the breaking down into smaller parts, is often used by our students to solve problems that they experience.  Imagine that a child tosses a ball onto the roof of her/his home and the ball gets stuck in the gutter (a common experience at my house).  The child wants to retrieve the ball but the gutter is too far away from the child.  The child may find that trying to solve this problem is daunting and overwhelming at first.  But when the child thinks about breaking the problem into simpler parts, then a solution becomes more plausible.   The child may realize that he/she needs to figure out how to get up to the level of the gutter, perhaps by carefully and quietly moving a ladder, unbeknownst to the child’s parent, to the gutter.  The student may also realize that they have to do this quickly and quietly or else, the problem may be discovered by her/his parents.  The child may also realize that he/she needs to figure out where in the gutter the ball is located and how to get it out of the gutter.  By breaking this problem down into small steps through utilizing decomposition, the child is able to solve the problem in a more efficient and effective manner without the parents ever knowing (provided the ladder is put back in its original position and condition).

During today’s session, we completed an unplugged activity from Code.org in which participants were asked to add up all the numbers between 1 and 200 in 30 seconds. As one may imagine, this could and is challenging to complete compounded by the short duration of time.  As we shared the solution, I heard a classroom teacher who was seated near me share the following: 
“Would this approach work for a set of numbers that were odd instead of even?”  This demonstrates the idea that Computational Thinking also involves posing problems as well as finding solutions.  This quote clearly demonstrates the curiosity of the educator and her wonders about if the pattern that we showed to solve the problem works for all seats of numbers.  

Computational Thinking exists in the world all around us.  We must work to ensure that our educators connect Computational Thinking and its related elements to the world in which our students live.  By helping students see the relevance of Computational Thinking, we can ensure that we build the necessary skills and provide the needed experiences for our students to be ready to complete North Carolina’s Computer Science requirement as well as equipping them with the experiences needed to prepare them for their future and demonstrating and expanding their skills required for North Carolina’s Portrait of a Graduate.  

We created a document for those wishing to explore additional resources for Computational Thinking and invite you to review this and add any additional resources to our padlet in column 5.

• Krauss, Jane, and Prottsman, Kiki. Computational Thinking { and Coding } for Every Student. Corwin, 2017.
• Original blog post was revised based on feedback from Chat GPT using the following prompt:  “Please review this blog and offer and any suggestions / edits”

---