Computational thinking

Abstract

My vision for the 21st Century: Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. Just as reading, writing, and arithmetic are fundamental skills every child learns, computational thinking is a skill needed for every citizen to function in today's global society. Computational thinking is an approach to solving problems, building systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on the power and limits of computing. Computational thinking is the use of abstraction to tackle complexity and the use of automation to tackle scale. The combination of the automation of abstraction underlies the enormous capability and reach of computing. In this talk I will argue that computational thinking has already begun to influence many disciplines, from the sciences to the humanities, but that the best is yet to come. Looking to the future, we can anticipate even more profound impact of computational thinking on science, technology, and society: on the ways new discoveries will be made, innovation will occur, and cultures will evolve. Teaching computational thinking also raises new challenges for education, especially in early grades. While we have models for teaching children mathematics and physics, we do not yet have such models for teaching computational thinking. Moreover, we have the unique opportunity to make most effective use of the computer as a tool to enhance the learning of computational thinking. In this talk, I will give examples of computational thinking, including ones from our daily lives. It is exciting to imagine the day when computational thinking will be commonplace.