Speaker:

Prof Leong Hon Wai,

School of Computing, NUS

You probably have heard about the importance of reading, writing and arithmetic (the 3R’s), as well as creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration (the 4C’s) in the 21st century. But do you know that Computational Thinking (and coding) has been added as the 4th-R and the 5th-C? So, what is Computational Thinking (CT) and why should every K-12 student learn CT? And how can CT be taught to young learners?

In this sharing session, we introduce Computational Thinking and talk about the key techniques in Computational Thinking namely decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition and algorithm development. We will talk about the learning attitudes that CT encourages in students with creating, tinkering, dealing with errors, persevering and collaborating with others and how learning and mastering CT will even help students in other subject matter in school like Math, Science, English, History and even Poetry, Art, Music and Sports!

Finally, we will share what Singapore is doing with CT in K-12 schools as well as the CT initiatives of many other countries.

Note: You do not need any computer background whatsoever. So, come with an open mind, ready to receive new information and maybe even act on them.

Biography:

Prof. Hon Wai LEONG (梁汉槐) is a "Computational Thinkerer" from the Department of Computer Science, NUS. He received B.Sc. (Hon) in Mathematics from the University Malaya and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

As a teacher, Prof. Leong specializes in finding simple ways to explain complicated subject matters. He loves to integrate computational thinking and mindset-change in his talks and courses. He is passionate about fostering the love for Computing and Mathematics to all, and especially to young students. He gives outreach talks and workshops on CT, creative problem solving, matheMAGIC; he also mentors students’ research projects. He founded (in 1992) the Singapore training program for the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Since 2008, he (together with others) initiated coding competition for primary school students in Singapore. In NUS, he is recently involved in teaching broader general education modules: "GEQ1000: Asking Questions" and "GET1031: Computational Thinking".

His research interests are in designing algorithms for all kinds of optimization problems (design of computer circuits, transportation and logistics and computational biology).

URL Homepage: http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~leonghw/