Computational thinking for the sciences

Abstract

This paper describes "Computational Thinking for the Sciences", a 3-day summer workshop for high school science and mathematics teachers. Our workshop emphasizes the deep connections between the natural sciences, mathematics and computer science through activities and simulation development appropriate for scientific explorations. Teachers were exposed to simulation development in VPython, a visual extension to the popular Python programming language. By broadening exposure of computational thinking to the natural sciences and developing activities specifically for science domains, we hope to attract new students into computer science and better prepare natural science students to employ the computational tools they will utilize in the future.