Mike Sharples, Richard Noss We are living in a world of
increasing interdependence and complexity. Science and maths
underpin so much of everyday life: yet too few people really
understand how the science and maths that affects their lives is
done. That knowledge is essential if we are to be productive and
engaged citizens of the 21st century. How else can we hope to
understand stock market crashes, compare goods and services
online, or assess competing arguments about climate change?
Computational thinking empowers us to explore how systems and
processes work, including societies, the spread of diseases,
interacting technologies, and our own minds and bodies. We need
to distinguish computational thinking from creative computer
programming (or ‘coding’). Both are relevant and important
skills. Computational thinking involves forms of dynamic problem
solving that computer scientists practise, such as splitting
problems into smaller parts, tracing how things work, finding
‘bugs’ in processes, recognising and an