Professor Tim Bell from Canterbury University (link to article) gave a short presentation on how computational thinking or coding can be used in the curriculum. It was interesting to see some tasks that could be done in class by students with out the need for devices that still taught coding concepts. One task was the Barcode check digit. There are a number of ways to do this mathematical (here’s one way) but the way Tim demonstrated was to add two rows of 6 to get the 13th digit. (5 + 7 = 2)
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- Coding sites
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- Computer case
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- Old hardware
Examples of resources for teaching computational thinking
- CS Fieldguide: Senior Students
- CS Unplugged: Primary Students
- CS4HS
- Computational thinking by Google
- CSER Digital Technologies: Online course for teachers
- Barefoot – Computational thinking resource
Interesting factoid: Pixel comes from ‘picture’ and ‘element’ (pic – el)
