My heart dropped when Professor Davis told us that we will be building computers during class one day. I began to think to myself self “Me? Build a computer? Yeah right, I hardly even know how to work a computer how am I suppose to build one?” However, it wasn’t as bad as I thought, as a matter of fact, I actually learned a lot from this activity. At first, I thought this was going to be an epic fail because I have never taken a technology class in my life, and you always hear about geniuses who build computers and code things. After, however, I realized that you just need basic knowledge and everyday skills to be successful at crafting a computer. During my experience of building the PIPER computer, my group demonstrated all of the aspects of the 4 C’s which enabled us to be successful at creating the computer.
The four parts of the 4 C’s are; Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Creativity. These skills are what made this activity possible and they were incorporated all throughout it. For example, I used collaboration in the activity because I worked with a group who all shared the same goal, to build the computer and play Minecraft. Along with collaboration, we used communication, I mean collaboration would have probably been a bit difficult without communication, but we were able to discuss the most ideal way to complete a task. In addition to this, we used ALOT of critical thinking especially when we weren’t doing something right or missed a step we had to think critically to solve the issue at hand. Lastly, we also got to use a lot of creativity mostly when something wasn’t working properly or a piece was missing we had to be creative and think of a way to solve the issue.
Below is a tweet I found that I think demonstrates the 4 c’s well
The 4 C’s #education #cpchat #edadmin pic.twitter.com/JAUB6zImHZ
— Craig Badura (@mrbadura) May 5, 2016
In addition to learning how to apply the 4 C’s I also learned how to recognize computational thinking. Computational thinking (aka CT) is a way to incorporate ideas (that are used in computer sciences) to solve problems using four techniques.
CT is achieved through decomposition, which is breaking a problem down and individually addressing its smaller parts. We demonstrated this while building the PIPER computer because instead of looking at the big picture of building a computer we addressed each individual part and broke the tasks into smaller pieces. In addition to decomposition, another part of CT is pattern recognition, which is looking for similarities amongst problems. We represented this when we wired the PIPER because a lot of the wiring was similar and repetitive, so we addressed each wiring task similar, if not the same to each other. Another technique of CT is abstraction, taking away the unnecessary parts of the problem and just focusing on what matters. While building the PIPER we performed abstraction when we were running out of time we skipped the decorative steps and just addressed the part of actually building the screen and doing the wiring so the computer can work. The last part of CT is algorithmic design, which is creating a step by step plan to achieve a desired outcome. Lastly, we accomplished algorithmic design by making a step by step plan to complete the PIPER.
I know understanding the parts to computational thinking can be difficult, so I am attaching an image from Google that helped me visualize it.
In addition to this image, Click Here to see a video explaining computational thinking!
Not only did I demonstrate the 4 C’s while building the PIPER, but also I demonstrated computational thinking. These two concepts made a scary topic (building the PIPER) into an exciting, and easy task. Once you learn about the 4 C’s and computational thinking you realize how effective and simple they are, and even that you demonstrate them every day without knowing! When teaching in the classroom it is highly important to incorporate the 4C’s to make your students well rounded and establish the necessary tools to be successful when working with others. That being said, I am excited to utilize both these concepts in my future classroom because I think it will definitely help students excel by giving them the confidence and knowledge on how to take a scary problem and break it down into smaller parts. I want my students to learn how applicable these concepts are by having them practice these concepts in multiple subjects such as science and math. That way they know that you can use these tools to address any situation!
Building the PIPER made me feel confident, intelligent and creative which are all traits that I plan to foster in my classroom! The PIPER helped me witness CT and the 4 C’s in action, but there are many activities and lessons that they can be applicable in and that I plan on exploring within my future classroom! As an elementary teacher, it will be important to incorporate the 4 C’s to help students develop their skills from a very young age. Besides the PIPER, one activity I plan to do in my future classroom is to break my students off in teams, then give them all bizarre items. With the bizarre items, they will have a friendly competition to build the tallest tower with their teams. With this, they will directly be working on teamwork which goes hand and hand with collaboration and communication. In addition, they will definitely be working on creativity and critical thinking by strategically planning the best way to build their tower with limited resources. These are all important traits because in life students will always have to know how to communicate and collaborate with others to solve problems. Lastly, creativity and critical thinking will make students excel in the world by having them be different then everyone else.
In conclusion, I am very glad that I got to experience building the PIPER because it enabled me to see the 4 C’s and Computational thinking first hand. It also let me envision what I plan to have my future classroom look like!
Here is a video that I found explaining how the 4 C’s are essential within the classroom.
Here is an article I found with some resources for Computational Thinking