Giving Compass' Take:

• These online resources can help students develop computational thinking skills as they interact with a variety of datasets and tools. 

• How can philanthropy help support teachers who want to use these resources? How can teachers figure out what resources will best fit their students and lesson plans? 

• learn about the importance of computational thinking.

Computational thinking can help prepare the next generation for the future of work. It teaches students to process information like a computer would. It'll guide students through a series of steps, similar to an algorithm, to solve open-ended problems.

Here are 10 resources to bring computational thinking to your classroom:

Computer Science Unplugged: Sorting Algorithm Activities
This website library offers lesson plans, activities and videos that will help students integrate their understanding of computer science principles with other subjects.

Data.gov
Data.gov is a massive database full of information collected by the United States federal government. These datasets are great resources for predictive modeling and charting trends over time.

Google for Education: Exploring Computational Thinking
Google offers a robust selection of courses and lesson plans designed to help educators and students strengthen their computational thinking skills.

Hopscotch: Make Games
Hopscotch is a visual programming language app suitable for K-12 students.

Poll Everywhere
Poll Everywhere is an interactive program that allows students to develop polls, collect data and analyze that data in real time.

Scratch
The Lifelong Kindergarten group of MIT’s Media Lab created Scratch, a coding platform geared toward younger coders.

Thingiverse
Thingiverse is an open-source library full of blueprints for CAD and 3D printing software.

TinkerCAD
TinkerCAD is a flexible platform for building all kinds of 3D prototypes, from interior design mockups to video game characters.

University of California Irvine Machine Learning Repository
The UCI Machine Learning Repository is a database full of almost 400 machine learning datasets.

Wolfram Computational Knowledge Engine
This special search engine shows how computational thinking can help us decompose information in order to find the best solutions to problems.

Read the full article about computational thinking resources by Dacia Jones at Getting Smart.