<div dir="ltr">I'm with Mark Guzdial on this, at least for the school sector - we're teaching an approach to thinking, and it is this that students will still find useful in 20 years' time. It's very practical to teach this via computer programming, in much the same way as some other subject areas are effective ways to encourage other specific forms of thinking. <div> </div><div>At the same time there are elements of the programming fraternity who will maintain that Scratch and other drag and drop programming interfaces are "not real programming".  I suspect once there were people who claimed programming in a text-based language that has a vague resemblance to English was "not real programming" either, as real programming would require directly loading binary values into memory locations manually...</div><div><br></div><div>There is also the belief in some quarters of the IT industry that the only "real programming" is what takes place in their own workplace. This is perhaps more understandable in some sense, but doesn't take into account the purposes of compulsory education. We don't teach poetry in order to fill a demand for poets in the workplace.</div><div><br></div><div>Ken</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 9:43 PM Roland Gesthuizen <<a href="mailto:rgesthuizen@gmail.com">rgesthuizen@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;"><p id="gmail-m_6898519757412805001yui_3_17_2_1_1557142688396_41" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">This is a bit deep but I thought to share it here. A preservice teacher with a solid CS background remarked a couple of weeks ago about the maturity of junior secondary students to think about coding and computational thinking (CT), remarking that there are many pedagogical and maturity challenges. I have been reading up about CT and the benefits to students, even if they don't go on to study CS.</p><div class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-bib-body" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px"><p class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-entry" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-left:30px">Lu, J. J., & Fletcher, G. H. L. (2009). Thinking About Computational Thinking. <i style="box-sizing:border-box">Proceedings of the 40th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education</i>, 260–264. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/1508865.1508959" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(0,54,174);text-decoration:none" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1145/1508865.1508959</a></p></div><p class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-bib-body" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">Much of the recent thinking comes from this discussion paper by Wing that points out the unplugged nature of CT, that it goes beyond just the hardware and software (and perhaps even the programming). This is quite readable at 2 pages and well worth a glance.</p><div class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-bib-body" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px"><div class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-bib-body" style="box-sizing:border-box"><p class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-entry" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-left:30px">Wing, J. (2006). Computational thinking. <i style="box-sizing:border-box">Communications of the ACM</i>, <i style="box-sizing:border-box">49</i>(3), 33–35. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(0,54,174);text-decoration:none" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215</a></p><span class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1145%2F1118178.1118215&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Computational%20thinking&rft.jtitle=Communications%20of%20the%20ACM&rft.volume=49&rft.issue=3&rft.aufirst=Jeannette&rft.aulast=Wing&rft.au=Jeannette%20Wing&rft.date=2006&rft.pages=33-35&rft.spage=33&rft.epage=35" style="box-sizing:border-box"></span></div></div><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px;margin-left:30px">"Computational thinking is <span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">reformulating a seemingly difficult problem into one we know how to solve</span>, perhaps by reduction, embedding, transformation, or simulation ... Computational thinking is <span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">thinking recursively</span>. It is parallel processing. It is interpreting <span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">code as data and data as code</span>... Computational thinking is using <span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">abstraction and decomposition</span> when attacking a large complex task or designing a large complex system. It is separation of concerns. (<a style="box-sizing:border-box;color:inherit">Wing 2006:33</a>)</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">The debate is still going on with this recent post that is even challenges, do we need to even program to teach about CT?  What is the role for Human Computer Interaction (HCI) when we consider how Scratch made it easier to teach coding? Have a think about this notion of reducing the friction between people and computers.</p><div class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-bib-body" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px"><p class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-entry" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-left:30px">Guzdial, M. (2019, April 29). A new definition of Computational Thinking: It’s the Friction that we want to Minimize unless it’s Generative, (2019) Mark Guzdial [Blog]. Retrieved from Computing Education website: <a href="https://computinged.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/what-is-computational-thinking-its-the-friction-that-we-want-to-minimize/" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(0,54,174);text-decoration:none" target="_blank">https://computinged.wordpress.com/2019/04/29/what-is-computational-thinking-its-the-friction-that-we-want-to-minimize/</a></p><p class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001csl-entry" style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-left:30px">"<span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">computational thinking is about framing problems so that computers can solve them</span> ... To meet Alan Kay's point about generativity, there are some things in computing that <span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">we want to teach because they give us new leverage on thinking</span>. <span style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:rgb(255,255,0)">We want to teach things that are useful</span>, but not those that are necessary just because we have bad user interfaces." (Guzdial 2019:2)</p><span class="gmail-m_6898519757412805001Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rft.type=webpage&rft.title=A%20new%20de%EF%AC%81nition%20of%20Computational%20Thinking%3A%20It%E2%80%99s%20the%20Friction%20that%20we%20want%20to%20Minimize%20unless%20it%E2%80%99s%20Generative%2C%20(2019)%20Mark%20Guzdial&rft.identifier=https%3A%2F%2Fcomputinged.wordpress.com%2F2019%2F04%2F29%2Fwhat-is-computational-thinking-its-the-friction-that-we-want-to-minimize%2F&rft.aufirst=Mark&rft.aulast=Guzdial&rft.au=Mark%20Guzdial&rft.date=2019-04-29&rft.language=en" style="box-sizing:border-box"></span></div><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">If you feel brave for a reply, please share your thoughts.</p><p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:1rem;color:rgba(0,0,0,0.87);font-family:roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16px">Best of Wishes, Roland Gesthuizen</p></div>

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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>-- <br>Dr Ken Price MACS(Snr) CP ACCE Professional Associate.<br>Immediate Past President, TASITE <a href="http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au" target="_blank">http://www.tasite.tas.edu.au</a></div></div></div>