Rethinking our Thinking

Rethinking our Thinking
by Greg Linch

As someone who started out as a primarily “print” reporter, my mindset — and, more specifically, my thinking — as a journalist continues to evolve after nearly eight years in the field, starting as a high school sophomore.


That made me wonder on Twitter: #

How would you characterize the relationship between mindset and thinking? Which one is derivative from the other? #

Computational Thinking visualized by Carnegie Mellon using Wordle. (Creative Commons)

More specifically, I’d say that I’ve long had an open mind(set) in the journalism realm. For at least a couple of years, I considered this one of the most important characteristics for a journalist — along with passion. I still think this is true. #

Recently I’ve become fascinated with “computational thinking” (more on that later) and wonder if my mindset is informed by this “new” way of thinking or vice versa.

As Lauren Rabaino (@laurenmichell) and I discussed on IM early this week, my tweet was something of a chicken-and-egg question. As Lauren said (and I agree):

your mindset impacts thinking which impacts mindset which impacts thinking… etc for infinity #

So why am I thinking about this now? Well, for one, I’ve proposed a session (with the same name of this post) for Saturday’s BarCamp NewsInnovation in Philadelphia: Rethinking our Thinking. The description: #

Journalists often discuss the need for evolving skill sets. On a deeper level, we sometimes talk about mindsets. What I’m interested in currently is, “How can we reshape our thinking?” #

Computational Thinking

That idea formed because I’ve been reading, watching and listening to a lot of insightful things lately, including material on computational thinking (first found via Daniel Bachhuber). For example, check out: #

• Computational Thinking article by Jeannette Wing, which I first read months ago
• Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators podcast with Wing
• Computational Thinking for Everyone podcast with Joan Peckham
• Computational Thinking and Computing lecture by Wing, the which you can watchbelow or download as a video podcast [slides].

Finally, there is the Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon, the university where Wing worked when she wrote the original article. #

Computational Thinking - Jeannette Wing