To play a simple game called Hexapawn, an ‘artificially intelligent’ computer is created made entirely from sweets. The game is like a mini version of chess; the rules are explained fully, and a playing board drawn. The ‘machine’ then ‘learns’ how to improve its playing of the game by trial and error and by ‘...

The Computing at School newsletter is published three times a year. It is full of practical ideas for teachers of computing in primary and secondary schools, with articles contributed by a number of CAS members. With input from teachers, academics, advisors and industry professionals, it provides a varied source of...

This resource contains two sets of triominoes, based around the theme of internet security. A simple set with only 4 cards, where three definitions and their key words need to be matched. The set also has two extra definitions and key words to act as distractors from the actual answers, an extension might be to get...

This document from the Department of Education looks at how St Gregory's Catholic School Science College educates pupils and parents about cyberbullying through newsletters, their 'Parent Zone' and curriculum. The resource explores the school's resources for parents, mobile phone and behaviour polices as part of...

This is a very comprehensive package from Sean Cullinane which consists of lessons to teach the basics of object oriented programming. Students will produce a playable snake game as the outcome. Note: It is recommended that this is only delivered to students with some previous programming experience, ideally some...

Using analogies to teach the topic of the TCP/IP networking is often a very useful strategy. This Computing at School community resource consist of three documents. The first provides a theory overview of the communication process. The second provides a range of links and activities, although some are aimed at...

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...

Machine learning is a process where machines or rather, computer code running on machines, is created that allows the code to develop its own methods to categorise information based on data that we feed into it.  Scientists at the University of Oxford are working on...

The book "The Magic of Computer Science" contains a variety of tricks that relate to various elements of computer science.

In this resource, the algorithm...

Can computers understand emotions? Can computers express emotions? Can they feel emotions? This video, from the University of Cambridge, examines the research of Professor Peter Robinson exploring how emotions can be used to improve interaction between humans and computers.

The research team is collaborating...

This magic trick from the Computer Science for Fun team at QMUL shows that computing is about more than just programming and computational thinking is about more than just algorithms.

A simple mathematical approach is taken with dealt piles of cards – this allows the dealer to control the whereabouts of the...

This unplugged activity from the CS4FN team uses two examples – an insulting computer and one that can play snap – to look at simple computer programming, flow of control and logic. Everything is provided for this front-of-class activity, which would act as an effective starter for a lesson on programming concepts...

In this activity from the CS4FN team, learners are introduced to algorithms in the context of artificial intelligence. They are challenged to beat a ‘piece of paper’ at a game of noughts and crosses. By following a simple algorithm, the piece of paper becomes very difficult to beat. The algorithm is a sequence of...

This resource contains a series of card tricks. Each trick is presented in two parts. In the first part enough detail is given so that the trick can be performed. A description of the desired effect is given followed by an explanation of the mechanics of the trick – actually what is done to ensure the trick works...

The Magic of Computer Science II begins with an introduction to the resource, explaining the basic concepts used in the book. There follows descriptions of how to perform seven tricks with explanations of how the trick works and the computer science concepts illustrated in the tricks.

The joker in...