CS Unplugged Techniques for Teaching Computer Science Concepts.

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CS UnpluggedTechniques for Teaching Computer
Science Concepts.
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CS Unplugged

• Most first courses in computer science are very
  ambitious.
• Try to teach how to program in a particular
  language as well as broader concepts.
• Very easy to get caught up in teaching the
  programming .
• Certainly a necessary thing for later topics in
  CS.
• How do you study operating systems without being
  able to program parts of them. (Or all of them.)

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CS Unplugged

• CS Unplugged
• Designed by New Zealander educators for teaching
  primary age children
• Good for older students as well
• www.unplugged.canterbury.ac.nz/
• Free from Google
• www.google.com/educators/activities.html
• www.google.com/educators/index.html

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Dots

• Dots.
• dots on the next card
• make numbers
• count
• how many numbers
• how many numbers if we add a card
• what happens when count to limit
• secret messages
• add a 0 to the end

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Pictures

• using dots for other things
• why the 0
• what kind of pictures require the largest amount
  of numbers to represent them
• what kind of pictures require the largest amount
  of numbers to represent them
• test it with a real fax machine

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0
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Text Compression

• intro, boxes and arrows
• decompress this
• a harder problem
• numbers instead of boxes and arrows
• compress this

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I am Sam. Sam I am. That Sam-I-am! That
Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am! Do you
like green eggs and ham?
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But our fish said, No! No! Make that cat go
away! Tell that Cat in the Hat you do not want to
play. He should not be here. He should not be
about. He should not be here when your mother is
out!
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Error Detection and Correction

• if letters encoded using bits, what happens if a
  bit is wrong
• 5 x 5 cards
• more cards to make it harder
• flip
• flip 2
• real life example, ISBN

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Searching

• Cards in random order
• each look requires payment of a treat out of a
  jar
• if any left, keep them
• Cards in sorted order
• same rules
• battleship
• each ship has a letter and a number
• I pick a number
• you want the location of that number
• you guess the letter of the ship I picked
• linear search battleship
• binary search battleship
• hashing battleship

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Sorting Networks

• grid on the ground
• start on left hand side
• when at a circle wait for another member to
  arrive
• compare cards
• low goes left, high goes right
• tie? same way you came in

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Minimum Spanning Trees

• the Muddy City
• connect houses with paving stones
• goal use the fewest stones
• can get from one house to any other house,
  although not always directly

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Dragon Stories

• David Touretzky, Professor at CMU
• www.cs.cmu.edu/dst/
• Common Lisp A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic
  Computation
• www.cs.cmu.edu/dst/LispBook/index.html
• Martin and the Dragon
• backed up with traces and recursion templates

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Problem Solving

• The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco
• Dr. Ecco Mathematical Detective (Codes, Puzzles,
  and Conspiracy)
• Dr. Ecco's Cyberpuzzles 36 Puzzles for Hackers
  and Other Mathematical Detective
• Crossing the River with Dogs

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And One Plugged In Activity

• Google Image Labeler
• ESP Game, Louis von Alm