Developing computational thinking workshop.

As part of my role at schools involving helping teachers improve their capabilities . I facilitated a workshop run by our area Microsoft Educator @craigrenderPE  where teachers were able to explore some computational thinking lesson ideas.

One of these ideas was to pose a problem where participants needed to solve a problem which included computational thinking.

This is the video used in the session, as well as a few other resources.




Update:

During the recent Steam Extravaganza at school a group of students used this same video to get others thinking about solving problems. The students had developed their own card game that they wanted to teach and used teh video above for a warm up. This was great because some teachers had commented that the problem would be too difficult for students, this was clearly not the case. It was more likely that our cluttered, adult minds couldn't think in a flexible manner that this problem required.  It is after all just a computational problem that can be solved logically.

Below is the workshop presentation from the students. I was particularly proud of these students because they are not usually confident when talking to others but because they were passionate about their project they presented it really well.



Update:

We used some similar problems in our algebra teaching and learning recently. The students in my class loved being challenged and it was nice to be able to make links to other learning that had taken place earlier.