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Post by LexLearn on Mar 24, 2014 20:53:49 GMT
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Post by apinnock on Mar 25, 2014 12:08:37 GMT
This article is useful because it points out that the main difference between the old ICT curriculum and the new Computing PoS is the new focus on computational thinking. Programming (which has always been in the curriculum) is currently getting most of the attention, but computational thinking is the most important element. Programming does, however, support the development of computational thinking.
Here are some key quotations from the article:
Computing ‘A high-quality computing education equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world’ the significant change is the shift of focus from the skills of using ICT to developing an understanding of computer science
Computational Thinking computational thinking … is a golden thread running through the whole of the computing curriculum computational thinking is about looking at problems or systems in a way that considers how computers could be used to help solve or model these computational thinking (can) be developed through its application across the curriculum, not just in computing lessons
Algorithms algorithms are step by step instructions to get something done or the set of rules describing how something works part of the challenge of computer science is about finding more efficient algorithms for the same problem it’s … worth getting pupils to guess at the algorithms that have been programmed into the apps they use or the computer games they play
Logical reasoning getting pupils to make predictions about when using software helps develop children’s ability to reason logically and to make deductions from the information they have.
Decomposition how to eat an elephant: it’s one mouthful at a time the same approach works for developing software (convert) one big, complex problem into many smaller ones
Patterns a good computer scientist is a lazy computer scientist, at least in the sense of always looking for the easiest or more efficient way to get something done – thus the strive for finding faster algorithms, but also much gets done through building on the work of others
Abstraction abstraction is about capturing the important structure of a system or problem, but not worrying too much about the detail
Summary we teach (programming) because it’s interesting and important, not just because it’s useful the real interest, importance and utility though lies with computational thinking, which seems much more important than learning to code learning to code may well be the best way start thinking computationally
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