WEEK 9 Computational Thinking

Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the World by the middle of the 21st century ‘.If I heard this sentence when I was in primary school I probbaly think that its totally nonsense.But when we think our century, its just like reading, writing and arithmetic.

Imagining every child knowing how to think like a computer scientist is not utopic for me anymore.We werent born to technology and computer age but 21st century children were born to this amazing century and they will undoubtedly be more different than us both as an individual and emotionally.

Computational Thinking enables what one human being cannot do alone; for solving problems, for designing systems, for understanding the power and limits of human and machine intelligence. There are  two A’s of computational thinking first one is ABSTRACTION; is operating in terms of multiple layers of abstraction simultaneously and the relationships between layers. The other one is AUTOMATION; which is thinking in terms of mechanizing the abstraction layers and their relationships. It means there is some ‘machine’ below human or computer virtual or physical. They gave us ability and audacity. We can think that computer science means programming but no, it is more about conceptualizing not programming.

I want to share something related to this belief, As all you know coding is really popular term nowadays,but three years ago it wasn’t. 3years ago the term coding was not very famous and I was in one of European Project with some of the teachers who are from different countries in Europe and in October we planned an event because in Europe the last week of October is celebrated as a Coding Week and we decided to participate this event with our students and teach just the first step of coding and let our students finish the course from the ‘Codeorg’ website.I prepared the students’ passwords and gave all of them their cards describe the system, we have done a few example in the classroom and they really loved passing all the stages just doing ‘drag and drop’ activity. They not only learn the simple commands in coding but also hear and learn some simple coding vocabularies and commands in English. But This is my positive thought as a teacher, the Parents and our school principle were not sharing the same idea with meJ

Because after doing practice at school I let them do the rest of the course at their home in a week. But after a few days some of the parents came to school and complained about me,they said that; she is an English teacher why is she doing these kind of things,she makes our students play comupter for hours ,we don’t want them to use computer ,they have lots of homewroks etc.. My first attempt about ‘teaching coding’ unfortunately  ended as a bad experience. But not after years just one year later something happened surprisingly, lots of private schools or courses started to do announcements that they give coding education, this term was becoming more popular and it was accepted something very advanced and special. if any institution gives a coding course, parents started to prefer these schools because they imagine that their children will learn programming and they will be much more closer to be a computer engineerJLast year I was blaming to be a bad teacher but next year I became the most favorite teacher in schoolJ

Lots of parents changed their ideas and they insist on me about doing these projects again. I was really shocked the two characters I became in one yearJTechnology really improves fast the advertisement of new trends are faster than it. So I can say as to sum up 

Computational thinking is also a need for every human being to know to function in modern society.It’s not just the software and hardware that touch our daily lives it will be the computational concepts we use to approach living. Its for everyone and everywhere. Notexaggerating  its really everywhere!

we can see it in biology,science,chemistry,geology,mathematics engineering,economics (ad placement,online auctions,)social sciences (myspace youtube),medicine(robotic surgery,virtual colonoscopy),entertainment ,games, movies art ,drama ,music ,sports …and list goes on like that..

When it comes to my question; after you read my example about the rapid changes in parents’ thoughts,I wonder your opinions about these points; While these families are resisting to new trends in technology (like coding,robotics ,programing, maker activities) they suddenly become the supporter of it,why did it happen?

and How do people get used to these changes in educational technology,and desire to learn and believe these new trends’ positive effects.