Computational Thinking
We were doing some Sudoko puzzles when my 6 year old declared that he will “become a doctor for kids and will just give pills, no vaccines”. That was a surprise as we don’t really discuss about any ‘profession’ he would adopt. We just enjoy learning all subjects. I guess that the current talk about pandemic, vaccine etc made an impression on him and he drew some conclusions.
This indicates that young children are very perceptive, absorbing information, processing it and making inferences and conclusions. They are always learning. Their brains don’t stop learning when it’s time for lunch break or sleep. In fact, all parents have had to answer some tough scientific or philosophical questions when it was way beyond sleep time on a weekday night!
Learning doesn’t happen in silos of subjects. Similarly, many innovations or problem solutions may span multiple subjects. And that lays the case for teaching Computational Thinking (CT) to all students.
CT is a powerful problem-solving technique applicable to numerous scenarios spread across the spectrum of different subjects. The purpose of CT is to equip our kids to better understand the world, innovate and solve problems in their chosen professional field. The purpose of CT is not to create millions of Computer scientists. Rather, the purpose is to provide tools for more holistic and cross-disciplinary approach to problem solving.
And CT can (and should) be taught as an interdisciplinary skill.
CT can be integrated in a language class, to break (decompose) a story into the key events and characters separated from the non-crucial information(abstraction). In a Physical education class to create an algorithm of repeated exercise movements. In a music class to identify similar rifts(patterns) within a song. In a science class to write the steps (algorithm) of conducting their experiment.
There are numerous ways in which CT can be integrated with other subjects. Of course, we educators need to understand and work with cross-disciplinary approach.
Some of the skills that Computational Thinking help develop, includes the following:
· It helps children decompose/break down the problem or the requirements.
· It helps children identify the patterns in the problem or data
· It helps children make prediction about the next data element
· It helps children identify the sequencing or steps of a process
· It helps children better articulate a problem
The above-listed skills help children develop their analytical, problem solving and innovation skills.
And isn’t that the very purpose of education? The education cannot be just transfer of facts. We don’t have to transfer our narrative and idea of who they should be when they grow up. We, as parents and educators, can equip them with the tools to think, analyse, evaluate, predict and create. The professional success will be well taken care of.
As Margaret Maed said “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think”
#ComputationalThinking #CredoLearnings
