Giving Compass' Take:

• Stephen Noonoo, writing for EdSurge, shares how educators can utilize computational thinking across various subject matter, not just for computer science classes. 

• Why is computational thinking gaining traction in the education sector, and how can funders support it?

• Read about these 10 computational thinking resources for K-12. 

Computational thinking is one of the biggest buzzwords in education—it’s even been called the ‘5th C’ of 21st-century skills. While it got its start as a way to help computer scientists think more logically about data analysis, lately it’s been catching on with instructors in a diverse number of subjects—from science to math to social studies.

One reason for its emerging popularity? It’s engaging.

“Ask yourself, would you rather get to play with a data set or would you rather listen to the teacher tell you about the data set?” asks Tom Hammond, an associate professor for the teacher education program at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania. “Most are more interested in getting hands-on, even if it's just looking at the map and saying, ‘What about this?’”

Hammond is a social studies teacher by training with a natural interest in computer science, a subject he’s also taught. Now he’s championing a new approach to his subject that combines computational thinking with data visualization tools, like geographic information systems, or GIS, which pair maps with layers of data—so that users can see, say, election results by county or state borders in the colonial era.

Whether it’s taught in coding class or social studies, the framework is the same: look at the provided information, narrow it down to the most valuable data, find patterns and identify themes. And it works just as well for comparing maps, blocks of code or two works of literature.

“There’s sort of an efficiency there in encouraging this sort of critical thinking across disciplines,” Oltman says. “Same framework, many scenarios.”

“Data patterns and rules are the ways we are packaging computational thinking for social studies,” he adds. “If I was in literature or English language arts, I might come up with a different framing.”

Read the full article about computational thinking by Stephen Noonoo at EdSurge.