Computational Thinking
Storyboard Text
- Hey! I'm Captain Computational Thinking. It's nice to meet you, but we have a problem. There's an hour until a rocket launches, and the engines won't start. Luckily, we can solve this with computational thinking.
- First, we have decomposition, which is breaking the problem down into smaller parts. This could be something like breaking down the steps of riding a bike into smaller parts (Get on, place feet on pedal, pedal, stop, place brake.
- If we decompose the problem, we can see that there's 4 steps. First, detach from the supports, then, ignite the fuel, next, open the exhaust hatch, and finally, use the propulsion to fly.
- Next is abstraction. This is the process of eliminating extra info. For example, this could mean not looking at the microwave type or the age of the food when heating something up, and instead looking at wattage or cook time.
- Here, we don't need to look at the power of the engines, or amount of fuel, but rather the quality of the wiring.
- Then, we have pattern recognition. Pattern recognition is finding parts that are similar or things that are common. For example, when classifying an organism, scientists look at their characteristics that they have in common with known organisms.
- In all of our rocket's engines, all of them were made using reused wires,
- After that, we have algorithmic thinking. This is the steps taken to complete a task or solve a problem. For example, if an app is broken, try closing and reopening it, and if that doesn't work, try uninstalling and reinstalling.
- Because the engines are broken, we can try replacing the reused faulty wires, with new, likely better wires.
- Lastly is debugging.. Debugging is the process of finding errors in your process and fixing them. For example, looking at a rubric and correcting errors on a project.
- However, in this case, with such limited time, this was the best we could do. Our astronaut is ready to go to space!
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