puting into mainstream
curricula, and to train
teachers so that every child
in India learns computing
as a science by 2030.
The National Policy on
ICT for School Education
in India6 advocates the
development of a model
Curriculum for ICT that
would include conceptual
knowledge enhancement
and enable the development of generic skills with
focus on digital literacy.
Although teaching computer science has already
been introduced in urban
India, it focuses primarily
on digital literacy and a bit
of programming.
mendations,
9 CAS U.K.
curriculum,
2 code.org
lessons,a Computer Masti,
8
and CS unplugged material,
4 and have developed an
unplugged computing curriculum5 influenced by the
New Jersey discrete math
curriculum for problem
solving.
10 It includes topics like systematic listing,
counting and reasoning
(systematically arriving at
all possible answers and
reasoning on completeness), iterative patterns
and processes (looking for
patterns to generalize and
apply to given problem),
organizing and processing
information (data collection, representation, and
analysis), discrete mathematical modeling (
abstractions like graphs and trees),
following and devising instructions (initially following, then devising a precise
set of instructions and later
evaluating multiple solutions) and programming.
Strategies to address the
challenges mentioned here
include:
˲ Efforts have been
directed toward carrying
out a pilot program with
500+ rural government
schools and working with
2–3 education boards. The
Tamil Nadu state educa-
tion board has adopted
computational thinking as
part of its math curriculum
for 10,000 schools. Another
state educational board will
begin a pilot shortly with
a www.code.org
Introducing a comput-
ing curriculum has not
been easy and has posed
several unique challenges:
˲ Scale: As per government reports,
7 India has
over 1. 6 million schools
offering K– 12 education to
300 million students. To
compound the problem,
in addition to two national
boards of education, each
of the 29 states in India has
its own education board!
While English is the common language of instruction in the urban areas,
70% of the population
residing in the rural areas
is educated in the state’s
regional language.
˲ Infrastructure: 63% of
the schools have electricity and only 27% of schools
have computers. In rural areas, electricity may be available for a few hours a day
and the school may have
only 1–2 computers. Urban
schools are better equipped
with computer labs that
allow a computer to be
shared by 2–3 students.
˲ Teacher skills: A survey
we conducted corroborated findings in Raman
et al.
12 Teachers from rural
areas had no computing
background. Moreover,
only 59% of the teachers
working in urban areas had
exposure to some form of
computing education, with
only 10% having a computer science degree.
A national curriculum
committee explored the
village of Takalkarwadi,
in Khed, Maharashtra,
are playing the “Guess My
Birthdate” game. The goal
of the game is to find the
date by asking the least
number of questions. The
students’ strategy is to ana-
lyze each question in terms
of the number of dates it
eliminates.
Some 300,000 students
from 750 schools in 11
states throughout India
are learning computing
through “unplugged”
activities as part of CSpathshala,
1 ACM India’s education initiative. The name
CSpathshala is derived
from computer science and
Pathshala, which means
place of learning or a
school. Launched in 2016,
CSpathshala’s primary
goals are to promote computer science education in
K– 12, to influence policymakers to introduce com-
Some 300,000 students from
750 schools in 11 states
throughout India are learning
computing through “unplugged”
activities as part of CSpathshala,
ACM India’s education initiative.
Education | DOI: 10.1145/3343445
CSpathshala: Bringing
Computational Thinking to Schools
BY VIPUL SHAH
“Guess my Birthdate” activity
at Takalkarwadi School,
Maharashtra.
