Session information

The current trend is to focus on STEM and Coding. However, focusing on Digital Age Problem Solving in all content areas instead requires students to think critically, systematically, and logically and become digital problem solvers. Learn about Design Thinking, Data Literacy, and Computational Thinking and find ways to use in any classroom with your students.

This session will look at the three aspects of Digital Age Problem Solving: Design Thinking, Data Literacy, and Computational Thinking. Attendees will find ideas for implementing these into any classroom and find tools that teachers and students can use.

PETE&C 2018: Let’s Get Digital: Problem solving that is! from The Source for Learning, Inc.

EDUCATION IS MOVING FROM TEACHING TO LEARNING

(FROM CONSUMING TO CREATING)

In teaching, we ask ourselves “What am I going to teach?”

In learning, we ask “What should my students be able to do with what they learn?”

Digital-age problem solving combines three key skills essential to understanding and solving problems in the information age: data literacy, design thinking, and computational thinking. Computational thinking is the thought process involved in taking a problem and breaking it down into small components that a human or computer can use to analyze or create solutions.

Data literacy

Collect, analyze, interpret, and tell stories using complex sets of data.

Data is used to help identify the problems to be addressed
Collection, analysis, interpretation,and action
Infographic – compelling way to display and share data
Focus should be on data analysis

Data literacy sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHz_ogTH2p4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA_tNh0LMEs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=speKlXgUTX8

https://www.data.gov/education/datagov-classroom

Data visualization sources:

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization

https://timeline.knightlab.com/

https://infogr.am/

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/

https://concord.org/stem-resources/subject/mathematics

https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/

https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory

http://opendata.arcgis.com/

https://books.google.com/ngrams

https://www.tableau.com/academic

https://developers.google.com/chart/

Data sources:

Find all kinds of data sources in this government clearinghouse:

https://www.data.gov

https://catalog.gpo.gov/F?RN=530650656

https://www.sascurriculumpathways.com/portal/#/info/6?id=3001

https://www.census.gov/data.html

http://data.un.org/

https://data.noaa.gov/dataset

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/DASL/

http://www2.stetson.edu/~jrasp/data.htm

http://vincentarelbundock.github.io/Rdatasets/datasets.html

http://mathforum.org/workshops/sum96/data.collections/datalibrary/data.set6.html

http://www.gapminder.org/data/

https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory

http://fathom.concord.org/resources/more-data/

Design thinking

Think like a designer. Design thinking focuses more on understanding problems and developing creative solutions for people than on implementing generic solutions. Uses empathy in the process.
Design thinking goes through phases of collecting feedback and data, using the data to identify the problems to be solved, developing prototypes, and testing solutions. Feedback from key stakeholders should be used often.
Phases of the design process are iterative and cyclical — revision after feedback is critical. In design thinking, failure isn’t an end, it’s an opportunity to refine and create something better. Rapid prototyping gives feedback for design.
Design thinking focuses on divergent thinking — generating and exploring as many ideas as possible before narrowing down to a solution. Even the infeasible should be listed (Throwing things against the wall). Use SCAMPER (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, rePurpose, eliminate, reverse/rearrange) when stumped look at Biomimicry – nature has solutions to all sorts of problems
Point of View madlibs to focus on human-centered: https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/22e39/POV_Madlibs.html
As a (persona), I want to (action), so that I can (reward).
Replacing KWL with why, what, how
Why – reason to care or purpose (what students believe)
What – elements to explore (problems or questions (dissatisfaction with evidence of their beliefs)
How – How we will explore or gather evidence. Leads to
Question – scientific process
Problem – engineering process
Design Thinking resources from TeachersFirst

Computational thinking

Computational thinking is expressing solutions so that humans and computers can understand them. A great way to visualize how to embed it in your classroom is to have the students think like the physicist, economist, artist, mathematician, etc. to identify the problems that need explored. This is not programming computers but logical ways for problem solving. It is a problem solving tool for every classroom that has students think like a problem solver and use higher level cognitive skills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkzdvKhbWLQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJKzkVZcozc

https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=152&category=Solutions&article=Computational-thinking-for-all

Goals

What is computational thinking?
Why is it important to think about?
How might it different from what we do now?
How can it enhance learning for students?
What can happen in your classroom to implement computational thinking strategies?

What its not

It’s not just more technical details for using software
It’s not thinking like a computer
It’s not programming (necessarily)
It doesn’t always require a computer
It’s not yet one more thing to add to your curriculum

Why is it important

It moves students beyond technology literacy
It creates problem solvers instead of software technicians
It emphasizes creating knowledge rather than using information
It presents endless possibilities for creatively solving problems
It enhances the problem-solving techniques you already teach

It fits with the ISTE NETS

Teachers apply technology to develop students’ higher order skills and creativity. (III)
Students use productivity tools to collaborate in constructing technology enhanced models, prepare publications, and produce other creative works. (4)
Students employ technology in the development of strategies for solving problems in the real world. (6)

Promotes these attitudes

Confidence in dealing with complexity
Persistence in working with difficult problems
Tolerance for ambiguity
The ability to deal with open ended problems
The ability to communicate and work with others to achieve a common goal or solution

ISTE Standards for students

Standard 5: Computational Thinker: Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.

5a. Students formulate problem definitions suited for technology-assisted methods such as data analysis, abstract models, and algorithmic thinking, in exploring and finding solutions.

5b. Students collect data or identify relevant data sets, use digital tools to analyze them, and represent data in various ways to facilitate problem-solving and decision-making.

5c. Students break problems into component parts, extract key information and develop descriptive models to understand compex systems or facilitate problem solving.

5d. Students understand how automation works and use algorithmic thinking to develop a sequence of steps to create and test automated solutions.

