iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Combine a makerspace, science fair and a coding bootcamp and you have South Fayette School District, a computational carnival for 3,200 students south of Pittsburgh.

With four schools on one suburban campus, South Fayette is the best example of K-12 integrated computational thinking we’ve seen. Yes, kids are learning to code but more importantly, they are learning to attack complex problems, analyze data, and sprint in teams to public products.

Like a lot of children, my sons, Toby, 7, and Anton, 4, are obsessed with robots. In the children’s books they devour at bedtime, happy, helpful robots pop up more often than even dragons or dinosaurs. The other day I asked Toby why children like robots so much.

“Because they work for you,” he said.

What I didn’t have the heart to tell him is, someday he might work for them — or, I fear, might not work at all, because of them.

It is not just Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking who are freaking out about the rise of invincible machines. Yes, robots have the potential to outsmart us and destroy the human race. But first, artificial intelligence could make countless professions obsolete by the time my sons reach their 20s.

If there is one piece of advice that is drilled into you as a new parent, it is to limit screen time. Bringing home our first baby, I may have not known how to effectively swaddle or change a diaper, but I did know, “back is best” and “no screen time for children under two.” Yet, screens are something we as parents are constantly interacting with. In those early days of parenting, our parents laughed as we announced that we would not expose our children to screens. Yet screens are such a piece of our world. How could I expect a child not to find interest in the screens and technology that we interact with routinely? Does this abstinence approach to teaching new parents and those who work with our youngest learners do more harm than good? Does coding and computational thinking have a place in early childhood education? Yes, it certainly does.

Computational thinking for every student: Teaching and learning computational thinking is the key to preparing Singaporeans for the digital century By Professor Looi Chee Kit National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University

Explore these engaging lessons from Learning.com and see how you can seamlessly integrate Computational Thinking into standard curriculum.

With Computer Science in Education (CSED) Week and Hour of Code right around the corner, we have a simple request: Don't teach coding. Instead, we suggest that you introduce computational thinking and creative problem solving into your classroom. This way, you can get at the big ideas behind computer science rather than focus on a single activity or lesson involving "code."

Released in 2013, the NGSS was created to align science education with how scientists actually work and think. It encourages students to learn science content and concepts deeply by using critical thinking and primary investigation skills. Adopted by 18 states (with as many as 40 interested and in the process), the standards define science education through core concepts (such as wave properties), practices (like analyzing and interpreting data ) and crosscutting concepts (like cause-and-effect).

Some of the NGSS guidelines directly overlap with the practices listed in the K-12 Computer Science framework and the new CSTA Computer Science standards. Here’s a doodle that illustrates how the two subjects overlap. 

Teaching London Computing in conjunction with cs4fn and support from Google have produced a series of fun activities and booklets based around puzzles that teach computing topics and computational thinking for use in the classroom, suitable for all ages.

Do the puzzles and  develop computational thinking skills as well as learn about some core computing topics.

Music and dance teachers who are respected by female pupils should be trained to teach computer science to inspire more girls to pursue a career in the technology sector, educators have said.

More than 150 teachers and schoolgirls recently attended an event at Microsoft’s UK headquarters designed to show young women what life at a technology company was like.

Speaking just weeks after the Government used its Budget to announce significant funding to support the training of Computer Science teachers, Cindy Rose, the chief executive of Microsoft UK, kicked off this year’s DigiGirlz by highlighting the lack of women in the technology sector.

Educators told Microsoft at the event that school leaders needed to create more positive role models in computer science and give them modern classrooms to work in if the UK was to encourage more women to pursue a career in science, engineering, technology or maths (STEM).

Mitch Resnick, one of the creators of Scratch, on why he thinks coding should be taught in all schools—it's not the reason you’d expect.

It’s Computer Science Education Week 2017, and what better way to celebrate than by drawing attention to a program that comes at the subject matter from an entirely new direction.

Lila Finch, a PhD student in my lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, has designed a set of learning experiences that teach computer science alongside art and biology.

Here are some future tales, fables, fairy tales and not-so-fairy tales about computational thinking…Learn about computing concepts like bits and bytes, through stories.

Your next computational thinking adventure awaits when you and your kids are in the supermarket, about to go through the checkout line. Play the Fastest Line at the Supermarket game!