Baltimore County Public Schools

Engage. Empower. Excel.

Students engage in a variety of learning experiences both on and off the computer with embedded opportunities to work collaboratively in applying their computer science knowledge and computational thinking skills to physical computing challenges.

The five main computer science concepts and their respective subconcepts are:

• Computing Systems: devices; hardware & software; troubleshooting
• Networks & the Internet: network communication & organization; cybersecurity
• Data Analysis: storage; collection, visualization & transformation; inference & models
• Algorithms & Programming: algorithms; variables; control; modularity; program development
• Impacts of Computing: culture & diversity; social interactions; safety, law, & ethics

The four pillars of computational thinking are:

• Pattern Recognition: Recognizing and analyzing repeated sequences, patterns, or trends
• Decomposition: Breaking down data, processes, or problems into smaller, manageable parts
• Abstraction: Generalizing patterns and trends into rules, principles, or insights and making one solution work for multiple problems
• Algorithm Design: Creating step-by-step instructions on how to solve a problem or complete a task