The theme of the May CSTA Voice is “Computational Thinking.” As I thought about what to include in this upcoming issue and reviewed some of the past CT work by people such as Jeannette Wing and Joan Peckham, as well Valerie Barr who leads the CSTA Computational Thinking Task Force, I realized that a lot has changed in the past four years during which I have been thinking about CT.
There are new analogies for trying to conceptualize CT, new reasons for its value, new strategies for including CT into course curriculum, and new ideas for engaging the teachers of other disciplines in our schools in the task of including CT in their classroom activities. A lot of attention is now being paid to CT in universities and professional computer science organizations. I don’t think CT is going away and I think as CS & IT professionals we ought to be informed to a level that we can talk about CT with our peers and make sound decisions about why and how to include CT strategies in our teaching strategies.
The missing piece in my plan for the May CSTA Voice is:
What do you, CSTA members, need and want to know about CT that will enable you to better prepare your students for the intellectual realities of their lives, and to help your colleagues better understand (and ultimately incorporate) CT into their classroom lessons across diverse subject areas.
Do you have questions about CT that I can call upon experts to help answer?
Are you curious about how CT will impact CS & IT courses?
Is CT a new topic for you and do you need a basic CT lesson?
Have colleagues asked you about CT and do you need essential details that you can share to help them better understand the concept?
What do you want to learn about in the May issue of the CSTA Voice?
Please let me know. Let me see what I can find to help us better understand computational thinking.
Pat Phillips
Editor, CSTA Voice