Computational Thinking

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Computational thinking and thinking about computation. Computational thinking isn't just for STEM students, and it's NOT computer science (the study of computers and algorithms). It's a set of processes that are particularly relevant to effective entrepreneurship. Computational thinking is a process of formulating problems, organizing and analyzing data, representing data through abstractions, automating solutions, and testing and refining those solutions for usefulness and efficiency (EducationDive.com, 2019). And it's not "big data," a term that to me means "larger sample sizes" and is a phenomenon that reinforces the status quo.

ISTE 2019: Where does computational thinking fit in curriculum? Everywhere (EducationDive.com, June 26, 2019)

Excerpts:

"Computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so they can be carried out by an information-processing agent. It's a process that involves formulating problems, organizing and analyzing data, representing data through abstractions, automating solutions, and testing and refining those solutions for efficiency.

You can think about computational thinking as four subprocesses:

• Decomposition — breaking down a problem into parts.
• Pattern recognition — finding patterns or trends.
• Algorithms — developing steps to complete a task.
• Abstraction — generalizing trends into rules.

You can read more about pattern recognition on the Connect the Dots page on this site.