What is Computational Thinking?

I am already teaching computational thinking skills whenever students find solutions to problems and skills to fix issues. This includes data analysis and visualization to help draw conclusions. I teach ELA so students do this all the time with text analysis, reading comprehension multiple choice, and using research data to help support their thesis as valuable evidence in arguments. In the future, I will need to use this more to try and have these skills translate inside and outside of the classroom along with other classes. 

I am already teaching computational thinking skills whenever students find solutions to problems and skills to fix issues. This includes data analysis and visualization to help draw conclusions. I teach ELA so students do this all the time with text analysis, reading comprehension multiple choice, and using research data to help support their thesis as valuable evidence in arguments. In the future, I will need to use this more to try and have these skills translate inside and outside of the classroom along with other classes. 

I use this type of thinking in my classroom on a daily basis. We practice coding and other basic skills to help students learn how to problem solve. This can be very difficult for students because of time management skills and task priority. I find that students need to put the tasks in order in print to accomplish many basic tasks. I need to help them figure out how to itemize and not be distracted. Keeping them engaged and wanting to learn more.

Getting my Kindergarten students to log in to my Google Classroom is Computational Thinking - This takes many classes of going through the process step by step.  If each step is not followed precisely - they will not have success.  

As technology integrator, I'm trying to demonstrate that computational thinking is not limited to computer science classes but can be integrated into all content areas. Many teachers are already incorporating aspects of computational thinking into their teaching, such as breaking down complicated problems into smaller steps and using data analysis and visualization to draw conclusions. I have tied this into coding and programming.

However, to meet students' needs moving forward, teachers will need to continue to prioritize computational thinking skills in their teaching. This means actively seeking out opportunities to integrate computational thinking into their lessons and providing students with the tools and resources they need to develop their problem-solving skills. Teachers may need to seek out professional development opportunities to learn more about computational thinking and how to effectively integrate it into their teaching. This could involve attending workshops or conferences or collaborating with other teachers to share best practices and strategies for teaching computational thinking.

A large part of technology education is introducing computational thinking and then linking the usefulness to other disciplines through out the school.   Many students have been exposed to this way of problem solving( Engineering Design Process or the Scientific method) but look at these strategies as only useful in the class they were introduced.  Many times students get stuck on the vocab used in these processes and it makes it difficult to draw meaningful connections to understand the usefulness of these strategies into problem solving on a daily basis. 

In my classroom, many of the ideas presented are things I am already doing with my students.  This includes modeling and simulation - I have my kids create 3D printed designs to go along with a variety of units - most recently Invention Convention.  I also use a lot of graphs and spreadsheets for kids to organize and present information.  In addition, there are many activities and projects where kids need to follow specific steps.  I think that many of the ideas in the video are things teachers already do and they just don't know.  Helping my colleagues realize how easy it is to integrate this standard into things they are already doing (or showing them how they are already integrating) is something I could totally do.