This project focuses on developing the infrastructure for a self-sustaining organization that can manage, grow, and evangelize olympiads that involve young students (middle and junior high) in computational thinking. A large component is the creation of pilot olympiads in a select few cities in the United States. Specific goals of this project include: (1) identifying a set of foundational skills that underlie computational thinking that can be taught before college and high school; (2) identifying a style of problems and scenarios that engage a wide variety of students; and (3) implementing a curriculum of training sessions and contest questions that exemplify those foundational skills.
There are two broad reasons for creating a Computational Thinking Olympiad. First, to expose the fundamentals of computational thinking to a broad audience of potential researchers and practitioners in the field, thus increasing participation and diversity in computing. Second, to ensure long-lasting impact beyond of this project.
The success of the Computational Thinking Olympiad will have a significant impact on our society by introducing middle school students to computational thinking in its breadth and depth: (1) encouraging students to have fun with the computational thinking in an arena that is both cooperative and competitive; (2) encouraging students to pursue education in computing; (3) introducing the unplugged parts of computing to those who have not had access to the plugged-in parts; and (4) showing that computational thinking is not ``just'' programming.
We created an Olympiad, targeted at middle school students, to increase their awareness of "computational thinking." We successfully hosted two events, the second was at Georgia Tech, run by the College of Computing’s Office of Outreach, Enrollment and Community. The spirit of CTO is to introduce middle school students (6th - 8th grade) to computer science by physically and mentally engaging them in competitions based on computational principles. The Olympiad is modeled after the athletic legacy of the Olympic Games with a computational twist. In the second run, students rotated through 5 challenging competition activities while learning to develop algorithms to solve problems and how to encode and decode images and messages and the various types of networks that carry these messages. Teams earned points towards medals for each activity and for the overall competition award. The Program Committee has consisted of computing education professionals that have worked with non-college students. All PIs are formulating middle schools lists to target this summer and prepping communication to the teachers. All are also reviewing a possible expansion plan and will nominate a future participant on the West Coast. We have produced ample materials that can be shared with any future sites wishing to host a similar event.
