Computational thinking (CT) is beginning to become a necessary skill to survive within the 21st Century. Wing (2006) argued that CT refers to understanding human behaviour and solving problems by drawing upon the fundamental concepts to computer science emphasizing the idea that it is not about operating like a machine, but how exactly can humans can operate with machines in order to go beyond. Wing (2008) further refined their statement by identifying that the essence of CT is abstractions, “the mental tools of computing.”.
Taking this into consideration, it is interesting how CT has become synonymous with STEM disciplines. It has come to the point where CT and coding becoming an integral part of school curriculum in various countries such as Israel, Finland and the United Kingdom (Angeli & Giannakos, 2020). Although CT education is heavily focused on STEM disciplines, there is no restrictions to implementing CT skills within the humanities disciplines within schools.
Within the tutorial, the goal was to create and design an automatic watering system for a low maintenance plant which will be controlled by a coded Microbit. As this was my first interaction with a Microbit, it was intimidating to use, however through scaffolding and guidance, the Microbit was able to be readily programmed and was able to read the coding that was implemented inside.
From there, in combination with design thinking, an end product was created to where both the Microbit and the self watering system was able to function perfectly.
There were some groups during the tutorial that weren’t as successful in their design with the MicroBit. However, implementing Wing (2006) definition of CT and the goal of fostering creativity within the classroom, a success or a failure within a classroom is highly welcomed with open arms.
Using CT as a creative activity uses combinations of computational abstractions as mental tools in order to use computational mechanisms to represent human imagination and creation (Hoppe & Werneburg, 2019). This means that as educators, taking on a constructivist approach similar to project based learning and using student-centred methods can enhance students’ understanding of CT concepts whilst allowing students to administer their own learning (Angeli & Valanides, 2020; Papavlasopoulou et al., 2020).
CT within humanities disciples such as History maybe difficult however, not completely impossible in order to foster creativity. Another CT tool is the use of games and virtual worlds to which within a stage 4 History classroom learning about Ancient societies such as Ancient China, Ancient Rome or Ancient Egypt, using a CT tool such as Minecraft in order to create these ancient environments will provide the opportunity for students to apply their own understanding and learning into the learn, allow students to be creative in their designs and also allow students to immerse themselves in what Wing (2008) describes as the essence of CT which is the abstractions, representational constructs of data and information.
References
Angeli, C., & Giannakos, M. (2020, April). Computational thinking education: Issues and challenges. Computers in Human Behaviour, 105.
Angeli, C., & Valanides, N. (2020). Developing young children’s computational thinking with educational robotics: An interaction effect between gender and scaffolding strategy. Computers in Human Behavior.
Hoppe, H. U., & Werneburg, S. (2019). Computational Thinking – More Than a Variant of Scientific Inquiry! In S.-C. Kong, & H. Abelson, Computational Thinking Education (pp. 13-30). Singapore: Springer.
Papavlasopoulou, S., Sharma, K., & Giannakos, M. N. (2020). Coding activities for children: Coupling eye-tracking with qualitative data to investigate gender differences. Computers in Human Behavior, 105.
Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational Thinking. Communications of the ACM, 33-35.
Wing, J. M. (2008). Computational thinking and thinking about computing. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 3717-3725.
Digital Creativity & Learning 
Cindy
Computational Thinking is indeed becoming increasingly relevant within the classroom and teachers are having to adapt to the uses of computational thinking in order to enhance those 21st century skills.
The activity in the tutorial was a really fun little experiment and a cool way to show how computational thinking can be integrated into teaching. Although this activity is quite complicated and would certainly be aimed at a higher staged class, the key components can be simplified and taught in as early as stage 1 which makes for a flexible integration.
Also one of the videos was my group, cool to see it feature!
Great post
Alex
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