In this Rapid Router activity, children progress from block-based programming to the textual environment of Python. In doing so they learn about the nature of text-based coding, including the need for precise syntax and how it is structured.

The progression is handled gently, with code compared in both...

This activity explores the concepts of pattern recognition and problem decomposition. It illustrates these ideas using a popular children's book, "We're going on a bear hunt" by Michael Rosen.

Children are asked to apply their understanding by then creating functions using the Blockly editor on the Rapid...

Cryptographic techniques enable information to be shared with other people, yet still maintain a surprisingly high level of privacy. This activity illustrates a situation where information is shared, and yet none of it is revealed: a group of students will calculate their average age without anyone having to reveal...

This is one of a series of resources to support the use of the BBC micro:bit.

In this activity pupils will make use of the BBC micro:bit to design and create a programmable system that can control the temperature and soil moisture levels in a ‘smart’ greenhouse. They will analyse a design brief and design...

This resource contains ten instant maths ideas using spreadsheets to solve mathematical problems. Mathematical topics explored include: * solving equations to complete a think of a number puzzle * completion of magic squares * exploring different sequences * the ‘Rich Aunt’ problem * an exploration of cubic graphs...

This CS4FN activity from the team at Queen Mary University of London highlights some issues encountered during the design of human-computer interfaces (HCI). It acts as an introduction to HCI, introducing the need to translate problems and to understand how people behave.

The activities include a robot...

The aim of this activity is to raise awareness of human interface design issues. In a world where poor design is rife, people have become accustomed to dealing with problems caused by the artifacts with which they interact, sometimes blaming themselves instead of attributing the problems to flawed design. The issue...

The twenty seven challenges contained in this booklet are designed to challenge and inspire students whilst helping them on their journey to becoming a ‘computational thinker’. The ideas contained in the booklet will also provide useful teacher stimulation when planning lessons.

Many of the challenges...

Our society is linked by many networks: telephone networks, utility supply networks, computer networks, and road networks. For a particular network there is usually some choice about where the roads, cables, or radio links can be placed. This resource explores the need to find ways of efficiently linking objects in...

When there are a lot of people using one resource, such as cars using roads, or messages getting through the Internet, there is the possibility of “deadlock”. A way of working cooperatively is needed to avoid this happening. The resource begins with instructions on how to play the orange game. The activity contains...

This activity shows how to accomplish a simple, but nevertheless seemingly impossible task -making a fair random choice by flipping a coin, between two people who don’t necessarily trust each other, and are connected only by a telephone. The resource begins with a detailed explanation of the activity and...

Many optimization problems involve situations where certain events cannot occur at the same time, or where certain members of a set of objects cannot be adjacent. For example, anyone who has tried to time-table classes or meetings will have encountered the problem of satisfying the constraints on all the people...

Many real-life situations can be modelled in the form of a network or “graph” of the kind used for colouring in the Poor Cartographer – Graph ...

Using sparkles to code flashing sequences. There are variations on difficulty including the introduction of switches.

The students’ goal in this resource is to find Treasure Island. Friendly pirate ships sail along a fixed set of routes between the islands in this part of the world, offering rides to travellers. Each island has two departing ships, A and B, which students can choose to travel on in order to find the best route to...