Thursday, September 29, 2016
Bergin, M: Computational Literacy vs Computational thinking
Throughout this class we has been working to differentiate between the two terms listed above. In this week's article DiSessa defines computational literacy as "an intelligence achieved cooperatively with external materials." Last week we read Grover and Pea's article which outlines that "computational thinking is the process of recognizing aspects of computation in the world that surrounds us, and applying tools and techniques from Computer Science to understand and reason about both natural and artificial systems and processes." The differences between the two are subtle as they interact and overlap in multiple ways. However, CL occurs when working with external materials more specifically computers, it is not simply the ability to use a computer but to rather to use the computer as an "object to think with" in the spirit of Papert. CT on the other hand is not exclusive to working with computers, although it can include them as a tool. This second term describes a mindset rather than a tool which involves systematic and high level thinking skills. Although some parties might argue that computational literacy is an extremely important skill in achieving computational thinking, the terms are not synonymous.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hello Michaela,
ReplyDeleteI like the how you described computational literacy. I have a different opinion regarding CT, and would love to hear your thoughts about that. While I approve that some elements of CT could be done separately from a computer, I think that CT is very computer-dependent. Although we can make algorithms in our minds or write them on paper, how great is our capacity to execute algorithms compared to the capacity of computer? Why should we consider notions of flow of control, efficiency and performance constraints (power and memory), modularizing and so on for our brain? I am not saying that such skills would not be useful in any way, I just believe they make sense the most when we speak of an information processing agent as powerful as a computer. And even if I learn algorithms through computer science, I don't think I will start thinking about algorithms and loops and using them in my daily to enhance my performance. It just doesn't make sense because we don't have the capacity to execute algorithms like a computer.