Abstract
Recently there is a nationwide focus on providing computer science education much earlier in schools. The goal is to bring computer science to k-12 students so that students have a robust computational thinking background before entering higher education or their professions, which rely on that skill for successful computer scientists. Computational thinking is defined as the skills necessary to solve problems, design systems, and utilize fundamental computing concepts such as decomposition, data representation, generalizations, abstractions, and algorithms. Depending on the grade level, these concepts should be introduced using the appropriate method. For example, an elementary school student would learn about data representation by recording different observations in an experiment and represent them with numbers, words, or lists. The introduction of these concepts to students requires proper guidance, which is imparted by using teacher’s computational thinking knowledge. These certificates necessitate proper practice in the following categories: computing practice and programming, computational thinking, computer and communications devices, and impacts of computing. Several universities in California offer training in the above-listed fields, although no such facilities are available in the Sacramento region. In this proposal, we plan to work on a project to create a hybrid online and in-classroom curriculum for k-12 teachers to teach computational thinking, using themes of Data Science in the curriculum. Data science is a growing field in computer science which alleviates the world’s problem with unlimited, ubiquitous data and our limited attention span to understand and apply it to our needs. Using this theme enables teachers to use real examples in the classroom.