Title
How Computers Work: Computational Thinking For Everyone
Abstract
What would you teach if you had only one course to help students grasp the essence of computation and perhaps inspire a few of them to make computing a subject of further study? Assume they have the standard college prep background. This would include basic algebra, but not necessarily more advanced mathematics. They would have written a few term papers, but would not have written computer programs. They could surf and twitter, but could not exclusive-or and nand. What about computers would interest them or help them place their experience in context? This paper provides one possible answer to this question by discussing a course that has completed its second iteration. Grounded in classical logic, elucidated in digital circuits and computer software, it expands into areas such as CPU components and massive databases. The course has succeeded in garnering the enthusiastic attention of students with a broad range of interests, exercising their problem solving skills, and introducing them to computational thinking.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.4204/EPTCS.106.1
ELECTRONIC PROCEEDINGS IN THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE
Field
DocType
Issue
Computer software,World Wide Web,Digital electronics,GRASP,Computer science,Computational thinking,Knowledge management,Elementary algebra,Mathematics education,Classical logic,Computation
Journal
106
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2075-2180
1
0.37
References 
Authors
14
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Rex Page1247.40
Ruben Gamboa211343.92