Reflection #7 Computational Thinking

Computational thinking was the topic of this weeks class discussion.  Computational thinking is a skill that "involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, by drawing in the concepts fundamental to Computer Science," according to Jeannette M. Wing, President's Professor of Computer Science and head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon.  A few of the responsibilities and expectations of computational thinking are relevancy, having specialized skill sets, and using algorithms in daily life.  The ability to use analytics in everyday life expands our minds.  A colleague in class provided sabermetrics, which is the ability to use stats to determine a winning baseball roster, as a form of computational thinking.  Teachers can benefit by applying computational thinking in instruction. 
As careers focus more on analysis and interpreting data, especially in the tech field, instruction in computational thinking is needed.  Students "use abstraction and decomposition when attacking a large complex task" (Wing, 2006).  The process of computational thinking in which people perform like a computer but apply human consciousness to a task will help students develop a high level of intelligence.  This is important for jobs that require a computational thinking mindset.  The problem or concern I have with computational thinking is that it does not really encourage citizenship and critical consciousness.  Computational thinking focuses more on efficiency rather than making social change.  Opportunities for critical dialogue is limited when using computational thinking.

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