Computational thinking

Jeannette Wing’s arti­cle gave rise to the “modern” move­ment on com­pu­ta­tio­nal thin­king — you won’t find any­thing pro­found, but take a quick look at it.

  • J. Wing. Computational thin­king. Communications of the ACM, 49(3):33 (2006) [Link] (3 pages)
  • Jeannette Wing. “Computational Thinking Benefits Society”. 40th Anniversary Blog of Social Issues in Computing. (2014) [Link]

A que­stion I will ask you, befo­re you read the other docu­men­ts: do you agree with this vision? Do you think an arti­cle like this could start a revo­lu­tion in tea­ching com­pu­ter scien­ce in schools?

This docu­ment pro­vi­des a com­ple­te over­view of the con­cept of com­pu­ta­tio­nal thin­king and its various interpretations.

  • National Academy of Sciences. Report of a Workshop on The Scope and Nature of Computational Thinking. The National Academy Press (2010) [Link] (solo pagi­ne 7–19, 26–31) (19 pagine)

Let’s read a part of this text:

  • Curzon, Bell, Waite and Dorling. Chapter 17: Computational Thinking. In Fincher and Robins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research. Cambridge University Press (2019) [Link] (only sec­tion 17.2; it seems stran­ge to skip 17.1, but I don’t want to over­load you; take a look if you have time)

In the pre­vious les­son, we discus­sed the natu­re of com­pu­ter scien­ce; in this les­son, we will discuss in more depth what, how, and why com­pu­ter scien­ce, or com­pu­ta­tio­nal thin­king, should be brought into schools.

I will ask you what stri­kes you about the­se tex­ts, and what your doub­ts, per­ple­xi­ties, and cri­ti­ci­sms are of what is proposed.

——–

In the second part, we will give more spa­ce to cri­ti­ci­sms and doub­ts on this topic. So I ask you to read:

  • Tedre, Denning. The Long Quest for Computational Thinking. In Proc. of the 16th Koli Calling Conference on Computing Education Research, Finland (2016) [Link] (10 pages, the fir­st repeat con­cep­ts alrea­dy discussed)
  • David Hemmendinger. A plea for mode­sty. ACM Inroads 1(2):4–7 (2010) [Link] (4 pages)
  • Peter J. Denning. Remaining trou­ble spo­ts with com­pu­ta­tio­nal thin­king. Commun. ACM 60(6):33–39 (2017). [Link] (7 pages)
  • Curzon, Bell, Waite and Dorling. Chapter 17: Computational Thinking. In Fincher and Robins (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research. Cambridge University Press (2019) [Link] (only Sections 17.3, 17.4) (4 pages)

We will then review the topics we discus­sed in the fir­st les­son with a more cri­ti­cal eye:

  • Is “com­pu­ta­tio­nal thin­king” so fundamental?
  • What is your posi­tion on the cri­ti­ci­sms discus­sed in the articles?
  • What are the open issues?
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