CS4HS@UMD, A Workshop on Teaching Computational Thinking in High School

UMIACS professors are organizing a workshop for high school teachers who are looking for help in teaching computation thinking.

Computational thinking involves learning about a problem and understanding how to break it down into a series of steps, each of which can be well defined and automated. Computation thinking is the key thinking skill of this century, far more important and widely needed than any particular programming language technology or software application. Computational thinking is an approach to problem solving, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science. Computational thinking is thinking in terms of abstractions, invariably multiple layers of abstraction at once. Computational thinking is about the automation of these abstractions. The automaton could be an algorithm, a Turing machine, a scientific simulation, a tangible device, a software system—or the human brain.

Bill Pugh, Jeff Hollingsworth, and Jan Plane are organizing a workshop designed with tracks for those with and without programming experience. The 3 day workshop will include presentations on ideas for teaching computation thinking, research in applying computation thinking, academic and professional careers and hands-on experience with lesson modules and software frameworks, all of which you can take back to your classroom.

The workshop is sponsored by the University of Maryland and Google.