In her influential CACM article, Jeannette Wing argues that computational thinking is an emerging basic skill that should become an integral part of every child’s education [14]. The potential impact of any approach for incorporating computational thinking into the curriculum is limited by the low enrollment in computing classes and the homogeneous population choosing these classes. While there are continuing efforts to draw students into computing courses, a complementary approach is to bring computational thinking into courses already taken by a diverse set of students. Because computing is transforming society and impacting many areas of study, providing students with meaningful exposure to computational thinking in other fields can be done without compromising existing learning goals.

Modifying the K-12 curriculum to include a stronger emphasis on computational thinking has great potential. This effort is difficult in the US however, since computer science is not a core high school topic and there are too few K-12 computing teachers to implement a national-scale computing requirement [2]. Projects that work to integrate computational thinking into existing discipline-specific courses show promise in overcoming these barriers [4, 5, 8, 15]. A comprehensive set of K-12 teacher resources has been developed jointly by the Computer Science Teachers Association and the International Society for Technology in Education [1]. The current emphasis by K-12 educators on 21st Century Skills provides a natural entry for incorporating computational thinking across the curriculum.