Practise the thinking. Keep the judgement.
Computer science education: computational thinking at school
Computer science education teaches you to define a problem, represent the data and design an algorithm. Using an app is a different skill.
What is computer science education?
It is learning to define a problem, represent the information, and design a process a person or a computer can follow.
In the Australian Curriculum, Digital Technologies asks you to use computational thinking and information systems to define, design and implement a digital solution. The curriculum names abstraction, collecting and representing data, specifying what the solution must do, designing algorithms, and implementing them.
Opening a slide deck or a search box is digital literacy. Computer science education asks you to explain the steps and the data, not only to operate a tool. Years 9 and 10 access to Technologies subjects is set by the state or territory, or by the school. Check the subject your school actually offers.
How is computer science different from digital literacy?
Digital literacy is using digital tools safely and effectively. Computer science education is designing the solution those tools might run.
The Australian Curriculum treats Digital Literacy and Digital Technologies as related and distinct. You can be fluent with a device and still be unable to state an input, an output and the rule that connects them.
Try this: write the steps that decide whether a number is even, including what you do with a negative number or a decimal. If you cannot state the rule, you are still using the idea rather than explaining it.
What does computer science look like in school?
School programs usually ask you to investigate a need, design a process, implement it and judge whether it meets the need. A named classroom program is not the same thing as the subject.
People search for computer science in schools. That phrase covers many classroom programs. Confirm the program name, year level and provider with your school. A tutoring brand in a search result is not the curriculum.
Computational thinking, in that curriculum, means breaking a problem into parts, naming the abstract idea, and designing algorithms, patterns and models. A useful task is small enough to trace by hand: a score rule, a sorting rule, or a decision about which data you are allowed to collect.
How do you practise computer science education?
Pick one problem, write the inputs and outputs, trace the steps with two examples, then change one condition and solve it again without looking.
Original example: a library fine is 20 cents a day after a two-day grace period. A book that is 5 days late has 5 − 2 = 3 chargeable days, so the fine is 60 cents. A book that is 1 day late is still inside the grace period, so the fine is 0. Name the grace period before you multiply. If the second example only copies the first answer, you have remembered a number, not the rule.
RubricMark’s maths practice is for mathematical reasoning. It is not a computer science course and it does not replace the subject your school sets. Use it when the computing task depends on number, patterns or a careful calculation, then return to explaining the algorithm in words.