Providing Students with Computational Literacy for Learning About Everything
Mark Guzdial · The MIT Press eBooks · 2022
Learning about computing almost always requires learning about programming.There have been some brilliant people, like Alan Turing and John von Neumann, who could think about computing without a language or notation, but those people are rare.It is analogous to learning mathematics, including addition, subtraction, and multiplication, without writing digits like "34.9" or symbols like "+."Programming is defining a computation, something that a computer can do.A program describes a process.A program can be specified in any notation, so we should pick one that best suits the programmer and the domain.The most popular programming languages today are demanding, requiring students to use complex cognitive skills such as abstraction and decomposition of a problem into subcomponents.Programming does not have to be so complex and overwhelming.A simple programming language can still be effective for learning.Programming is a powerful tool for helping students learn in many different domains.I argue in this chapter that providing students with the ability to program is providing them with a literacy that can be an advantage in learning about everything else.