Jolain LaMott Computational Thinking
by Jolain Lamott
1. Abstaction: The teacher recognizes that she can look for other areas of lost time by first charting all of the time then looking for where time can be grouped together. The teacher also recognized that this same process can be used not only in school but also in other areas of her life.
2. 3. Pattern Recognition: As Mrs. A looks at the recorded times, she begins to notice that a large amount time is being lost to student bathroom breaks. When she examines those bathroom breaks she again notices a pattern. Students begin to ask to go to the restroom about a 30 minutes after class begins. Additionally, she notices that few students tend to need to use the restroom again about an hour later. Mrs. A notices that a majority of her students need to use the restroom following lunch. However, the pattern in the late afternoon indicates that only a few students need to use the bathroom later in the afternoon before they head home.
2.1. Pattern Rationale: Google defines pattern recognition as "observing patterns and regularities"; Mrs. A observed the patterns such as, bathroom requests that were affecting the time management of her day (Computational Thinking for Educators - Unit 1 - Introducing Computational Thinking, 2019)
3. 2. Decomposition: Mrs. A decides to track all the events and disruptions during her day to determine where she is losing the most instruction time.
3.1. Decomposition Rationale: Google defines decomposition as the breaking down of a problem into smaller, more manageable parts (Computational Thinking for Educators - Unit 1 - Introducing Computational Thinking, 2019). Mrs. A is breaking down the larger problem of loss of instructions time and breaks, into more manageable parts of events to evaluate where she is losing instructional time.
4. 1. Problem Statement: Mrs. A notices she is behind in her planned lessons every week.
5. 4. Algorithm Design: Based on the noticed patterns, Mrs A. decides to have her students come into her class and unpack for the day. She then teaches a 15 minute content mini-lesson. Next, she has students take a whole class restroom break before the students move into a 30 minute independent work time. Then she moves into her next content lesson, again teaching a 15-20 minute mini-lesson time. However, due to the fact that only a few students tend to need to use the restroom during this time, she sends those specific students to the restroom as the rest of the students are transitioning to their independent work time. After lunch, the class takes a whole class restroom break because the patterns dictated that many students needed to use the restroom during this time of the day. Mrs. A teaches her next content area then allows specific students to use the restroom as they transition again to independent work time. Finally, the teacher teaches her last content area before students pack up to go home for the day.
5.1. Algorithm Rationale: Yadav, et al., (2016) states, "algorithm design is a sequence of steps to solve a problem"; Mrs. A sequences her day around the results of her students needs and her lessons to maximize her time ( Yadav, et al., 2016).
6. 5. Abstraction: Mrs. A recognizes that she can look for other areas of wasted time in her personal life. For instance, she never seems to have time for exercise or hobbies. By charting all of her time outside of school, she can look for areas of wasted time, i.e spent on Facebook, where she may be able to free up time for the other things she would like to do.
6.1. Abstraction Rationale: According to Yadav, Hong, and Stephenson, abstraction is how a solution transfers to a similar situation; because Mrs. A takes what she has learned in managing her time more effectively at school and applies it to her time management in her personal life this scenario is an example of abstraction (Yadav, Hong, Stephenson 2106).
7. References Computational Thinking for Educators - Unit 1 - Introducing Computational Thinking. (2019). Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://computationalthinkingcourse.withgoogle.com/unit Yadav, A., Hong, H. & Stephenson, C. TechTrends (2016) 60: 565. https://doi-org.ezp.twu.edu/10.1007/s11528-016-0087-7 *italicize to journal titles cannot be added due to formatting issues.