Tinkering is about hands-on experiences, learning from failures, and unstructured time to explore and invent
Computational thinking is the process of formulating and solving problems by breaking them down into simple steps
There are four key skills in computational thinking:
Decomposition (the process of breaking down a problem into a number of smaller problems that can more easily be addressed).
Abstraction (the process of sorting through information to decide what is relevant and what is irrelevant)
Algorithmic thinking (Creating a set of ordered steps (sequencing) and then doing them in a particular order to solve a problem).
Pattern recognition (finding similarities and patterns in and among the problems).
1) What steps did you take to construct your object? (Algorithms)
2) What problems did you encounter as you constructed your object? How did you address each problem? (Decomposition)
3) As you constructed your device, what resources & information did you use? Why? What materials & information were not helpful? Why? (Abstraction)
4) As you review the answers to questions #1-4, do you see any themes in your responses? (Patterns)
5) Overall, what did you think about this activity? Do you think you understand the concepts of Computational Thinking? How might you use it in your future classroom?
