Page 25 - ParentsWorld June 2020

nurturing 21st Century Children
aCademiC

advantage

Developing children’s computational

THINKING SKILLS

defined as thought processes that address problems and devise solutions in the same
manner as a computer would, computational thinking enables children to develop critical
thinking, logic, analysis and problem solving skills

Jayalakshmi vaidyanathan

omputational include logic and logical
thinking (CT) analysis; algorithms
Cis emerging as and algorithmic
a necessary core skill for thinking; patterns and
success in the new digital pattern recognition;
era. Defined as thought abstraction and
processes that address generalisation, evaluation
problems and devise and automation. CT
solutions in the same practices include problem
manner as a computer decomposition; creating
does, computational computational artefacts
thinking enables (through coding);
children to develop testing and debugging;
critical thinking, logical iterative refinement, aka
reasoning and problem incremental development;
solving skills. Venkatraman & son collaboration and
“There is growing creativity as well as re-
recognition in education systems around the globe that in using solutions,” adds Grover.
a world awash with computers, capability to problem-solve In progressive K-12 private schools in India, CT is
computationally, i.e, logically and algorithmically, and use increasingly being integrated into STEM curriculums
computational tools, is becoming a necessary competancy and/or taught as a co-curricular activity. For instance
for all STEM and allied fields subjects. Therefore we need under the CSpathshala (www.cspathshala.org) initiative of
‘computational thinking’ (or CT) to become a core skill — the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) India,
or ‘5th C’ — taught to all students in addition to the ‘4Cs’ of currently 300,000 students in 750 schools in 11 states
the 21st century — critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, countrywide, are learning CT through unplugged activities
and communication,” says Dr. Shuchi Grover, an (learning computing without computers). Launched in 2016,
alumna of Harvard and Stanford universities and US-based CSpathshala’s objective is to “promote computer science
computer scientist. education in K-12 education and influence policy makers to
According to Dr. Grover, computational thinking introduce computing into mainstream curricula as well as to
is fundamentally about using analytic and algorithmic train teachers so that every child in India learns computing
concepts and strategies to formulate, analyse and solve as a science”.
problems. And since conceptualising solutions for problems “The CSpathshala CT curriculum and teaching aids
using CT need not involve a computer, even though the are available free-of-charge online. Schools can download,
execution of the solution usually does, CT can be taught adapt and integrate it into their maths and/or computer
without the use of computers. “Educators worldwide science syllabuses,” says Vipul Shah, head, ACM India’s
have found it more convenient to think of CT as a set of CSpathshala initiative.
concepts (the ‘what’) and practice (the ‘how’). CT concepts CT — the process of analysing a problem and

parentsworld • june 2020 26