Chapter 7:
Promoting Computational Thinking for Civic Impact with AI

This chapter was inspired by the ISTE Computational Thinker standard. 

Take a look at the videos below to see this standard in action in real world classroom settings!

Open Access Datasets

• Home of the U.S. Government's Open Data (Data.gov).

• Datasets at the Library of Congress: A Research Guide.

• Dataset Search. Google.

• European Union’s Open Data Portal. 

• MIT Election Data + Science Lab. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2025

Elections and Politics

• Elections Overview: 1990 - 2024. Open Secrets, 2025.

• Exploring Political Ad Trends: Meta and Google Advertisers from 831 Political Parties and 53 Countries. Who Targets Me. 

Tools and Resources

• Google Data Gif Maker.

• 'I Wonder' Questions: Harnessing the Power of Inquiry. Edutopia, November 10, 2015.

Lotteries

• Lotteries in the United States. Wikipedia.

• Here's where your money goes when you buy a ticket from a state-run lottery. NPR (2023). 

• The Settlers Brought the Lottery to America. It's Had a Long, Uneven History. Scott Neuman. NPR, August 9, 2023.

• Is the Lottery Ever a Good Bet? The surprisingly subtle math behind the Powerball and Mega Millions. Scientific American (2023). 

Sports Betting

• State Governments Parlay Sports Betting into Tax Windfall. U.S. Census Bureau (December 10, 2025).

• The Story of Sports Betting: 5 Infographics That Tell the Story of Legal Sports Wagering in the U.S. The Journalist's Resource (December 2025).

• Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (2018).

  • The Aftermath of Murphy v. NCAA: State and Congressional Reactions To Leaving Sports Gambling Regulation To The States. CardozoAELJ (2023). 

• The Math Behind Betting Odds and Gambling. Shehryar Sohail. Investopedia, September 23, 2024.

• The Complete Guide to States Where Sports Betting is Legal in the US. Responsible Gambler, 2025.

• Sports Betting 101: A Beginner's Guide to Odds, Spreads, Moneylines, Props, SGPs and More. Ryan Fowler, MassLive, June 23, 2025.

• 7 Years of Sports Betting: Did States Get It Right? NCSL (2025). 

• Massachusetts sports betting brings in $127.1 million in tax revenue. WWLP (2024). 

Algorithms

• Muhammad Ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi: The Father of Algebra. Story of Mathematics, 2025.

• Picture Book: The House of Wisdom. Florence Parry Heide & Judith Heide Gilliland. 1999.

• Press Release: Algorithmic Justice and Online Transparency Act. U.S. Senator Ed Markey, July 13, 2023.

Recommendation Algorithms/Tools

• How Recommendation Algorithms Work -- And Why They May Miss the Mark. Manon Bischoff. Scientific American, August 17, 2023.

• Example "Personalized News Recommendation Tool Interactive Artifact" designed by Claude. 

• Example "Personalized News Recommender" artifact by Gemini. 

Computational Thinking

• Introduction to Computational Thinking. BBC Bitesize, 2025.

• Computational Thinking. The K-12 Educational Techonlogy Handbook. 

Deepfakes

• Denmark to Tackle Deepfakes by Giving People Copyright to Their Own Features. Miranda Bryant. The Guardian, June 27. 2025.

• What Are Deepfakes and How Are They Created? Sally Adee. IEEE Spectrum, March 8, 2024.

• Teacher and Student Guide to Analyzing Images. Critical Media Literacy and Civic Learning. EdTechBooks, 2021.

• The Wired AI Elections Project. Victoria Elliott, May 30, 2024.

  • • Tracking use of AI in elections around the world in 2024.

• Watch Out for False Claims of Deepfakes and Actual Deepfakes This Election Year. Daniel S. Schiff, Kaylyn Jackson Schiff & Natalia Bueno. Brookings, May 30, 2024.

  • • Researchers have found that "politicians and other public figures may receive a “liar’s dividend” in the form of a public support boost for falsely claiming that real scandals about them are fake."

Other Resources

• Norman Rockwell and His Dam Painting. Cody White. The Text Message/National Archives, February 1, 2024.

• Example: Real or Fake AI Image Game. 

• Learning Plan 1: Analyzing Data Visualizations with AI

• Learning Plan 2: Designing a GenAI Chatbot for Civic Learning 

  • • Create Custom Versions of chatbots a the GPT Store.

    • Estella Explainer Math Bot 2

      • • Estella Explainer is a GenAI math and reading tutor for teachers and students. It explains math word problems to young learners in student-accessible language. Developed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, this work is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0