Oh no... my airplane blew up, and now I'm stranded alone in the desert!
I'll call Captain Computational Thinking. Maybe they can help!
You have to help me!!! The airplane I was in blew up and now I'm stranded in the desert!! Also my phone has no WiFi except for calling you!!
Okay, I'm coming
It is I, the almighty Captain Computational Thinking!!
Hooray for Captain Computational Thinking!!!
First, it's best to decompose, or turn the problem into smaller ones.
Your problem is that you're lost in a desert, so you should try to find a way to contact someone.
So I guess my goal right now should be to not die?
Water! My past experience from getting lost in deserts lets me know that when there's an opportunity for water, I should use it!
You can use pattern recognition to find solutions to problems through patterns of previous experiences.
Abstraction can be used by taking out the specific differences in things to create a solution that works for multiple problems
There's an entire river here! I must be nearing civilization!
When we arrive there, I can use the Wi-Fi there to both use my phone and call someone!
An algorithm is a series of instructions that you can follow to do something.
So first we'll follow the river to civilization, where we should be able to find some Wi-Fi and use my phone to call someone!
That's called debugging, which is the last but not least part of the computational thinking process. You can revise your plan/program and get rid of flaws.
Wait... Wouldn't it make more sense to directly ask someone for help instead of using my phone to call someone?
So when we debug this, we can change it so that we find a person for help instead of trying to find Wi-Fi and calling someone.