Welcome to the Computational Thinking Program!

Program Overview
Program Description for students
Schedule and Team
How to get involved
Poster/ Flyer
Resources and References
Photos
Acknowledgement
Schedules from previous quarters

Computational Thinking program

In 2009, I created this program to provide middle school students (6th to 8th grade) with opportunities to discover and practice basic principles of computing and computational thinking through fun activities. The long-term goals with this program is to motivate a higher diversity and stronger participation in computing. We started running the "Computational Thinking" program at the Pittsburgh Science & Technology Academy (SciTech) in Fall 2010. SciTech is a public K6-12 school in the Oakland neighborhood (http://www.pps.k12.pa.us/pst/). Currently, we are in our third quarter at SciTech. The program is a continuation of the CS Prep program, which I originally started at the Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12 University Preparatory (UPrep) School. UPrep is located in Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood.

Upon my departure to UIUC, Kenny Joseph took over the leadership for this program. He is supported by a great team of volunteers. I am excited to see that this endeavor continues.

Program Description (for K6-K8 students)

Welcome to the Computational Thinking activity!
People, Puzzles and Problem Solving: Discover the fun side of Computer Science

Computational Thinking is a fundamental skill just like reading, writing, and arithmetic that everybody can benefit from in their education and everyday life. Thinking computationally helps us to develop solutions to a wide array of problems and hones our analytical capabilities, but it does not necessarily require using a computer to learn it. In this activity students discover fundamental computational thinking principles, such the concepts of binary, sorting, and algorithms, through fun activities. Some of these activities will involve computers, while others are unplugged yet hands-on. With this activity we hope to encourage a future generation of problem solvers to tackle problems in different domains by using a computational thinking approach.

(Note: if you are interested in a description for teachers or a copy of the pedagogical outline for this program contact Kenny Joseph)

Schedule and Team

We have a great team of leaders and volunteers: Kenny Joseph, Edward McFowland III and Manya Sleeper are joining us regularly. Additional volunteers have been joining us for individual sessions. More volunteers are always greatly welcome (see info on how to get involved).

Fall 2011

Session	Date	Topic	Team
1	09/08/2011	Computer Science Outreach Roadshow	Jana, Kenny
2	09/06/2011	Using Math for Card Tricks	Jana
3	09/15/2011	Think big, build big: design exercise. Concept of rapid prototyping	Jana, Ed, Ronit Slyper
4	09/16/2011	Algorithms: Binary Search	Kenny
5	09/22/2011	Programming in Scratch, Control Structures	Eliane Stampfer, Jana
6	09/23/2011		Jana
7	09/30/2011	Data Structures and Algorithms: Dominating Sets	Kenny
8	10/06/2011	Cryptography: Cryptographic Protocols	Ed
9	10/07/2011	Cryptography: Public Key Encryption	Kenny
10	10/14/2011	Human Computer Interaction: Human Iinterface Design	Kenny
11	10/21/2011	Programming in Scratch	Kenny
12	10/27/2011	Algorithms: Minimum Spanning Trees	Ed
13	10/28/2011	Algorithms: Constraint Propagation and Optimization: Graph Coloring	Jana
14	11/03/2011	Algorithms: Search	Ed
15	11/04/2011	Using Math for Card Tricks	Jana

How to get involved

We are always looking for CMU student volunteers to help with a session or to lead a session. You are also welcome to design and run a session. Time: Thursdays and Fridays, 11.30 to 12.30 at SciTech. Email Kenny Joseph if you are interested in volunteering or have any further questions or comments.

Poster/ Flyer

Resources

For more information on Computational Thinking:
Jeanette Wing (2006). Computational Thinking. Communications of the ACM 49(3). http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf

Material on several of the exercises we ran can be found in:
Tim Bell, Ian H. Witten and Mike Fellows (2002). Computer Science Unplugged. http://csunplugged.org/

Photos

Spring 2011 - Finite State Automata Exercise:

• Black hat pirates are states (islands) with local knowledge about transitions (boats) between states.
• Blue hat pirates are given maps with just states and need to reverse-engineer state transitions, and find the shortest path to the goal state.
• The end: Treasure Island. Solid Gold.

