Learning science and mathematics should not be limited  to knowing disciplinary ideas such as Newton's laws or Kinetic Molecular Theory. It should also include the process of figuring these ideas out. We use the term ‘Scientific Inquiry (SI)’ for this process. Scientists engage in specific practices to make sense of phenomena in the world and construct new knowledge. Students can do the same in their classrooms! Computational tools make this easier.

Researchers in all fields increasingly use computational tools and methods in their work. The use of these tools and techniques requires a different kind of thinking. We use the term - Computational Thinking (CT) to characterize this thinking. Researchers and educators at Northwestern University (Weintrop et al., 2016) have developed an operational definition of Computational Thinking for Science and Mathematics. This definition includes practices about data, modeling, and simulation, computational problem solving, and systems thinking.   

We have co-designed computational models that can be used to learn Computational Thinking and Scientific Inquiry (CTSI) in science and mathematics classrooms. On this website, we share these models and suggest curricular activities for using these models.

Computational Models to play and learn with