Computational thinking: purposeful enterprise

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." --Edsger Dijkstra: I have dipped my toe into computer science recently. I have always been a computer user, for as long as I have had access to one, starting in the seventies. I have used, abused, broken, and repaired my machines, but never really understood what was actually under the hood, so to speak. So last spring I joined some of my students at a local college for a dual enrollment high school college introduction to Java programming. I had to get special permission from my boss and the bosses at the college to parallel enroll me as an adult along side these 15-18 year-olds. I enjoyed it enough to take another course in the summer, this time in the programming language Python. I loved it! Meanwhile I was in a crash course to get trained to instruct an introduction to computer science. Eighty hours of training later and countless nights reading and rehearsing curriculum I have learned a fair amount. And it is by far some of the most fun I have had teaching in a long time.

Computer Science is not just about "geeks" and programming code. Computer science is not just for "math-minded 'smart' kids". Computer science is not a single discipline with a specific focus. It is about algorithmic thinking, and logic, and crosses over into almost every discipline as a useful tool for more purposeful ways of dealing with anything associated with "crunching data." Computer science can encourage inquiry learning in an equitable environment. Computer science is creative and relevant. Computer science can lend support for a much more democratized society if we make sure we are purposeful about access to CS learning for all.

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A paragraph that I like:

The word "algorithm" comes from the name of Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi, author of a ninth-century book of techniques for doing mathematics by hand. (His book was called al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala—and the "al-jabr" of the title in turn provides the source of our word "algebra.") The earliest known mathematical algorithms, however, predate even al-Khwarizmi's work: a four-thousand-year-old Sumerian clay tablet found near Baghdad describes a scheme for long division.

But algorithms are not confined to mathematics alone. When you cook bread from a recipe, you're following an algorithm. When you knit a sweater from a pattern, you're following an algorithm. When you put a sharp edge on a piece of flint by executing a precise sequence of strokes with the end of an antler—a key step in making fine stone tools—you're following an algorithm. Algorithms have been a part of human technology ever since the stone age.
--Introduction from Algorithms to Live by, Brian Christin and Tom Griffiths

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A video about what might be the next step for my students. Creating apps that change the world: