Unlike humans, computers are incredible at doing boring, repetitive tasks with flawless efficiency and accuracy. But the only way they can do them is when somebody can specifically instruct them what to do and how to do it. That process is called Computational Thinking algorithmic design, and an algorithm is nothing more than a set of instructions. When used in cooking the algorithm is called a recipe. When used in mathematics it is called an equation. In a basketball game we call it a play or a move, and when we use it in computer science we call it coding.
Here, Golightly suggests using https://classic.csunplugged.org/ - Computer Science without a Computer which has countless activity suggestions and handouts, such as the ones presented in this workshop
Participants scan the handout and briefly discuss the three kinds of searches.
While they are doing that, the presenter will start playing an online version of that game showing how the computer strategizes and how you might do the same
An example of critical minds at work re-shaping the learning environment around their own goals :-)
How did this happen?
It was the presenter's fault. My beauiful assistant and I had played the battleship game weeks ago when we had discovered these materials, and it was so simple that we hardly looked at it again but instead got our minds around coming to grips with how the sorts work. This consumed us to the extent that on the day of the presentation we focused on the sorting algorithms and assumed the battleship game would follow naturally. It didn't, because each of us had forgot the rule through which the sort would be applied. You give a location and the partner needs to give you the number of the ship in that location, which you then enter on your worksheet. That way, you learn some of the ship numbers in locations A through Z and this enables you to hone in on the ship you are looking for.
I missed this when I tried to play with the workshop participants in Bangkok, and Bobbi had forgot it as well. BUT one participant took over and interjected her own theory and we got to see language and communication at play. The language benefit of talking about coding is to tease out people's approaches and solutions to problem solving. It's not a question of the teacher telling you how to do it (i.e teacher teaching coding), the language benefit is to elicit from the students descriptions of algorithms they think might work, and discussion follows on that. So our lapse elicited exactly what we were looking for.
I asked the participant if I could upload my video of her doing this, and she agreed. I did so against this byline
Vance Stevens forgot exactly how to conduct an activity he was presenting, thus creating a knowledge gap in a recent presentation at ThaiTESOL on "Teaching English through coding using collaborative projects that don’t require specialist skills or even a computer". A participant named Kashivee stood up and attempted to fill in that gap. As the thrust of the workshop was to suggest that teaching coding has potential to elicit language from and among students, Kashivee illustrated spontaneously what the presenter asserts that teaching around the subject of coding is meant to accomplish.
To prevent the lapse next time I conduct this workshop (on Feb 9 at 04:20 UTC at CamTESOL in Phnom Penh), where I hope to elicit a correctly guided conversation, my beautiful assistant and I prepared the instructions graphic we need to run the workshop more efficiently in the 25 min we'll have for it at CamTESOL on Feb 9, 2020.
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