St. Clair Misar, Kate
Computational Thinking
Computational Thinking
Science
Readings: Using computational thinking and design process to create models
which explore natural phenomena and help students have concrete experience with
more levels of complexity in a given phenomena (ecosystem, physics/forces,
waves, etc). How do we implement this in a classroom with less resources? How
long will it take for students to learn and feel comfortable with the coding
capabilities before they can engage in the process of modeling these phenomena?
How much time will this take in the classroom and how will this impact the
current amount of curriculum? I agree that this modeling will deepen thinking
about the topic they are studying but currently science curriculum is written
to support shallow depth and broad coverage? How do we change the curriculum to
support deeper coverage on narrower topics? How will students develop their
understanding of cycles or phenomena that can not be easily modeled on the
computer? I like the idea of students being the creators of these cycles and
models, as well as how it engages students to look at a program in levels.
Literacy
Readings: Combining programming with the writing process to brainstorm,
storyboard (plan), draft, edit, and publish (Burke) and incorporating
computational thinking into designing fashion to encourage interest in
programming(Burke). Makes writing more visual- and interactive, helps students
see how programming like writing can be applied to multiple situations. Vee
makes a strong argument about how “literacy enables people to represent their
ideas in texts that can travel away from immediate interpersonal contexts (to
write) and also to interpret texts produced by others (to read)”(45) and how
this literacy becomes a “material component or technology must first become
central”(45). He makes the argument for the prevalence of programming within
our society today and the need for students to learn to program or become
consumers. Burke makes a strong argument for how it can be included into
already existing curriculum in writing- but what about our students’ current
skills with traditional writing? I wonder how will this impact their abilities
to develop persuasive and evidence based arguments? How will this assist them
in looking at text critically and improve their fluency? I can see how it might help in accuracy, and helping
students look at text at the word level and more structurally (organization and
construction of an argument); how will this improve their comprehension of
texts. How will this help them to develop literacy strategies and apply fix-up
comprehension strategies? What impact will this have on their writing longer pieces
of text?
Idea
for Program on Scratch Combining Literacy and Science:
In
my experience, middle school students and high school students enjoy reading
dystopian novels. What if we would encourage students to take part in the
creation of stories similar to Burke’s study while simulating an environmental
experience. I have been thinking a lot about the idea of having students write
a story about how rising water levels will impact human and animal ecosystems-
I got the idea from the second wave of the young adult novel Fifth Wave. I have been thinking about how we have designed simulations of ecosystems- what if we added a story-line to it?
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