Eclectic Technology

Should we be teaching coding to our students? What does computer literacy mean? And what is computational thinking? These are some of the questions addressed in this article from Mother Jones.

Let's start with the question 'What is computational thinking?' Below is a quote from the article.

"If you've ever improvised dinner, pat yourself on the back: You've engaged in some light CT...If seeing the culinary potential in raw ingredients is like computational thinking, you might think of a software algorithm as a kind of recipe: a step-by-step guide on how to take a bunch of random ingredients and start layering them together in certain quantities, for certain amounts of time, until they produce the outcome you had in mind."

There are so many quotes I could pull from this article to share. Below are two more and I would urge you to take the time to click through and read the entire article (and it is quite long). Along with a information on the history of literacy (as in reading and writing as well as computer) you will find a video of individuals (some of whom you will recognize) talking about how they became involved in computational literacy as well as many graphs and images. On to the quotes...

"Computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior," she writes in a publication of the Association for Computing Machinery. Those are handy skills for everybody, not just computer scientists.

And while many kids have mad skills in movie editing or Photoshopping, such talents can lull parents into thinking they're learning real computing. "We teach our kids how to be consumers of technology, not creators of technology," notes the NSF's Cuny.