

Computer Science for the Rest of Us (Non-Computer Scientist) - rxin
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/business/computer-science-for-non-majors-takes-many-forms.html?_r=1&hpw

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mbell
I think they lose audience by using terms such as "Computational Thinking".

What I find lacking in many non-tech folks is not Com Sci thought (by my
definition), but rather something much more fundamental: systematic and
analytic thought.

I find no end to the level of frustration I feel when I try to have a
conversation about something, anything, with a non-tech person and they can't
deal with breaking a problem down into a set of interrelated sub issues and
focusing the discussion on what those issues are and how they interact with
each other.

This of course, isn't true of every non-tech person I talk to. But, it is
clearly far more prevalent outside the tech community. I do agree that it
needs to be core to education, far more core than remembering what year some
guy found some land in my opinion.

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mjn
I agree, though empirically so far, "computational thinking" has been the most
successful of the various phrases coined for versions of this concept.

I personally prefer "procedural literacy". "Procedural" still has some
potentially scary connotations, but is as least not _specifically_ about
computation. The idea is that the general skill of thinking in terms of
sequences and processes and systems is a kind of literacy to be fluent with,
and that that's not really the same as knowing how to _program_ in particular.
But somehow "computational thinking" has garnered more press and institutional
support, despite being coined several years later.

This paper has a nice history of procedural-literacy-esque proposals
(disclaimer: written by my grad-school advisor):
[http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005....](http://dm.lcc.gatech.edu/~mateas/publications/MateasOTH2005.pdf)

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spdub
Fellow slug i assume edit: went to your website, you are only a slug by
affiliation, my apologies

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derrida
If I were trying to solve this problem for Primary/Secondary education, I
wouldn't teach "computational thinking", I'd teach philosophy and give
students programming tasks in an art class.

Why? Philosophy gives you a feeling for syllogistic reasoning of the type that
occurs both in arguments and computer programs.

Programming in the art class because what really matters with implementation
is that students feel that they are making something they want to see in the
world, rather than rote-learning drudgery.

Programming in Mathematics classes, also.

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hsshah
If only I had more upvotes to give.

Don't teach programming/technology just for the sake of it to non-CS folks. If
they enjoyed that, they would have opted for CS major.

However, strongly believe that there is a need for better understanding of the
computational world, outside of CS domain. Help build familiarity (kind of
computational intuition) and they will participate eagerly in technological
revolution in their domain. (instead of pushing back)

Ideally we should introduce computational skills in middle schools. Scratch is
a great platform to teach these skills implicitly; kids focus more time on
being creative/fun and less with writing code.

For adults, we need to identify strong application areas and start from there.
Loved to hear what Professor LeBlanc is doing in his course 'Computing for
Poets'. We should have more of these 'Computing for X' style introductions. (X
= [Doctors, Teachers, Product Managers, ....])

If anyone is interested in working on this, PM me. Love to discuss ideas.

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trun
My favorite part of this article...

 _[T]his course is tied to two courses offered by the English department on
J.R.R. Tolkien and Anglo-Saxon literature. Students in the computing course
put concepts to immediate use by analyzing large bodies of text. The syllabus
is more like what one would find for a humanities course._

Too often introductory CS programs focus on the "how" of programming. By
showing students the "why" and "what" first, you immediately have a more
compelling case for keeping them engaged. This is true of all subjects I
suppose, but CS is somewhat unique in that there are problems waiting to be
solved almost everywhere.

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philip1209
I didn't gain much from the article. As an engineer who loves computers, I was
hoping for more enlightenment about the theory versus application of computer
science, with my experience being in the latter half. However, the article
seems to focus more on the abstract concept of incorporating computing into
primary education.

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hythloday
The obvious mnemonic is "reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, recursion". It's
illustrative that they didn't go for that.

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hendzen
Very surprised that the author failed to mention this:
<http://www.collegeboard.com/html/computerscience/index.html>

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gaius
Social implications of algorithms?! What on Earth does that mean?

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jvoorhis
Sounds like technological determinism.

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kyt
Couldn't view article on my iPhone.

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ktizo
I was trying to convine someone just the other day that if they were serious
about wanting to get a video game made to their own design, then the first
thing they should do before hiring programmers is to learn the basics of
programming themselves, which I also offered to show them. I said that they
should do this so they have at least some fundamental understanding of the
issues involved.

Their answer is that they dont need to do this because they will be hiring
programmers.

I suspect that they will not get their game made.