This exercise is described in the CS unplugged series

Fall 2010 - Opening CS Roadshow
Team: Edward McFowland III, Molly Claire Hranicka, Manya Sleeper, Kenny Joseph, Jana and Carol Frieze (taking pictures).

Current core team (Kenny Joseph, Jana Diesner, Edward McFowland III):

 

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Women@SCS for supporting this program, to Beatrice Anghelache from CMU for the artwork, and to the Gelfand Center at CMU for providing additional support.

Schedules from previous quarters

Summer 2011

Session	Date	Topic	Team
1	04/07/2011	Representing Information: Binary Numbers	Jana, Ed
2	04/08/2011	Representing Information: Information Theory and Decision Trees	Jana, Kenny
3	04/15/2011	Algorithms: Search	Kenny
4	04/28/2011	Algorithms: Routing and Deadlocks in Networks	Jana, Virginia Bedforf
5	04/29/2011	Basic Data Structures	Kenny
6	05/052011	Representing Information: Error Detection & Parity Checking	Jana, Ed
7	05/06/2011	Algorithms: Checksums	Jana
8	05/12/2011	Algorithms: Sorting Graphs, sequential vs. parallel processing	Jana, Ed
9	05/13/2011	Cryptography: and/ or gates, one way function, combinatorial circuit	Manya, Jana
10	05/19/2011	Cryptography: Zero knowledge methods	Jana, Ed
11	05/20/2011	Cryptography: Public key encryption	Jana, Kenny
12	05/26/2011	Programming in Alice: Intro
13	05/27/2011	Programming in Alice: Abstraction
14	06/02/2011	Programming in Alice: Decomposition
15	06/03/2011	Programming in Alice: Control

 

Spring 2011

Session	Date	Topic	Team
1	02/03/2011	Algorithms: Minimum Spanning Trees	Ed
2	02/04/2011	Intro to the Concept of :Programming Languages	Molly Hranicka, Kenny
3	02/10/2011	Dominating Sets	Ed, Kenny
4	02/11/2011	Information Representation: Image Representation	Molly Hranicka, Kenny
5	02/17/2011	The concept of Algorithms	Ed, Jana
6	02/18/2011	Representing Procedures: Finite State Automata	Jana, Kenny
7	02/24/2011	Alice - Intro	Ed
8	02/25/2011		Kenny
9	03/03/2011	Alice - Basic Programming and Data Structures	Ed
10	0304//2011		Kenny
11	03/10/2011	Alice - Video Game Design and Implementation	Kenny, Jana
12	03/11/2011		Jana, Juergen
13	03/24/2011	Programming in Alice to learn fundamental principles of computing: Abstraction	Jana
14	03/25/2011	Programming in Alice to learn fundamental principles of computing: Decomposition	Jana, Kenny
15	03/31/2011	Programming in Alice to learn fundamental principles of computing: Control	Jana
16	04/01/2011	Programming in Alice to learn fundamental principles of computing: Functions	Jana, Kenny

 

Fall 2010

Session	Date	Topic	Team
1	11/12/2010	Computer Science Outreach Roadshow	Ed, Kenny, Manya, Molly Hranicka, Jana, Carol Frieze
2	11/18/2010	Applied Computing : Lego Mindstrom and basic principles of Robotics	Ed, Jana
3	11/19/2010		Kenny, Manya, Molly Hranicka, Jana
4	12/02/2010		Ed, Jana
5	12/03/2010		Kenny, Manya, Jana
6	12/09/2010		Kenny, Manya
7	12/10/2010	Representing Information: Binary Numbers	Jana, Kenny, Manya
8	12/17/2010	Representing Information: Information Theory and Decision Trees	Jana, Kenny
9	1/6/2011		Jana, Kenny
10	1/7/2011	Algorithms: Routing and Deadlocks in Networks	Jana, Juergen Pfeffer
11	1/14/2011	Elementary Data Structures and Polymorphism	Kenny, Juergen Pfeffer
12	1/20/2011	Applied Computing: Programming with Scratch	Rebecca Gulotta, Juergen Pfeffer
13	1/27/2011	Algorithms: Search	Kenny, Jana