This week’s show on ITConversations explores what Jeannette Wing means by computational thinking. As I noted here, she has coined that evocative phrase to suggest how the intellectual tools of computer science — including abstraction, naming, composition, state machines, refactoring, and separation of concerns — can add up to “a universally applicable attitude and skill set that everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.”
At Carnegie Mellon, where Dr. Wing is head of the computer science department, this way of thinking pervades many other academic disciplines. But in her view, it’s really as fundamental as reading, writing, and arithmetic, and like those skills it should be taught in grade school. Since that’s not likely to happen anytime soon, I wonder if computer games — which already teach kids certain aspects of computational thinking — could help advance this agenda in a more deliberate way.
June 18, 2007 at 7:35 am
[...] state machines, refactoring, and separation of concerns — can add up to “a … (Read on Source) Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and [...]
June 18, 2007 at 8:29 am
[...] Jon Udell links to → his interview with Jeannette Wing about computational thinking → which reminds me of Conrad Parker’s Freedom of Automation talk (Ogg, 19M) at our Software Freedom Day event in Sydney last year. [...]
June 18, 2007 at 10:07 am
[...] John Udell talks about Jeannette Wing’s concept of “computational thinking“, and points to a podcast on it (which I haven’t listened to, no. But that’s antoher topic). [...]
August 29, 2007 at 12:27 pm
[...] most people aren’t comfortable with that indirection. If Jeanette Wing has her way, such computational thinking will become much more prevalent. I hope she’s right, and I wonder what we can do to encourage [...]
December 2, 2007 at 4:45 pm
[...] Jon Udell’s interview with Jeanette Wing (audio) about why everyone should think like computer scientists [...]
April 22, 2008 at 4:46 pm
[...] are ways of computational thinking unknown to most people. As a school administrator, librarian, city planner, social worker, or [...]
May 12, 2008 at 10:29 pm
How about “reasoning” for the fourth “R”? Maybe it doesn’t quite capture some of the “newness” of ideas in “computational thinking.” But it does start with “R”.
I love the “Conversations” series. Keep picking great folks!
May 14, 2008 at 10:56 am
[...] I’ve been meaning to note a connection between computational thinking and health. Sean writes: RSI is about the most complex problem I have ever tried to [...]
June 2, 2008 at 9:34 am
[...] I’ve been meaning to note a connection between computational thinking and health. Sean writes: RSI is about the most complex problem I have ever tried to [...]
December 4, 2008 at 10:38 am
[...] Those problems used to plague only IT folk. But now we’re all involved. Effective social information management is quite severely constrained by the fact that regular folks are not (yet) taught the basics of computational thinking. [...]
June 10, 2009 at 10:30 am
[...] principles of computational thinking will become part of everyone’s educational foundation. (blog) [...]
September 10, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I agree Computational Thinking is very important and can be a very important tool no mater what area you are in. i am wondering why there are no tools to support computational thinking. if we relay want to push this idea i think its more then teaching a powerful way to think but also giving them the power to do something with this thinking method. its like standards committees, whats better defining a standard if how to do something or just providing a tool to do it by the standard very easily. as a programmer i don’t want to implement long standards but i don’t care about taking a ready module with a simple interface that will implement the standard. should we be educating or creating tool for computational thinking ?
March 8, 2010 at 11:10 am
[...] and techniques shouldn’t be a badge of membership in a separate tribe. In conversations with Jeannette Wing and Joan Peckham I’ve explored the idea that what they and others call computational thinking [...]
March 22, 2010 at 9:20 pm
[...] and techniques shouldn’t be a badge of membership in a separate tribe. In conversations with Jeannette Wing and Joan Peckham I’ve explored the idea that what they and others call computational thinking is [...]
May 1, 2010 at 1:50 am
Great post thx a lot !