“A high quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world” (Department for Education, 2013, p. 188).
Students of today’s society are born into an advanced technological world that is continuously adapting, and with this many would call the Generation Z’s ‘digital natives’ (Kalelioğlu, 2015). From this it is important for students to have a developed understanding of computational thinking.
This week’s focus of the blog is ‘computational thinking’. Computational thinking is a problem solving process that enables the understanding of human behaviour and design systems by drawing on the fundamental techniques that surround computer science (Wing, 2006). Computational thinking can be looked at as a critical competency as students will develop careers in areas that are heavily influenced by computing as well as the simple fact of having to utilise technology on a day to day basis (Bower et al., 2017). Additionally, Curzon et al. (2014, p. 2) sheds light on the importance of integrating computing into school curriculums, as it can improve the students ability to become “independent learners, evaluators and potentially designers of new technologies”.
CODE.ORG
Code.org is a website and organisation that centres around its dedication in promoting the importance of integrating computer programming into school curriculums as a core subject area (Josh, 2019). It strives to expand student participation in computer science by encouraging and actively making it more available at schools (Josh, 2019). Code.org uses a visual programming language called ‘blocky’, which utilises a drag and drop function that allows one to generate codes (Kalelioğlu, 2015, p. 3). Code.org offers course materials and educational programs for teaching computer science. The courses aim to teach students not only computer science, but computational thinking and problem solving in a collaborative and creative way (Kalelioğlu, 2015).
References
Bower, M., Wood, L. N., Lai, J. W., Howe, C., Lister, R., Mason, R., … & Veal, J. (2017). Improving the computational thinking pedagogical capabilities of school teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(3), 4.
Josh. (2019). What is Code.Org?. Code.org Support. https://support.code.org/hc/en-us
Curzon, P., Dorling, M., Ng, T., Selby, C., & Woollard, J. (2014). Developing computational thinking in the classroom: a framework.
Department of Education. 2013. The National Curriculum in England, Framework Document. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425601/PRIMARY_national_curriculum.pdf
Kalelioğlu, F. (2015). A new way of teaching programming skills to K-12 students: Code. org. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 200-210.
Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33-35.
Shin, S., Park, P., & Bae, Y. (2013). The effects of an information-technology gifted program on friendship using scratch programming language and clutter. International Journal of Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(3), 246.
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Hi Lily,
I like that you gave a clear definition of what computational thinking is and discussed and it’s role in the curriculum to help students become independent learners. I also really enjoyed using code.org in our tutorials and also thought that students creativity could be greatly fostered when using this program. It’s great how you discussed the links between students learning and developing computational thinking skills through using the same program. I think this is extremely important to find resources that can
Although the program has a large potential to improve features of the curriculum and engage students when learning, I think there are still many limitations to the program as well that could impact learning.
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Hi Lily,
Great post, clear definition of what computational thinking is and what code.org does. I totally agree that students of today will have a very different experience to us when they enter the workforce and teaching them skills such as computational thinking is key to preparing them for their future.
However, I find the section on code.org is a bit descriptive, it doesn’t evaluate or analyse how code.org or programming in general can be used to foster computational thinking in the classroom, or any positives or negatives about it.
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