The Computational Thinking Duck

The Computational Thinking Duck

One of the key playtime activities that almost every child has engaged in is playing with LEGO bricks. Remember getting the playset, where you had a set of instructions to build a scene? Many a child has followed those instructions to create that scene, and then simply chucked them away to build something totally unique and different. LEGO bricks are a perfect outlet for creativity for both adults and children alike. We can teach not just creative problem solving, but also tackle key concepts in Engineering and Physics amongst others.

This activity uses 6 LEGO bricks. The task is simple. Give each person a set of bricks and tell them to build a duck. What do you come up with? Suitable for all age groups, this activity helps cover key computing and computational thinking concepts such as: algorithms and algorithm design, abstraction, evaluation, logical reasoning and many more. Download the teacher guidance notes below for full details.

Documents
The Computational Thinking Duck.pdf

I must admit when I found this today, that it was out of the blue, I am now trying to find all the bits to make this. It is one thing that I start my classes off with without realising it. I get them using the lego learn to learn series to design and develop a number of different items to get them thinking about design thinking. The duck is the first one of them.

Computational Thinking

Since being on the curious minds review last year, the aspect of computational thinking has been spread wide and far since being announced by Minister Pareta. I have a couple of times posted ideas of computational thinking on my blog, I continue again with the first page of Computing At School magazine, Autumn 2016.

Ideas, particularly good ideas, can take a long time to gain traction. Take the notion of Computational Thinking (CT), a term first coined by the late Seymour Papert. Papert was pointing to the potential of new technology to facilitate children’s ability to solve problems and thus ‘construct’ knowledge and understanding. But it took many years for the term to enter more mainstream use. For that we can thank Jeannette Wing. In a short paper (goo.gl/uRP3AI) written in 2006, the professor, then at Carnegie Mellon University argued that “Computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability. Just as the printing press facilitated the spread of the three Rs, what is appropriately incestuous about this vision is that computing and computers facilitate the spread of computational thinking.” She pointed out that “Thinking like a computer scientist means more than being able to program a computer”, going on to stress that “This kind of thinking will be part of the skill set of not only other scientists but of everyone else. Ubiquitous computing is to today as computational thinking is to tomorrow. Ubiquitous computing was yesterday’s dream that became today’s reality; computational thinking is tomorrow’s reality.”

Too many people still see CT as something for the technically minded. CAS takes a different view. CT has a generic value for developing ways of thinking in all children. The benefits are applicable to many areas, not just Computing — one reason CAS lobbied for a curriculum entitlement across all key stages. This issue focuses on inclusion; on making Computing accessible to every child, not just a select few.

Computing At School Autumn 2016

Tic tac toe

This week, I carried on the idea of last week, getting students to develop an idea of how computers are designed to win games. Going through all options that the computer has to play, learning from losses.

I must say I am impressed at the cs4fn.org activities, they have enabled students to be engaged and push there preconceptions. 

As someone commented on the photos that I made available online, They love the fact that I am using tic tac toe, for me it is about using their prior learning and developing new knowledge from it.

Getting students to develop their own pieces and gameboard through cardboard allowed them to personalise their games. I did think about developing it through the laser cutter, but this turned out to be very creative, one of our Hobsonville Habits.

www.cs4fn.org/teachers/activities/winatoxo/winatoxo.pdf

cs4fn sweet machine

One of the ideas that I am working on at the moment is to develop what I do as a teacher. I am a learner as well and I want my students to see that. I chose to develop a TURING SPIN as part of this term theme around Citizenship with a look at the Technology Curriculum of Characteristics of Technology.

We have been developing chatbots to do specific ideas, one to continue to carry on a conversation with a human, to order pizzas. This has been interesting as we use http://motion.ai for students to develop in.

However, I felt something was missing, and I came across this last night. http://www.cs4fn.org/teachers/activities/sweetcomputer/sweetcomputer.pdf The Sweet Computer.

How can a computer learn from experience?
The class challenge a machine made of sweets to the game of Hexapawn (a little like a game of chess with only pawns and on a 3x3 board). At the start the machine only knows the basic rules of the game. The more it plays the better it gets: when it loses the class punish it by eating its sweets allowing it to learn from its mistakes.

Using the game Hexapawn, students use machine learning to develop a machine that will always win. 1.5Kg of Jelly beans later the students have developed a machine that always wins. The thinking, thoughts, challenges that I saw today, the "will this work" statements, the "I want to try this", "I want to test this idea" were statements that showed engagement in the learning. The frustration as one student would beat the machine, however the machine was learning so when the next student tried the same combination, they lost. Watching students as the explained the rules of the game I saw students communicating clearly, through words as well as actions.

Note: the colours in the pdf seem to be incorrect
• 5 red sweets • 11 yellow sweets • 13 purple sweets • 12 brown sweets • 13 blue sweets
could be
• 5 red sweets • 11 yellow sweets • 13 purple sweets • 12 orange sweets • 13 blue sweets

Also problem solving with the students as we worked through the instructions, while text is a great form for communication, pictures would have helped show layout of the cards. Also using better colours in the task of the beans, I have still to figure out why brown jellybeans exist, as I have yet to see that as a colour in the packet.

I must say that this was an enjoyable lesson for many of the students and others around as Jelly Beans were handed to the winners, as well as losers.

