Enhancing Computational Thinking with Spreadsheet and Fractal Geometry: Part 1

Abstract

For most primary and high school level students, computer is a game-playing tool. They might have taught word processing and PowerPoint presentation tool and very basic spreadsheet usage for computing, but, one of the essential skill required for survival in modern technological society is “Computational thinking” that combines power of human intelligence and computing agents for solving complex problems facing the society. It is found that this skill is not imparted to the primary and high school level students. In this context, the concept of computational thinking, its need and the attempts that are being made world over to impart this skill at various levels of education is discussed in the part -1 (out of four) of this article. It is proposed that concept of fractal and its implementation in spreadsheet can be one of the starting points at high school level to induce students into computational thinking. Also it is shown how to create various kinds of fractals in spreadsheets without using any programming. Different fractals require different computational strategies to implement in a spreadsheet. It is hypothesized that practice in the development of such strategies improve the ‘abstraction’ and computational thinking capabilities of the students.