Along with a series of six Project SUCCEED Saturday Explorations workshops beginning on October 18 in Durham, NC, Robert M. Panoff, Shodor Executive Director, and staff members will also offer parallel workshop sessions on “Computational Thinking–Sources and Resources for Quantitative Reasoning in Math and Science Education.” These workshops are being offered to math and science teachers in multiple locations in Illinois, and Georgia this month including one at the Mountain Area Health Education Center (MAHEC) in Asheville, NC which is being jointly sponsored by NSDL. This professional development workshop for math and science teachers in a 16-county western region of North Carolina, will explore a variety of free and low-cost sources for modeling tools from the Computational Science Education Reference Desk, a Pathways project of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).
Panoff explains, “Computational science continues to advance the accurate description and prediction of the dynamics of the world around us. Moving “beyond PowerPointless-ness,” we have the opportunity to help students see that computing really matters. Computing “matters” because quantitative reasoning, computational thinking, and multiscale modeling are the intellectual “heart and soul” of 21st Century science and therefore are the essential skills of the 21st Century workforce. Computing “matters” because it moves students others have identified as “at risk” to students self-identified as “capable, motivated, and employable.” Computing “matters” because we can demonstrate the power of interactive computing to help students and teachers reach a deeper understanding and application of math and science. Computing “matters” because the computational tools integrated with curriculum are both the content of education and the most effective method.”
More information is available here.
I agree Computational Thinking is very important and can be a very important tool no mater what area you are in. i am wondering why there are no tools to support computational thinking. if we relay want to push this idea i think its more then teaching a powerful way to think but also giving them the power to do something with this thinking method. its like standards committees, whats better defining a standard if how to do something or just providing a tool to do it by the standard very easily. as a programmer i don’t want to implement long standards but i don’t care about taking a ready module with a simple interface that will implement the standard. should we be educating or creating tool for computational thinking ?