Barefoot Quick guide to Computational Thinking

The Pdf file quick–guide-to-computational-thinking

What is collaborating?
Collaborating means working with others and it frequently achieves the best results. Teachers plan together and observe one another to develop good practice. Collaboration motivates us […]

What is debugging?
Bugs are errors in algorithms and code. Debugging is the process of finding and fixing these and it can often take much longer than writing the code in the first place. There can be […]

What is creating?
Creating is about planning and making things. Some endeavours involve various media each providing an outlet for creative expression. Software and digital media allow scope for creativity […]

What is tinkering?
We often try out something new to discover what it does and how it works: this is tinkering. It’s closely associated with logical reasoning. Pupils build up experiences of cause and e […]

What is evaluation?
Evaluation is about making judgements, where possible in an objective and systematic way. Every day, we make judgements about what to do and what we think, based on a range of […]

What is abstraction?
Abstraction is about simplifying things – identifying what’s important without worrying too much about detail.

A school timetable is an abstraction of what happens in a typical wee […]

What are patterns?
Patterns are everywhere. By identifying patterns, we can create rules and solve more-general problems.

Children notice patterns in how teachers react to their behaviour. Weather […]

What is decomposition?
In computing, decomposition is the process of breaking down a task into smaller, more-manageable parts. It has many advantages. It helps us manage large projects and makes the process […]

 
What are algorithms?
An algorithm is a sequence of instructions or a set of rules to get something done.

You’ll favour a particular route home from school – you can think of it as an algorithm. There are […]

What is logic?
Logical reasoning helps us explain why something happens.

If you set up two computers in the same way, giving them the same instructions (the program) and the same input, you can pretty much […]

How do we evaluate our solution?
There are several ways to evaluate solutions. To be certain that the solution is correct, it is important to ask:

does the solution make sense?

Do you now fully understand […]

Solutions that are not properly decomposed
If computational thinking techniques are applied to the problem of how to bake a cake, on decomposing the problem, it is necessary to know:

what kind of cak […]

Evaluating solutions

Before solutions can be programmed, it is important to make sure that it properly satisfies the problem, and that it does so efficiently. This is done through evaluation.

What is […]

There are two main ways that algorithms can be represented – pseudocode and flowcharts.
Representing an algorithm: Pseudocode
Most programs are developed using programming languages. These languages have spec […]

An algorithm is a plan, a set of step-by-step instructions to resolve a problem. In an algorithm, each instruction is identified and the order in which they should be carried out is planned.

What is an […]

How to abstract
Abstraction is the gathering of the general characteristics we need and the filtering out of the details and characteristics that we do not need.

When baking a cake, there are some general […]

What is abstraction?
Abstraction is one of the four cornerstones of Computer Science. It involves filtering out – essentially, ignoring – the characteristics that we don’t need in order to concentrate on those t […]

Why do we need to look for patterns?
Finding patterns is extremely important. Patterns make our task simpler. Problems are easier to solve when they share patterns, because we can use the same problem-solving […]

Pattern recognition

Once we have decomposed a complex problem, it helps to examine the small problems for similarities or ‘patterns’. These patterns can help us to solve complex problems more eff […]