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 resource contains a variety of activities and teacher resources to help students develop their problem solving skills, these are mostly through the use of unplugged activities which also encourage the development of skills associated with creating algorithms. The resources consist of teacher guides for each of...

A series of five lesson plans aimed at students with no knowledge of Python. In the description it is stated that depending on the students' level of ability these might be adapted to take up to eight lessons. The resource contains some discussion about how and why one might want to start using Python as their...

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...

This game from Siemens gives pupils the opportunity to design a virtual car by altering various factors such as the type of tyres, body style, engine and materials for wheels. The real-time simulation tests each design change in terms of outputs and how it performs on the road.  Once the design is finalised, the...

By creating their own paper ‘robot face’, students learn about how high-level language is translated into low-level machine instructions. The resource, created by Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan of the CS4FN team, covers sequencing in programs, compilers and interpreters. A detailed instruction sheet guides the...

In this activity students explore why a water clock was the world's first programmable system. Programmable systems are by no means a modern invention. Many regard the first to be Ktesibios's water clock, which was invented approximately 2250 years ago.

The aim of this activity is that students apply what...

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...

This resource uses the version of Minecraft that comes pre-installed within the Raspbian operating system for the Raspberry Pi. As such a Raspberry Pi is required to use this e-book. Minecraft: Pi Edition comes with a powerful Application Programming Interface (API), which allows students to hack and make entire...

In this resource , students can get started and are guided step-by-step through the process of creating all sorts of projects using Scratch including games, animations, quizzes, electronics circuits, and more. Although originally written for the Raspberry Pi all the projects can be ported to other platforms (except...