Education 2.0 & 3.0

Anyone who says you can’t apply computational thinking and digital learning strategies to strengthen students’ writing skills is wrong. To the contrary, this innovative learning style helps students hone critical-thinking skills across every discipline.

In my classroom, I teach students computational thinking through free materials from Ignite My Future in School, a partnership between Tata Consultancy Services and Discovery Education. I especially enjoy using their Curriculum Connectors, online resources for teachers across disciplines to help their students apply computational thinking techniques.

The core tenets of computational thinking are the building blocks that help my students become better learners and problem-solvers across every area of their work—from all areas of reading and language arts. Here’s how five core computational thinking approaches help my students build stronger critical thinking and writing skills:

Key Takeaways
New digital tools and platforms create opportunities in pedagogy, but they also result in deployment of under-tested digital tools in classroom instruction, which raises questions and challenges for educators.
A collaborative project between a media studies professor and a digital humanities librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign sought to address these challenges by developing digital pedagogy practices.
As the two case studies described here show, these practices can foster an environment of interdisciplinary, collaborative student engagement with new tools; openly acknowledge the digital tools' experimental states; and encourage playful student tinkering with the tools, even when they appear simple or familiar.

Encouraging an innovative mindset in students is important because the jobs they will have in the future may not yet exist today. Therefore, schools are increasingly asking for funds for 3D printers, robotics arenas, and makerspaces. While these shiny new tools are typically reserved for the STEM fields, English and humanities teachers can use a school’s makerspace to build on content. 

BY SUSANNAH HOLZ