Core Computational Thinking Skills

Decomposition: Breaking down a problem into its component parts.
Abstraction: Removing extraneous/irrelevant details from a problem to define the elements of a solution that are consistent.
Pattern Recognition: Looking for common elements among different cases of a problem to help us define the rules that we can use to solve it.
Creating Algorithms: The detailed, step-by-step rules we use to solve a problem in a consistent and replicable way.
Evaluation: Determining the effectiveness and efficiency of a solution and whether the solution accurately and precisely solves the problem.

Approaches

Tinkering – experimenting and playing
Creating – designing and making
Debugging: finsing and fixing errors
Persevering: keeping going
Collaborating: working together

Great resources for computational thinking vocabulary: http://www.educationcity.com/uk/sites/default/files/Prog_Vocab_BW.pdf and https://code.org/curriculum/docs/k-5/glossary

These thinking skills are what we already do in the classroom. You should expand on the use of critical thinking and problem solving. One great suggestion is to use the terminology often in the classroom. For example, instead of using the word steps or procedure, use the word ALGORITHM.

Resources:

Exploring computational thinking

Use lesson plans using government resources and data sets to ask a question, get students to ask questions, or identify patterns/problems

Computational Thinking skills resources from TeachersFirst

Coding

Background

It is a set of instructions or rules that computers understand. People write the code to imagine a process, the code runs the computers, and computers power the devices (anything that actually uses electricity runs on code).
Reading sheet music and morse code is coding
Learning to code is like learning a language. At the most basic, the language resembles binary (series of 1’s or 0’s). Some computer languages are easier to work with.
A program is a set of instructions written as a text file in a particular programming language.
coding vs. programming… Coding is the special set of instructions or direct commands specifically written to make a program do something , programming is all aspects of having a computer do what you want. In other words, it is the coding, the internet, the interactions…the study of coding plus everything that goes with it
Two types of coding :Text based: Basic, Python, C, Javascript, Java, PHP or Visual- what you would use to introduce coding.programming
Easier to start with visual- you just focus on logic. IN text based you also have to teach syntax
All beginning uses visual- start with concrete kinesthetic

Why teach computer science: Coders are the architects and the engineers of the digital age.

Makes their thinking visible
Learn basic logic
Programming is communication and computational thinking- test, reflect, and adjust
Kids become empowered in experience, and confidence and becomes part of learning – best in elementary
Not limited to any field of study- integrated into all
All can contribute—struggling readers, ESL can still collaborate- level playing field
Empowers students to take action
Not limited to technology class- every subject

Known as the “new literacy” and prepares kids for their world
Collaboration- learn to listen and talk effectively, listen and rethink
Creativity
Persistence- failure provides an avenue for learning
Prepares for more rigorous programming later
“By year 2020 there will be one million more computer science jobs than there are students- “Code.org
Currently Only 20% of software programmers are women
2013 as the U.K. passed a plan to educate every child how to code. In 2014, Barack Obama made history as the first U.S. president to program a computer. Yet critics claim that often only the more affluent schools offer computer science courses, thus denying minorities potential to learn the skills required by the 1.4 million new jobs that will be created during the next ten years. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/15-ways-teaching-students-coding-vicki-davis

Where to Start

Unplugged Activities

Kinesthetic Activities
Begins concrete and uses familiar context for teaching logic and computational thinking. Focus on logic!

Why teach unplugged activities

Puts all on equal playing ground
Technology limited at school, home, internet problems, testing period- no computer use
Understanding that these are thinking skills first and not all limited to computers
Use coding vocabulary as often as you can to understand that these are thinking skills.

Code.org

https://code.org/

Different courses and includes professional development, Teacher sign up and class sign up, dashboard to monitor student work, other online courses, tutorial apps

Preparing for a CodeStudio lesson

Student login: Older students use an email to register, younger students use a word or picture. Creates a special URL for each particular class

Various courses age groups:

Course 1 for early readers K and 1: learn mouse drag and drop, write programs that draw patterns, get angry bird move to pig, bring a bee to get nectar and get honey, spelling bee- write programs to move letters to spell words
Course 2 for grades 2-5: for students who can read and new to computer science, programs with same and new characters
Course 3 for grades 4-5: Move on from course 2: write programs, bounce game
Open ended sections in all courses- use concepts learned and create an art, story, or game…etc
Middle 6-8
CS in Algebra- algebra and geometry to develop video games
CS in Science-complex scientific models through agent based programming
Exploring computer science
Computer science principles (future AP)
Hour of Code
Frozen
Infinity play lab
Flappy Code
Accelerated
10-18: Intro to computer science

Features:

Unplugged activities found in all courses
All take about 20 hours
Tracks progress
Free
Track class progress
Professionaldevelopment: https://code.org/educate/curriculum/accelerated-course
Lesson plans which detailed instructions and videos to help teach
Professional development
Third Party resources: https://code.org/teacher-dashboard#/plan
Hour of code by grade level

Tynker

https://www.tynker.com/

Build an animated character (even zombies) and then animate it. Students will learn to code by dropping blocks of commands into the correct sequence. You can even track students progress.

Visual programming language designed to help kids learn programming as they solve puzzles and build interactive apps and games
It’s Scratch, but organized into a “package”
Only six free lessons, but freemium options available.
200+ puzzles
Build games, stories, and interactive animations
Web and mobile access to all projects with sync
Work offline without Internet access
Create classrooms (student accounts)
Create and publish a class showcase with best student projects
Monitor student progress
Tutorial that walks you through using the app: Codey’s Quest
Integrates with school subjects
Tynker lesson plans/curriculum: https://www.tynker.com/school/courses/