It has been a good week for computational thinking. I have been able to run two staff meetings this week introducing the computational thinking aspect of the revised digital technologies curriculum at two different schools.
It is gratifying to be able to de-mystify and enthuse teachers about a part of the curriculum that they are quite often intimidated by. I get the teachers to examine their own thinking process by illustrating the computational thinking cycle to them, then give them the Marching Ants challenge. I get them to focus on the thinking strategy they undertake to solve the problem and almost universally they adopt the “brute force attack” model and promptly get stuck. This is where most students would give up. I then illustrate to the teachers how to scaffold a student through the decomposition process so that they learn a pathway of success through resilience.
