Teaching and Digital Technologies Big Issues and Critical Questions

Introduction

Computational thinking is at the core of the digital technologies curriculum. But what is it? This chapter will uncover some of the hype around this term, and show how it is considered by some to be important for future economic prosperity. A key idea about technological transformation is that continued computer innovation needs to bring together three very important ingredients: software, hardware and liveware. The software comprises the programs – the lines of instruction codes – that tell a computer what to do. The hardware includes the physical microchips, cases, CD-ROMs and other machinery of which a specific computer is constructed. Liveware is us – the people that interact with computers, program them to accomplish tasks, stand in front of the automatic teller machine (ATM). If any part of the equation is left out, the system will fail to work properly.

If all these ingredients work well together, then computer systems and humans can achieve amazing things – things that are not practically possible otherwise. The challenge is to make this creative synthesis clear and understandable to students. This chapter will explore some ‘unplugged’ activities to expose the possibilities, and then show how students can make the transition into ‘person-plus’, that is, knowing when and how to employ computers to enhance their problem solving capacity.