Computational thinking tools

Abstract

Computational Thinking is an essential skill for all students in the 21 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">st</sup> Century. A fundamental question is how can we create computer affordances to empower novice teachers and students, in a variety of STEM and art disciplines, to think computationally while avoiding difficult overhead emerging from traditional coding? Over the last 20 years we have iteratively developed tools that aim to support computational thinking. As these tools evolved a philosophy emerged to support Computational Thinking by joining human abilities with computer affordances. Chief among these findings is that supporting Computational Thinking is much more than making coding accessible. Computational Thinking Tools aim to minimize coding overhead by supporting users through three fundamental stages of the Computational Thinking development cycle: problem formulation, solution expression, and solution execution/evaluation.