Problem Statement: Elly's son Asher is currently involved in two sports activities outside of school: atheletic conditioning and basketball. Starting next week, Asher will also be on his school's soccer team and will only have time for 1 of his sports act

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References

BBC. (2019). Introduction to computational thinking - Revision 1 - KS3 Computer Science - BBC Bitesize. BBC Bitesize; BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp92mp3/revision/1 Dominguez, X., Kamdar, D., Grover, S., Vahey, P., & Balisciano, P. (2020). Computational thinking in preschool: What, why, and how. Digital Promise. Gretter, S.& Yadav, A. (2016). Computational thinking and media & information literacy: An integrated approach to teaching twenty-first century skills. Team, L. (2023). Computational thinking definition. Learning. https://www.learning.com/blog/defining-computational-thinking.

Problem Statement: Elly's son Asher is currently involved in two sports activities outside of school: atheletic conditioning and basketball. Starting next week, Asher will also be on his school's soccer team and will only have time for 1 of his sports activities during the soccer season. Elly and Asher must decide which of his two activities he should drop during soccer season. How can they make this decision?

Algorithm Design

Elly can now create a step-by-step process to arrive at the best solution. She and Asher write every soccer practice and game date and time on a calendar. Next, in different colored pencils, they add in the potential practice dates and times of conditioning and basketball. When the details are laid out visually for Asher and Elly, they can see that the basketball practices overlap with soccer, making it impossible to still attend basketball twice a week. Additionally, the information that Asher has provided about the skills practiced in conditioning demonstrate it will be a more beneficial activity to help his skills during soccer season. Elly and Asher are able to arrive at the decision to remain in conditioning, and pause the basketball membership.

Rationale: Algorithm Design allows for a sequence of clear steps to arrive at a solution (Dominguez et al, 2020). Once Elly and Asher have progressed through the first steps of computational thinking, they are able to develop a step by step process to find an ideal solution to their problem.

Abstraction

As Elly begins to recognize patterns, she is able to discard less important information. For example, Asher has told his mom that he prefers certain peers in his basketball class. He also shares that he learns skills in his conditioning class that are good for any sport. By focusing on practice times and the skills worked on at each practice, Elly is able to focus on the most important information first.

Rationale: As Gretter and Yadav have stated, abstraction allows us to ignore less relevant information, and focus on the most important facts (2016). By using abstraction, Elly can eliminate the excess details and focus on what will be most important in the decision-making process.

Pattern Recognition

When Elly begins to analyze the problem through decomposition, she begins to notice trends. Athletic conditioning is available Monday- Saturday from 4-5pm. Asher's current membership allows him to attend conditioning twice a week on the days of his choosing. Basketball is Monday, Wednesday and Thursdays, from 4:30- 5:30pm. Asher's current membership at basketball also allows for twice a week practice. The costs for each program are the same, at $50 per week.

Rationale: By looking for patterns and/or connections between the smaller parts of the problem, Elly can simplify the problem (Team, 2023). Elly is able to take steps that narrow the problem down.

Decomposition

Elly must break this problem into smaller parts. This will make the problem more manageable and easier to understand. She needs to consider the cost of each, as well as the days, times and lengths of each. She should also consider whether these activities will conflict or work well with the new soccer schedule Asher will have with practices and games.

Rationale: Breaking down problems into smaller parts makes them more manageable for consideration (BBC, 2019). When Elly takes this big decision and breaks it into smaller parts, she is able to see the specific details that can help her determine the correct decision.