There is also another one around tic tac toe

What is a programming about?
How can computers win at games?
Explore programming without worrying about programming languages and investigate how a computer is able to win at board games like chess, by writing instructions to play perfectly at noughts and crosses followed by a tournament to find the best.

http://www.cs4fn.org/teachers/activities/winatoxo/winatoxo.pdf

Maybe an extension could be to 3d print the objects required to play? or lasercut pieces and a board...

Curious Minds, What might Digital Technologies look like

This week saw the fourth meeting of the Curious Minds, Review of the Positioning of Digital technologies in the New Zealand Curriculum.

What the Ministry have heard

There is a "Digital Imperative".

• Digital Technologies need an increased presence or focus in the National Curriculum
• Work is needed to determine if the curriculum support/reflects this.
• Digital Citizenship is important in Years 0 - 13

Vision and Principles in the NZC

• The vision may need to be reviewed to include 'digitally capable'

Achievement Objectives in the NZC

• Every learner needs to know how to be critical consumer of digital technologies
• Computational and logical thinking through active learning needs to be supported for learners from Y0-13.
• Learner need to know how to create, not just use artefacts.

Technology Learning Area

• Digital Technologies should remain as part of the Technology learning Learning Area but be strengthened and structured with explicit progressions for digital technology.
• As long as the teaching and learning of digital technologies occurs, as above, it did not matter whether it remained within technology or was imbedded across the curriculum.

Implementation

• There needs to be significant, well funded, relevant and ongoing PLD to shift practice for ALL teachers.
• Exemplars of authentic programmes of work and lesson plans are needed to show contextualized learning.
• Resources are needed at all levels, including - PLD, ITE, teacher support materials.
• This must be part of a larger transformational change across the sector (ITE, PLD, infrastructure, guidance, parents, families and whanau)

Community

• There needs to be an acknowledgement of learner and whanau demand.

Teaching and Learning

• Authentic and integrated experiences to enable high quality teaching and learning is the key driver.
• Learners will flourish in a digital world.
• Pedagogy needs to inform planning, teaching and learning.
• Evidence, examplars and guidance about how to teach digital technologies is required.
• The support of leadership is imperative.

Assessment

• Assessment tools need to link pedagogy to the future
• There needs to be a change in the assessment system and the tools available.

The ministry put up a slide in What they haven't heard.

• No change is required to the national curriculum.
• Schools, leaders and teachers are fully equipped to teach digital technologies
• Digital technologies is relevant to some students.
• Digital technologies is coding.
• Coding should be compulsory from Y0-13
• Digital technologies is already sufficiently explicit in the curriculum.

My Comment

One of the biggest issues that has still really to be resolved is what is Digital technologies, Learning with Digital technologies is still a huge issue and one that is causing issues. While the ministry agree that concepts of skills and knowledge in Digital technologies/Computational thinking/Computer Science is necessary, it still gets caught by the digital technologies used within classrooms and the changing nature of teaching and learning for all students.

I think the intention was to gather information, then they'll write the plan, based upon some of the suggestions that have been given along the way.

One thing that has come through every discussion has been that the technology Curriculum needs fixed. Digital Technologies needs to be fully independent  or a fully independent area within technology.

I include the proposal of what a Digital technologies curriculum could look like, this was looked at in Meeting 3, and some more comments in meeting 4, before another proposal was put forward and the elephant in the room was discussed.

We do have a full endorsement that it's important, that it needs prominence, and that it needs to be from primary levels up.

So four options have been talked about through the meeting

- Separate area

- Address the shortcomings of technology as a learning area. (It was interesting seeing a possible model be captured which would have meant the removal of Design and Visual Communication)

- Look at integrated/restructured delivery

- Be added to the Humanities area

The ministry have taken what has been captured and talked about, and are looking at possible trials and pilots of what this could look like. So we wait to see what that could be.

What came out nice and clear, is what is digital technologies isn't.

It is not Unit standards, it is not Digital Information (office productivity tools)
It is not knowing how to use ms access. 

It is around developing understanding and using databases, however MS access removes the complexity required for understanding of how databases are used and created. Simple Queries of drag and drop components do not help develop the deep understanding. 

It is not around just using software programs. 

This is what they are saying Digital Technologies is, it is Computational thinking, maybe this is what the Learning area could be called, "Computational Participation".

Computational thinking (CT) is a problem-solving process that includes (but is not limited to) the following characteristics: 

• Formulating problems in a way that enables us to use a computer and other tools to help solve them. 
• Logically organizing and analyzing data 
• Representing data through abstractions such as models and simulations 
• Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (a series of ordered steps) 
• Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions with the goal of achieving the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources 
• Generalizing and transferring this problem solving process to a wide variety of problems 

These skills are supported and enhanced by a number of dispositions or attitudes that are essential dimensions of CT. These dispositions or attitudes include: 

• Confidence in dealing with complexity 
• Persistence in working with difficult problems 
• Tolerance for ambiguity 
• The ability to deal with open ended problems 
• The ability to communicate and work with others to achieve a common goal or solution
  http://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/CurrFiles/CompThinkingFlyer.pdf

It is not simple media, using wizards or tools, its not WYSIWYG. It is about higher level computational thinking applied across contexts.

It is going to involve a series change in thinking from years 9 at present. 

If the goal is to give it creditability alongside physics and calculus, that will come at a cost.

This will require Resources, Professional Development and a new way of thinking, teaching and implementation not seen in New Zealand Schools. Potentially it may not get that funding. We can say it needs funding, but as we know with other implementations, funding is not ongoing.