Computational Thinking

Jon UdellUCEA

April 2009

A set of

principles, practices, and patterns

that govern the

structure, flow, and processing

of information in networks.

What is computational thinking?

Who learns these principles today?

Mathematicians computer scientists

geeks

Who should learn them?

Everybody

WHY?

Our fate as a society depends on our collective ability to

create, organize, navigate,

search, interconnect, and reason

in (and about)networks of

people

andinformation

What are some principles of computational thinking?

Indirection

Abstraction

Namespace management

Publish/subscribe syndication

Query

Composition/decomposition

Generalization/specialization

Structured data

Automation

How would Piaget explain this?

And how would Piaget explain this?

The structured Information must be here, right?

Actually, no, it isn’t anywhere.

Andy Baio’s analysis of Feed the Animals

Track data on Wikipedia

Amazon Mechanical Turk bulk requester

What principles did Andy apply?

Structured data

Decomposition

Composition

Automation Generalization

oreilly.com search: before

oreilly.com search: after

What principle did Allen Noren apply?

Namespace management

Every book has a unique keyword, or tag

Mine was pracintgr for Practical Internet Groupware

The tag is used consistently in URLs for:

Tables of contents

Cover images

Summaries

Indexes

Author bios

What principles did I apply on Allen’s behalf?

Abstraction

Structured data

Automation

Transparency Camp 2009

Principles in use at Transparency Camp

Publish/subscribe syndication

Namespace management

Indirection

Query

Public events: the conventional way

Public events: the computational way

Principle: structured data

How we describe calendar events:

"Communications Committee, Tuesday at 5:30, Cheshire Career Center Conference Room, KHS"

How computers understand calendar events:

DTSTART:20080617T173000 SUMMARY:Communications Committee LOCATION:KHS , Cheshire Career Center Conference Room

Anti-principle: Artificial intelligence

We infer context easily. Software tries hard, often fails.

Principles: indirection, pub/sub

Keene Sentinel: Monday night chess club, 6:30 PM, Best Western Hotel (wrong)

Eventful.com: Monday night chess club, 6:30 PM, E.F. Lane Hotel (right)

When we are authoritative producers of feeds, and when the newspaper consumes them, the Information we provide will be timely and correct.

“We posted weekly.pdf to the website. Isn’t that good enough?”

Principles: abstraction, generalization

Bloggers publish and subscribe to feeds

So do Twitterers

Abstraction: Publish/subscribe is a key pattern.

Generalization: iCalendar files are feeds, can form pub/sub networks.

Calendar curation for Huntington, WV

Metadata for Huntington, WV

One of these thingsIs not like the other.

Project-wide metadata

Project communication / collaboration

The room orchestrates feedsIn the same way that the project Itself does.

Principles at work in the elmcity project

Indirection

Abstraction

Namespace management

Publish/subscribe syndication

Query

Composition/decomposition

Generalization/specialization

Structured data

Automation

How do we learn and apply these principles?

How do we teach them?

Let’s discuss.