Computational Thinking for Everyone

As part of Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators series, he talks to Joan Peckham about Computational Thinking for Everyone. She is a involved in an NSF project that's evaluating computational thinking in the context of K-12 education.  I love thinking about computer science education, and this adds a new twist: in the modern world, should we be focusing on educating kids about computing concepts way before college? If so, how?  A few interesting points from the interview:

• With the growing importance of technology in every aspect of life these days, should computational thinking be one of the "three R"s -- taught at every level in school, and considered crucial to being an educated citizen? 
• If so, how should kids be taught these concepts?  When they say computational thinking, the NSF project has way more than just using computers in mind: from the ability to organize one's thoughts in a systematic manner, to applying "debugging" skills to non-software problems, to approaching complicated systems by breaking them down into components with interfaces.  Curricula will need to be developed for different classroom levels, and teachers and parents need to understand this new subject.
• A topic of much debate in the computer science education world is whether a college-level computer science program must start with an in-depth programming class.  On one hand, there's a lot more to computer science than just writing code, and you don't want to immediately bore and discourage new students with dry coding exercises.  Instead, they should get a foundation in the important mathematical and social concepts of computing first.  But wait! On the other hand, you don't want these students to get any farther into their major without truly understanding what they're getting into: writing and understanding software will likely be a key aspect of the rest of their education, and of course of any job a computer science graduate later takes.  The idea of teaching computational thinking way before college helps clear up this debate: teach all kids what computers can be good for and how to think about them way before college, and then computer science freshmen will be ready for nitty-gritty programming details right away.
• Right now, while most kids and young adults say that they use technology every day and enjoy it, most think that majoring in computer science is something that only boring nerds do; they're not considering it. Perhaps by teaching computing in holistic way and relating it to other fields, we could engage many different types of students.  If kids with diverse interests understand the potential of software to create beautiful things and solve the world's social problems, they will hopefully go on to contribute to and truly enrich the software world.  And that's a worthy goal if I've ever heard one.

Next up for the NSF project: coming up with a PR-worthy name for the concepts they're discussing.  "Computational thinking" seems to have the connotation of teaching kids to think mechanically instead of creatively, and other alternatives have so far been too long or complex.

Check out the full interview here, and also interesting are Jon Udell's notes.