High school students across 8,860 government schools in Odisha will soon learn about computational thinking

Bhubaneswar:12/7/23: High school students across 8,860 government schools in Odisha will soon learn about computational thinking as a part of their curriculum, which will be rolled out in schools from August 2023 onwards.

This is part of the Kaushali club curriculum for computational thinking and is under the aspirational program of the 5T High School Transformation scheme. The classes will be held twice a week through the clubs. It includes a 30-hour curriculum with 25 marks devoted to its assessment. One teacher from each school will be trained on the club approach and teaching methods. The training of 314 master trainers will begin on Thursday (13 July) and these trainers will train teachers from across 8,860 schools.

The initiative to introduce this Kaushali club curriculum was taken by the Department of School and Mass Education (S&ME) in Odisha.  Mo School Abhiyan ParichalanaSangthan supported the development of the curriculum.  Along with Computing and Coding, the other clubs include life skills through sports, science and literature and the library.

The department invited experts from Quest Alliance, Learning Link Foundation, and Raspberry Pi Foundation to develop the Kasauli club curriculum. The curriculum will include concepts like computing systems and networks, software tools and creating media, design thinking, data and information, and coding, among others.

Highlighting the importance of computational thinking, Md Azim ud Doula, Senior Programme Manager, Quest Alliance, said, “The curriculum places a strong emphasis on computational thinking, a foundational skill that cultivates problem-solving abilities, logical reasoning, and algorithmic thinking in students. This will also help students become 21st century ready.”

The effort to introduce computational thinking in schools has been supported by Amazon through their Amazon Future Engineer program, which envisions making problem-solving and critical thinking skills accessible to government school students. As part of this program, as many as 1,860 teachers and 1.28 lakh students have gotten exposure to block-based coding and have been a part of hackathons, enabling them to build problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Akshay Kashyap, India Lead, Amazon Future Engineer, said that by integrating computational thinking into the curriculum, students will develop a deep understanding of technology and its application in various domains, preparing them for the digital future.

Educators, too, have understood the importance of integrating computational thinking into their curriculum. Anil Kumar Sandha, a teacher at Janata High School in Jiranga, Odisha, spoke about how computational thinking is an essential part of problem-solving and is a useful programming language. “Learning about computational thinking will help students apply it to their everyday lives,” he said.