Computational Thinking is the way you have to think if you are going to tell computers what you want them to do. See, computers can’t think for themselves. They can only do what people “program” them do to.
Computers have to be given very specific instructions in order to do what we want them to do. Computers are very good at doing things very fast, but people are always in control.
If you are able to think like a computer scientist, you will be able to learn many different computer programming languages and work with many different types of computers, smart phones, and other technologies.
Are you learning to be a computer scientist? Answer these questions to find out:
Can you put list of words in alphabetical order? Can you think of way a computer could be programmed to put words in alphabetical order? If you are thinking that you would start by telling the computer to look for all words that start with “a” you are doing computational thinking!
Can you add 2+2? Of course you can! But what if you wanted to add 2+3, 2+4, 2+5, 2+6, until you get to 2+1,000,000,000,000? If you know that it would take you a very long time to do this, but that a computer could do it quickly, you are doing computational thinking!
What if you wanted to add 3+3, 3+4, 3+5 until you get to 3+ 1,000,000,000,000? If you can see how this would be easy to do if you knew about to tell the computer to add 2+2, 2+3, just like we did before, then you are doing computational thinking.