Scratch is widely used in primary schools to teach children basic programming. This resource goes deeper, making use of the familiar Scratch environment to take students deeper into programming concepts such as:

• Algorithm design
• Parallel and sequential instructions
• Event-driven...

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 ‘...

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...

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 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 ...

This sample of a teacher guide introduces basic robotics using VEX IQ robotics kits and ModKit programming software – the activities are based upon a single robot model which can be constructed from the VEX starter kit.

Students learn about basic movement of the robot rover, as well as related challenges, in...

This short activity introduces students to the ideas of the footprint and resolution of an image, asking them to choose and use appropriate methods to calculate how these quantities would change as they moved a camera to a series of vantage points above the surface of the Earth

In this activity students take on the role of Earth observation scientists submitting a request for an image they would like for their research. This gives them the opportunity to consider the possibilities of pictures taken from orbit (and the limitations) and to write scientifically for a specific audience. It...

In this activity children take on the role of Earth observation scientists submitting a request for an image they would like for their research. This gives them the opportunity to consider the possibilities of pictures taken from orbit (and the limitations) and to write scientifically for a specific audience. It...

This engineering activity, suitable for children in computing lessons, looks at the basics of flowchart construction. Simple examples, such as the decisions made by a dog chasing a stick, are used to make flowchart representation of algorithms accessible to younger children. A simple design activity requires...