Insights | Computer science is more than just coding
Computers are ubiquitous. Nearly all of us carry one in our pocket and use it for everything from watching videos to ordering dinner delivery. In fact, you are reading my words on one right now. Of the world's 10 most valuable companies, seven are technology firms. Even companies that do not directly deal in digital technology are bound to have some sort of touchpoint with it. Increasingly, data is playing the role in our economy that petroleum played at the beginning of the 20th century. Suffice it to say, any pupil who pursues a career in computer science will find ample opportunities open to them for the foreseeable future.
But even if it is not their chosen career path, an education in computer science can be immensely beneficial to our pupils. At Wellington International School Shanghai, our computer science curriculum is about more than just teaching coding skills. By learning to code, our pupils also get better at thinking logically and solving problems. They gain the confidence and organisational skills to envision, plan and execute ambitious projects. Skills like these are transferrable to any worthwhile undertaking. Pupils will find them to be assets at university and in whatever career they choose.
In Senior School, our computer science curriculum allows our pupils to showcase the skills they have developed by building a portfolio. We do this by encouraging our pupils to identify a problem, design a solution and then break that solution down into a series of smaller, more executable goals that they can meet within a strict timeline. They learn how to manage their time, benchmark their work and, ultimately, they have a finished product that will impress a university admissions officer or a potential employer.
One of our pupils who wants to become a pilot, for instance, has chosen civil aviation as a path of inquiry. He has begun developing an ambitious program that helps air travellers find the best seat for their money. He started by scrubbing internet databases for airline fleet information, such as aircraft makes and models, seating configurations, etc. He then assigned different values to different seats based on a variety of customisable parameters, such as legroom, aisle or window seats, proximity to lavatories and exits, bulkheads, etc. He is working on 10 or 20 airlines to establish proof of concept, but he is already finding that this tool could be scalable and potentially useful for airline or travel websites.
Another one of our pupils is an aspiring video editor. He kept encountering a problem that he realised his studies in computer science can solve. Whenever he shot digital video and prepared it for it for editing, portions of the footage often had 'dead' pixels, portions of the image that had no data. Rather than re-shooting the footage, he sought an intelligent way to fill these 'dead' pixels. He is doing this by defining the difference between pixels that have zero data and those in which the colour value is just black. He will then teach the program to fill in the pixel based on the average of the colour values in the pixels that surround it. If successful, such a programme could have countless applications in his desired career field.
Neither of these pupils plans on pursuing computer science as a career, but our curriculum will underscore for them just how relevant computer science is to nearly any career path they choose. By the time they complete their projects in April 2021, they will have proven that they can take something abstruse like computer code and turn into something that produces real-world results. They will have cultivated the soft skills that are essential for success in university and the job market. Most importantly, they will have gained the confidence that they can meet daunting challenges head-on and ultimately succeed if they put their minds to it.
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