TASK 7. "COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AND CODING" - Translator

 

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Translator: Eloy Riquelme Pineda

• COMPUTATIONAL THINKING: computational thinking is the  process by which a person deals with problems of different kinds by means of computer skills, critical thinking, lateral thinking and so on. It has some important characteristics, such as: decomposition, which is the procedure by which a problem with higher complexity is broken down into smaller, more manageable series; pattern recognition. After breaking down the complex problem, the small series are tackled individually so that they can be solved in a similar way to previous problems; abstraction. It consists of the omission of information irrelevant to the problem at hand; algorithms. steps to solve the situation of each problem are presented. After all those things, computational potential is used in order to solve the problem in the most efficient way possible. For teachers, the early incorporation of computational thinking into school subjects is a major breakthrough in the introduction and development of school subjects; this is because the computational thinking functions as a basis for the development of other subjects in order to provide them with a wider range of tools. it is important that professionals be proficient in the fundamentals of computational thinking and the respective technical vocabulary. There are also some learning strategies that are used with computational thinking, like problem based learning, PBL, game based learning or person-computer interaction.

  
  

• PODCAST: it is an audio content which is available through a streaming archive. The advantage of the podcast is that it is an on-demand format, as the user listens to it whenever he/she wants. It is normally presented by one or more presenters who discuss a particular topic or current event. The debate or the content in a podcast can vary from a script until completely improvised. a podcast can be presented in many formats, such as audio, video or enhanced podcasts.  One of the uses of podcasts is educational. students can receive the lessons they want as well as studying and feel it is appropriate to do so. It is a great opportunity for those students who have visual and attention disabilities, as they can obtain classroom materials in a format more adapted to their conditions and needs. It also fosters an active role for students in their teaching-learning process and enables innovative educational and pedagogical models, so it leads to the use of ICTs. 

• CODING: it is the educational tendency that seeks to encourage learning programming languages in children and young people from an early age. This is because, in a very near future they will be the innovation future and both innovation and digital skills will become a core subject to learn in schools. The reasons why learning a programming language as a child is a long list, however, the benefits could be summarized in the following lists: 

  - It is a toll which can encourage creativity, due to the fact that it is not only about solving problems, but to use the resources and tools that are available to create what we have inside our mind. 

  - It helps children in decision-making and in team-work because coding is based on collaboration, where each one plays a role and contributes something to the others. 

  - In addition to improving employability and promotion, the teaching of programming enables children to develop logical-semantic thinking. 

• Screen reader: is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is displayed on the screen. This interpretation is then represented to the user by text-to-speech synthesizers, audio icons or Braille output.  This is the most common assistive technology used by students who are blind. It allows them to navigate around computer operating systems, read as well as write to files, surf the web or operate software products. The user does this by using keystroke commands to navigate and enter information. The needs of the student and the requirements of their study should determine the selection of screen readers. For example, the product needed for a user who requires access to a wide range of file types and a large amount of information will be different to the needs of the user who only uses email, word editing software and reads information on the internet in HTML format.

• educational standards: they are the learning goals for what students should know and be able to do at the end of the grade level. local communities and educators choose their own curriculum, which is a detailed plan for day to day teaching. In other words, it is what students need to know and be able to do, and curriculum is how students will learn it. 

 Specific question: weakness and things to improve: 

reflecting on our proposed task, i believe that we have learned about a new way to teach students new concepts and how ICTs can be used also with no internet or with a poor internet connection. 

We have focused on the different situations that students have when learning through ICTs. Doing that also helps us as future teachers to understand much better that every student has a different situation and we have to adapt to them as well as they do. However, there are some things that can be improved in our work. 

to be honest, not all the group members have tested all the games. We divided the games in groups of two or three and then we put everything in common, so in my opinion all of us should have tested the three games in order to try to understand better what the teacher tries to inculcate in us. 

The next step from my point of view is to immerse ourselves as much as possible in the educational experiences they propose to us because if not we would never come to understand the different situations children have when using technology in their educational process. 

For a better standing and for developing the activity ideally with our students we must be sure that all of them can do the activity without problems and if they have problems we have to be able to solve them as best as possible in order to give the same opportunities for learning to all students and not create desigualities.