{"id":65990,"date":"2022-11-25T00:47:09","date_gmt":"2022-11-25T05:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=65990"},"modified":"2022-11-25T00:47:09","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T05:47:09","slug":"why-teach-children-to-think-like-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/why-teach-children-to-think-like-machines\/","title":{"rendered":"Why teach children to think like machines"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Historically, errors have been identified as a negative situation that we should avoid at all costs.\u00a0It is a widespread conception that cuts across all areas of society.\u00a0If a mistake is made in the practice of a sport, the consequence is a penalty.\u00a0From the field of education, it is a characteristic principle of currents related to behavioral psychology, those that are based on simple trial and error processes.\u00a0An error that, from the operant conditioning of psychologist Edward Thorndike, is considered to be followed by a punishment that eradicates the manifested behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reflecting on the mistake<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is the last thing that comes to mind when experiencing the bitter feeling that results as a consequence.\u00a0It is more common to want to forget, since the error, most of the time, is synonymous with failure.\u00a0It is a fairly widespread conception, but not universal.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are visions that advocate not stigmatizing the error, since they consider that, treated properly, it could be the greatest learning opportunity.\u00a0Seymour Papert, a disciple of Jean Piaget, a renowned author in the field of educational psychology and pedagogy,\u00a0<\/span>remarks that the school teaches that mistakes are bad<\/span><\/a>\u00a0;\u00a0the last thing one wants is to examine them, dwell on them, or reflect on them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The purification philosophy proposes an opposite attitude.\u00a0Errors benefit us because they lead us to study what happened, to understand what did not work properly through a correction process.\u00a0This contribution is collected under his theory called constructionism.\u00a0Along the same lines, Edgar Morin in his work\u00a0<\/span>The Seven Necessary Knowledge for the Education of the Future<\/span><\/em> points out that there is no knowledge that is not threatened to some extent by error and illusion<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mistakes in a connected society<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The rise of information and communication technologies has contributed to losing the fear of making mistakes, committing them on a digital plane sometimes generates the feeling of the lesser evil.\u00a0The generations that\u00a0<\/span>Mark Prensky calls digital natives<\/span><\/a>\u00a0seem to tend to be more daring in the interactions that are generated on digital planes, perhaps they are less aware of the consequences that their actions can cause in these scenarios.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is evident is that losing the fear of making mistakes,\u00a0<\/span>as Ken Robinson affirms<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, is one of the ingredients to let creativity run wild.\u00a0Mastering the art of making a mistake generates favorable conditions for the development of many of the soft skills that organizations such as the World Economic Forum recognize as crucial for an individual’s socio-professional success in the 21st century society.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perseverance, flexibility, adaptation to diverse environments, impact communication, among others, are skills that require a loss of respect for errors, showing rebellion based on critical reasoning capable of deciphering the triggers for said error, to submit them to an analysis that allows proposing resolution alternatives that lead to success.<\/span><\/p>\n

The question is how to work on these skills in a society where we spend a huge amount of time in connected digital environments.\u00a0We will require these skills to function successfully when managing our access device to a social network, to a digital Administration, to a metaverse, etc.\u00a0Right at this level we can resort to the movement called computational thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Computational thinking<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Jeannette Wing defined computational thinking<\/span><\/a>\u00a0as \u201cthinking that involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, making use of fundamental computer science concepts.\u201d\u00a0The essence is to solve problems by applying computer scientist thinking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karen Brennan and Mitchel Resnick provided a working definition of the concept and presented a framework that classifies computational thinking along three dimensions: concepts, practices, and perspectives.<\/span><\/p>\n

With computational concepts they refer to the main ideas that we learn when we develop our computational thinking: sequences, parallelisms, loops, conditionals, events, data and operators.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, the practices \u2013 being incremental and iterative, testing and fixing, reusing and remixing, and abstracting and modularizing \u2013 would come to suppose the resolution of problems with a computational nature, developing procedures that use the computational concepts that the previous dimension includes.\u00a0These practices will focus on thinking and learning processes, that is, we move from what we learn to how we learn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the perspectives \u2013express, connect and question\u2013 suppose a level of problem solving with a more critical position with the digital tools we use.\u00a0They are more effective in their selection and application.<\/span><\/p>\n

Definitely, in a society increasingly mediated by information technologies, where the development of soft skills is decisive, the computational thinking approach becomes essential to prepare an empowered individual capable of actively participating in their immediate environment. .<\/span><\/p>\n

Approach from education<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The school that prepares for life cannot remain oblivious to the promotion of computational thinking.\u00a0Today, we spend a significant amount of time interacting with machines.\u00a0It is crucial to understand the language they use to communicate with us.\u00a0A programmed sequential language that foresees the actions that we are going to need to carry out to offer us a response that is as aligned as possible.\u00a0The responses are not always satisfactory, and understanding your programming will help you tolerate the frustration that unintended consequences can create.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is evident that the work of computational thinking has a clear and direct link with programming.\u00a0However, it is important to understand that it is not just a matter of mastering this practice, but of being able to solve problems of various kinds by applying a computer scientist’s thinking, as Jeannette Wing points out.<\/span><\/p>\n

The work of computational thinking from educational environments must attend to a series of pedagogical principles that ensure an experience that connects the school with the immediate environment of the learner.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Escuela Nueva movements and, above all,\u00a0<\/span>the pragmatism of John Dewey<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, laid the foundations of what we know today as action pedagogy.\u00a0A teaching and learning proposal that presents challenges whose resolution implies direct interactions with the learning object.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is of vital importance to control the maturation level of the apprentice, returning to Papert’s constructionism.\u00a0The development of computational thinking at an early age is worked on first with tangible devices such as robots, and later with programming languages \u200b\u200bas a vehicle for abstract thinking and as a means to express and create.<\/span><\/p>\n

Types of activities in the classroom<\/strong><\/h4>\n

One of the work experiences of computational thinking in educational environments that is highly aligned with these pedagogical postulates is the\u00a0<\/span>Fundaci\u00f3n Profuturo<\/span><\/a>\u00a0project .\u00a0A proposal that addresses its development from\u00a0<\/span>the perspective of Kotsopoulos, Floyd, Khan, Namukasa, Somanath, Weber and Yiu<\/span><\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0These authors classify the pedagogical experiences to address the work of computational thinking into four types:<\/span><\/p>\n