The Use of 3D Technologies to Support Computational Thinking in STEM Education

Theoretical Framework

The term Computational Thinking was already known through the work of Seymour Papert (1980), while many recent works refer to both the historical course of computational thought and its spiritual roots. Although, it seems that there is not yet a commonly agreed definition of CT, Nardelli E. (2019) notices that after the widely cited communications viewpoint by Jeannette Wing an extensive discussion opened with hundreds of subsequent works and papers analyzing the expression and arguing about what Computational Thinking is. In this work we argue that occupation with 3D printing technologies helped students to develop skills considering that Computational Thinking (CT) is a problem-solving process that incorporates a number of features and processes, delivering questions and problems to students in a way that allows to use a computer and other tools and procedures to solve them, such as logically organizing and analysing data, system design and understanding of human behavior, utilizing the fundamental concepts of computer science (Wing, 2006). We also consider that Computational thinking consists of four parts: