Bill Moseley, Ph.D.
Leadership & Innovation in Education and Technology
EDLT - Computational Thinking
About this Course...
Part of the Ed.D. program in Learning Technologies at Pepperdine University, the Applied Seminar in Learning Technologies (aka, Comptational Thinking) is a course that focuses on two important trends in Learning Technology, the Maker Movement and Computational Thinking.
In this course, students actively participate in each of these two areas of learning technology, as a means of giving them context for both a personal and academic evaluation of these ideas in practice. Students build interactive electronic projects using Arduino, solve computational problems in Minecraft, and write their own code.
Latest SyllabusArduino Projects
In this project, students are challenged to create a piece of wearable computing using LilyPad Arduino that is whimsical and/or useful, and interactive. The students learn to work with both the hardware and software aspects of the arduino, as well as some of the basic concepts found in computer science and software development. The process of development is used as a context for discussions and a short paper on the Maker movement in education.
Minecraft Puzzles
Using Minecraft as a learning environment for the hands-on study of computational thinking, students are challenged to complete a series of puzzles using the tools and materials afforded by the Minecraft environment. This is accomplished through the use of Redstone, which is a material found in Minecraft that is capable of mimicking electronic circuitry. This can be used to teach a number of basic computational principles and has been used by some individuals to create very complex creations.
