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High School Scenario

Innovate
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2

Rethinking a Unit to Include

Computational Thinking
Like every year, Marla Sanders came home
from the annual technology conference
energized. Besides picking up countless
tips and tricks that will help her in her
history classes at Mountain View High
School, she was intrigued by a concept
that was new to her. In a session that her
department head recommended, she
learned about CT and how important it is
to her students.
Ever since she started teaching in 1998,
Marla has been committed to a studentcentered approach. She includes critical
thinking components in each of her
projects and assesses her students on
those skills. Marla suspected that she
could emphasize CT in some of these
projects without major changes. If she
added some steps or even simply changed
the emphasis of some of the activities,
she thought she could help her students
immensely.

Table of Contents

This scenario illustrates

how a teacher can reinforce
computational thinking (CT) skills
and dispositions in a problembased learning unit. Virtually all
the CT skills and dispositions
are involved at some point in
this problem. In addition to
showing how individual CT skills
can contribute to the solution of
complex, real-world problems, the
unit also demonstrates how the
whole set of skills and dispositions
can work together to make the
problem-solving process more
efficient and effective.

What CT Looks Like in the Classroom

Getting Started
Erins rst piece of advice was to pick
a project that Marla already planned to
change. This turned out to be easy. Marla
has been teaching a unit on migration that
incorporates U.S. census data, and she
planned to make changes based on the
results of the 2010 decennial census.
The project that students do within this
unit is her modication of a lesson on the
growth of U.S. cities. She combines this
lesson with some of the activities from
a U.S. Census Bureau lesson plan on the
2010 census. In the project, her students
research both national and state events
and plot those events against national,
state, and city population data. Marla
and Erin decided to start with the list of
CT skills and to look through the unit
for an authentic opportunity to teach or
emphasize each of the skills.

They began with data collection, data

analysis, and data representationwhat
they called the easy ones because
the project already focused on data.
In one activity the students compile
historical census data to explain the
growth or decline of urban areas. They
compare the data with historical events
and demonstrate the relationships with
a timeline. Marla added a discussion of
how the Census Bureau collects data
and ensures its accuracy. To make the
data representation section stronger, she
added an activity in which students use
the same data set, but chart it differently to
emphasize or de-emphasize a point.
The abstraction CT skill was a bit harder
since there were no current activities that
explicitly addressed that skill. Erin and
Marla turned to the census reports to look
for examples of abstraction. They found a
report on Housing Quality and when they
looked at how quality was operationally
dened, they knew they had their activity.
To start the activity Marla would brainstorm
a list of characteristics of high-quality and
low-quality houses. Then the students
would develop a set of questions to ask

respondents to determine the quality of the

house they lived in. The whole class would
then look at the questions that the Census
Bureau uses to determine the quality of a
house in the American Community Survey.
Next Marla would tie this discussion into the
migration unit by discussing the importance
of lifestyle improvement in the motivation to
move ones family to a new city.
Erin suggested they look at the automation
CT skill next because having students think
about how technology can help them solve
problems is a major goal of CT. Because
Marla is a history teacher, she pointed out
that much of the early history of computing
was inuenced by the overwhelming size of
the census data set. She decided to have
her students review the Census Bureaus
technology web page and divide into teams
to argue which census-related technology
has changed their lives the most. She will
instruct the students that their arguments
should include an explanation of how the
relevant problem was solved before the
invention.

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Table of Contents

She started with a meeting with Erin

Paulson, her Social Sciences department
head, who had been a long-time mentor
to Marla. Since it was Erin who steered her
toward CT, Marla thought that her insights
would be valuable. Marla was also not
condent in her computer science skills, so
she thought some help with some of the
concepts such as algorithmic thinking
would help.

High School Scenario

As Marla looked through her unit for an

example of the problem decomposition CT
skill, she realized that it was all around her.
Each of the activities had several tasks to
be done and required at least a minimal
amount of planning. She decided to simply
point this fact out to her students and to
talk about how much more complex a task
like the decennial census is.

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Finally, Erin and Marla tackled the

algorithms and procedures CT skill.
This skill proved difcult for them since
Marla did not feel comfortable with an
activity where students actually created
algorithms. Erin encouraged her to simplify
by looking for an existing activity. She
found a website that explained how to
create a owchart for a census count and
included a link to the site in her project
bookmarks. She will have her class review
the site and invite her students to actually
create a owchart for extra credit.

While both agreed that the simulations CT

skill is important to CT, Erin thought that
they had tackled enough in this unit. Marla
agreed and expressed her fear that adding
a simulation would take up more time
than she had budgeted and might remove
the emphasis from human migration. She
knew she had other units that could be
modied with a better t for a simulation.

Table of Contents

The parallelization CT skill demanded

some thought. While Marla believes in a
team approach to problem-solving, she
had not included any activities in this unit
whereprimarily because each activity is
brief. It was Erins idea to team with Jerome
Duncan, the math teacher, for the visual
representation of data. Teams in his class
could serve as graphic service providers
to the teams in Marlas class. The history
students would supply the data sets and
the math students would provide the charts
from those data sets. Marla planned to talk
to the class about how this collaboration
between specialist teams is the most
common problem-solving arrangement
in the business and scientic worlds. Erin
agreed to chat with Jerome to make a case
why this project is important enough to
make room for it in his math class.

What CT Looks Like in the Classroom

After Marla completed her changes

to the unit and tried it out in the fall,
Erin asked her if she would prepare
a case study to present at the next
faculty training day. Marla agreed.
Besides, she already planned to
put something together for the next
annual conference.

Table of Contents

Follow-up

In her presentation Marla used the CT operational denition

as a framework for describing her project:
Computational ThinkingFormulating problems in a way that enables us
to use a computer and other tools to help solve them.
Logically organizing and analyzing data
If your student projects already include collecting and analyzing data then
emphasize the role of automation.
The automation occurs at many levels from large national databases, to Google
searches, to local storage and analysis, to charting.
Representing data through abstractions such as models and simulations
You probably do this already too. When we go from specic cases to generalities,
we are abstracting.
In my project we looked at how specic cities grow and shrink to reach
conclusions about how all U.S. cities grow and shrink.
Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps)
Again, you include this in your teaching so emphasize CT by using the term
algorithm when you do.
It can be as simple as having students reect on the process that they used in a
project.
Developing rubrics for assessment when they are using algorithms.
Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving
the most efcient and effective combination of steps and resources.
In the census project, explore different ways of representing data to tell the most
accurate story.
Automation allows us to explore other ways of telling the same story.
Generalizing and transferring this problem-solving process to a wide variety of
problems.
I am proof that you dont need to be a computer scientist to include
computational thinking in your teaching.

2011. Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and

the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).
This material is based on work supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-1030054.

All elds now have some computational element so all students will need CT
professionally.

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