iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Computational thinking is the process of breaking down a complex problem into easy to understand parts. Essentially, computational thinking helps you break down a problem into bite-sized pieces that a computer could understand and ultimately help solve.



Computational thinking is not programming. Programming tells a computer what to do and how to do it. Whereas computational thinking is the process of figuring out what to tell the computer to do. Computational thinking is the process of thinking like a computer scientist.

Over the past decade, there has been much discussion of the term computational thinking. The term, popularized by computer scientist Jeannette Wing, is generally used to describe computer-science concepts and strategies that can be useful in understanding and solving problems in a wide range of disciplines and contexts. In a growing number of schools around the world, there are now efforts to help students develop as computational thinkers.

In our Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab, we prefer to focus on the idea of computational fluency rather than computational thinking. Why? We want to highlight the importance of children developing as computational creators as well as computational thinkers. In our view, computational fluency involves not only an understanding of computational concepts and problem-solving strategies, but also the ability to create and express oneself with digital technologies.