Last week Ben and I watched a bit of Computer Science Unplugged: The Show.
It’s an ingenious piece of educational theatre that introduces students to basic concepts. The mantra of the show is computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes.
It’s a great way of showing students, and reminding adults that computers are just tools. That it’s the coding and computational formulas that run them, and these are, and will always remain the domain of humans.
Although the students don’t actually know this as they’re being led through a series of entertainin interactive demonstartions, they are being introduced to the basics of error detection, divide and conquer algorithms, encryption protocols, data compression, number representation and human computer interaction.
There’s a companion manual to the show, which I haven’t looked at yet. But here’s the show for those who want to check it out:
familyCoding 