New Courses

We have recently launched three courses at Rainbow. These courses focus on computational thinking and programming. In our earlier blog we have outlined why computational thinking is important. Computational thinking helps us to understand the problems better. We also believe that learning programming is fun and helps us to bring our ideas into reality. Our industry experts at Rainbow have developed and deliver these courses to make you understand the programming topics in an easy and engaging manner.

Programming Day

This course is designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of computer programming. In this course you will learn how computer works, how to analyze, what code is all about, how to code and how learning to code will help you now and also in future.

Computing for School Teachers

The aim of this course is to provide guidance and practical advice and support current ICT transformation to align with the new Computer Science programme published in September 2013 for teaching from September 2014. This course has been designed to increase the effectiveness of teaching computer science in the classroom. At the end of this course you will have knowledge of computational thinking and programming.

Java Courses

Java course is designed to give an introduction to the Java programming language and object oriented programming (OOP) concepts. After completing these courses, students will have necessary skills for analyzing, designing, and developing Java applications.

All these courses include both theory and practice session. For more information about these courses and book your place please visit our website http://www.rainbowsolution.co.uk .

What is Computational Thinking and why is it important?

Jeannette M. Wing used the term "computational thinking" in an ACM Communication article to present her vision to the computer science community. In this article, she mentioned that anyone can benefit from computational thinking and  she also suggested that computation thinking should be a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists.

So what is computational thinking?

"Computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating problems and their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a form that can be effectively carried out by an information-processing agent." - Cuny, Snyder, Wing

Computational thinking involves a set of problem-solving skills and techniques that includes:

• Collecting, logically organizing and analyzing data
• Representing data through abstractions (such as models and simulations)
• Problem decomposition (breaking down tasks into smaller manageable parts)
• Automating solutions through algorithmic thinking (series of ordered steps taken to solve a problem)
• Identifying, analyzing, and implementing possible solutions in order to achieve the most efficient and effective combination of steps and resources

It also includes pattern recognition (the ability to notice similarities or common differences that will help us to make predictions or lead us to shortcuts); generalizing (the ability to represent an idea or a process in general terms) and transferring this process to other problem domains

Computational thinking is applicable to any subject such as biology, medicine, economics, finance, archaeology, journalism, law, social science, arts. Computational thinking influences research in nearly all disciplines. It brings together different disciplines under one platform. For example, in Human-Computer interaction ,  researchers from computer science, designs and psychology working together to understand how human can interact with computer effectively, Computational Biology or Bioinformatics involves people from computer science and biology.

Why Computational Thinking is important?

We are in 21st Century. Computer technologies are used in every part of our life. We must understand and learn computational thinking because it changes the way we think. When we will apply computational thinking in our problems, we will understand them better. We will know what strategies are applicable to solve them. With the understanding of computational thinking we will have the ability to evaluate the match between computational tools and techniques and a problem. We will be able to explain problems and solutions in computational terms. We will know how to think abstractly to manage complexity.

References:

• Jeannette M. Wing, “Computational Thinking,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 49, No. 3, March 2006, pp. 33–35
• http://link.cs.cmu.edu/article.php?a=600
• http://www.google.com/edu/computational-thinking/what-is-ct.html