Why My Kids Have to Play Video Games

As an Einstein Fellow at the National Science Foundation, I have spent the last month delving through research regarding best practices for instilling computational thinking skills in K-6 students so that they can be prepared to jump into computer science courses by 8th or 9th grade. Clearly students need to acquire the foundational knowledge (i.e. fundamentals of reading, writing, number sense, etc) critical to their success. However, as a computer scientist, I firmly believe that equal importance must be placed on developing advanced problem solving skills to prepare students for 21st century jobs. Almost every industry is now influenced by computer aided science and students who posses skills like critical thinking, computer simulation and modeling, and computational analysis are finding it much easier to find, and thrive, in high-level jobs.

The challenge is finding ways to instill these skills using technology that is vastly different now than it was merely 10 years ago. Many educational app designers, software companies, coalitions, and educators are working diligently to provide a deliverable solution to this problem, and many of them are having great success. However, as I have been reading about all of these efforts, I could not help but to reflect on my own childhood. In reflection, I have come to two primary questions: 1) How did I learn these skills in an elementary school that had a total of a dozen computers (administrative staff included); 2) How can I make sure my two daughters get these skills in an era when the focus is increasingly on test preparedness for math and English?

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