Name: Joyce Malyn-Smith

Title: Strategic Director of Workforce and Human Development Education, Employment, and Community Programs, Education Development Center, Inc., Newton, Mass. 

Education: Ed.M., Teaching, Boston State Teacher’s College; Ed.D, Education, Boston University

EDC is a 50-year old international nonprofit that develops, delivers, and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic development. It manages 325 projects in 35 countries.

Malyn-Smith is also the Principal Investigator for the National Science Foundation’s ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) Resource Center, which helps young people and teachers build the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a technologically rich society. The program serves more than 100 NSF-funded projects.

This is the second half of a two-part conversation she had with HotChalk about how digital natives’ learning experiences with technology alter the classroom teacher’s role (You can find Part 1 here).
 

Q: What is computational thinking?

A: Computational thinking is an approach to solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science. That’s the definition used by Jeanette Wing of Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Computational Thinking. In simple terms, computational thinking is thinking like a computer scientist. It’s embedding in your actions the step-by-step procedures and rules to make things happen that are foundational to computer science.   

Q: How can teachers identify computational thinking in the classroom?

A: We might see students using technology as their first choice in solving problems; breaking big problems down into small, easily solvable pieces, routinely using feedback loops, skipping over procedural steps because they have a frame of reference telling them to leap ahead and implement a bigger strategy.  Our students are solving problems in different ways that we, as educators, are struggling to understand and define.    

Q: How does it benefit students?

A: They’re able to use techniques developed from their computer use to explore and solve complex academic problems.  For example, an NSF ITEST project showed that visualization and game development tools helped girls develop solutions to global warming. In another, students used geospatial technologies to make and share discoveries about fossil records in the Northern Plains. Some youth report becoming better strategic thinkers through their intensive use of video games.  They plan and implement a winning strategy, overcome obstacles and battle enemies, continually rethink and reprioritize their actions – ultimately beating the game.   

Q: Are there drawbacks?

A: Computational thinking will help us use technological tools and systems in more creative and innovative ways, especially in a global knowledge economy. That’s recognized nationally.

Q: What challenges exist for the digital immigrants among us?

A: I see a cultural problem that has to do with how we use language. The terms around computational thinking are clearly understood by computer scientists. While some concepts may be simple, they’re not understood by educators because we use different terms. It takes work and some translation to see the connections between these two cultures.  

Q: Could you summarize what this means for educators?

A: What may be happening is that students are developing a patterned way of thinking and solving problems stemming directly from their hundreds of hours using computer technologies. Computational terms and processes exist in the computer culture, and our kids are beginning to understand these things conceptually before we teachers do.

Sheila Riley is a San Francisco-based freelance journalist. She is also an experienced online editor and ESL curriculum developer, and teaches ESL at City College of San Francisco.

 

 _{POSTED ON HOTCHALK.COM}

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