21st Century Learning and Teaching

There is growing recognition in the education systems around the globe that being able to problem-solve computationally—that is, to think logically and algorithmically, and use computational tools for creating artifacts including models and data visualizations—is rapidly becoming a prerequisite competency for all fields.

In 2012, the U.K. national curriculum began introducing computer science (CS) to all students. Singapore, as part of its “Smart Nation” initiative, has labeled developing CT as a “national capability.” Other countries, from Finland to South Korea, China to Australia and New Zealand, have launched large-scale efforts to introduce CT in schools, as either a part of new CS curricula or integrated into existing subjects. Here in the U.S., former President Barack Obama called on all K-12 students to be equipped with CT skills as part of an “Computer Science for All” initiative in 2016. Most emergent efforts in the US involving CT are currently part of CS curricula, although CT is increasingly seeing integration into STEM (especially science) learning.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Computational+Thinking

One might think that computational thinking is somehow only relevant to STEM education. But it’s not true. Computational thinking is relevant across the whole curriculum. To social studies. To language arts. To music. To art. Even to sports. In every one of these areas there are very powerful—and often very clarifying—things that can be done with computation and computational thinking.

For instance, you can talk about a Shakespeare play and try to get a general sense of the flow in it. Well, with computational thinking you can imagine creating a social network for the play (for instance, who “knows” who through being in the same scene). And pretty soon you have a nice summary, that’s a place to launch from in talking about the nuances of the play and its themes.

Imagine you’re talking about different language families. Well, you can just take some words and use WordTranslation to translate them into hundreds of languages. Then you could make a dendrogram to show how the forms of those words cluster in different languages—and you can discover the Indo-European language family.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Computational+Thinking

Computational thinking is the process of logical problem solving that allows us to break down challenges into manageable chunks. It is ‘computational’ not only because it is logical in the same way that a computer is, but also because this allows us to turn to computer power to solve it.

As Jeannette M. Wing puts it:

“To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability. Just as the printing press facilitated the spread of the three Rs, what is appropriately incestuous about this vision is that computing and computers facilitate the spread of computational thinking.”

This process is at the heart of a data journalist’s work: it is what allows the data journalist to solve the problems that make up so much of modern journalism, and to be able to do so with the speed and accuracy that news processes demand.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=content+marketing

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=content+strategy