In 1996, Seymour Papert adopted the notion of Computational Thinking to characterize an essential 21st Century skill. Computational Thinking is a combination of Critical Thinking, Creativity, Problem Solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Computing.
Kirstie Bellman I like Papert's list ...now can we take it to the next step and characterize with more depth and understanding?
September 4 at 11:49pm · Like
Barry Kort The leading research center on Computational Thinking resides at Carnegie Mellon University...
The mission of the Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon is to advance computing research and advocate for the widespread use of computational thinking to improve people's lives. The Center accomplishes this by seeding research activities, seminars, and symposia that lead to vivid demonstrations of the value of computational thinking in diverse areas of human life.
"Computational Thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be effectively carried out by an information-processing agent."
Barry Kort Google also has a program supporting the development of educational resources focused on Computational Thinking...
Google is committed to promoting computational thinking throughout the K-12 curriculum to support student learning and expose everyone to this 21st century skill.
Google Computational Thinking
Barry Kort Mitchel Resnick's, Scratch Project at the MIT Media Lab also plays a leading role in promoting and developing resources for Compuational Thinking...
http://scratched.media.mit.edu/stories/scratch-math-games-lesson-plan-shared-iste-12-san-diego
In a 2009 article in Communications of the ACM, Resnick wrote: "When personal computers were first introduced in the late 1970s and 1980s, there was initial enthusiasm for teaching all children how to program. Thousands of schools taught millions of students to write simple programs in Logo or Basic. ... Since that time, computers have become pervasive in children’s lives, but few learn to program. Today, most people view computer programming as a narrow, technical activity, appropriate for only a small segment of the population."
It's not immediately obvious how to draw a clear distinction between "computational thinking" and computer programming, or how to promote the former without becoming mired in the minutiae and technicalities of the latter. Projects like Scratch have the ability to introduce "computational thinking" with or without diving into the more arcane details of computer programming.
Scratch Math games lesson plan shared at ISTE 12 conference San Diego | ScratchEd
scratched.media.mit.edu
The Los Altos School District in Los Altos, San Francisco Bay Area, California offers all 6th graders a weekly program called C-STEM. cSTEM teaches Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) subjects through the 3 C’s – Creativity, Collaboration and Computer Science.