Suggestions for High School Career Summit?

[Robyn K]

Hi,

I'm new to the group. I'm a computer scientist who doesn't usually
teach CS, although I do do some volunteer math teaching in a K-8
school a couple of times per week.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be running the "Information Technologies"
session of our local Sophomore Career Summit -- designed to help 15yos
think about what they'd like to do as a career, and I was hoping to
adapt one of your activities to use in the session. I want something
that I can say, "if you enjoyed that, then maybe CS is for you". I
bought your activities book download, and have begun skimming the
activities (and I saw your google video about the project) but I was
hoping you'd have some advice for this particular situation. I think
we'll have about 20 minutes for an activity, in addition to having
panelists speak about their paths to CS/IT careers, and giving the
kids some information about the typical post-secondary preparation for
such careers.

Anyhow, if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks!
Robyn Kozierok

[Tim Bell]

The 15 year old age group is a challenging one (in most countries I've been
in), but the main thing is to pitch any demonstration with the right
attitude - not patronising, but still with an element of mystery and
wonder(!)

Here are a couple of ideas, but I hope others will pitch in with their
success stories.

The sorting network always goes down well with this sort of group -
especially if you have teams race against each other by timing them (the
rest of the class will police any cheating, and are motivated to watch
carefully so they can try to do better themselves). After a demo with single
digit numbers, give them 6-digit numbers with lots of similar digits in
them. It's good to make the network as large as possible so they're not
bumping into each other.

The parity trick also works fine, but you can sell it as a trick they can
play on younger kids (since some of them may see through it). Get them to
reason for themselves how it works (ask how many black cards in each
row/column, what's the pattern?, show how you added the cards, then ask
someone to find the right one. But don't actually say that you're looking
for the odd numbers - let them see that for themselves.

The Stroop effect is also fun (there are PPT slides for it at
http://csunplugged.org/human-interface-design), even if they've seen it
before. Get them to call out the colour (not the word) - they'll struggle
and generally it's a bit of a laugh. Hint: make sure the colours work ok on
your data projector -sometimes they get washed out and hard to pick. You can
talk about contradictory interfaces, and ask if they've ever been frustrated
using a computer (safe question!) Or if they've felt violent towards their
computer (usually a few will admit this). Then talk about the need for
people who understand humans AND computers to design interfaces that people
love. (Ask which interfaces they love - facebook? iphone?...)

Cheers,
tim

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[Robyn Kozierok]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Tim Bell <tim....@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

The sorting network always goes down well with this sort of group -
especially if you have teams race against each other by timing them (the
rest of the class will police any cheating, and are motivated to watch
carefully so they can try to do better themselves). After a demo with single
digit numbers, give them 6-digit numbers with lots of similar digits in
them. It's good to make the network as large as possible so they're not
bumping into each other.

I'm not sure about the space I'll have available, so I'm not sure about being able to set that one up.  I won't be in the room until the day of the event, which also makes it hard to check how the colors work on the projector, etc. :-/ 

The Stroop effect is also fun

I have a great Stroop effect story.  We were at a science museum presentation with my parents and my kids, where they tried this on the audience.  My youngest was great at it.  My mother asked how he could do it so easily.  Well, he was only 2, and knew his colors, but couldn't read ;-)

and ask if they've ever been frustrated
using a computer (safe question!) Or if they've felt violent towards their
computer (usually a few will admit this). Then talk about the need for
people who understand humans AND computers to design interfaces that people
love. (Ask which interfaces they love - facebook? iphone?...)

This is definitely a good discussion to have.  I like the parity trick too.  I'd love to do one of the "puzzle" type activities with them, since I think so much of CS is puzzle-solving in a way. 

I think my goal differs from the "usual" CS Unplugged goal because I'm not necessarily trying to teach any particular CS topic, but rather give a quick "feel" for what CS might be like -- the kinds of challenges a computer scientist might face in her daily work, and what she might do to solve them.

Thanks for the suggestions!
--Robyn

[Robyn Kozierok]

p.s. I'm in the US, as you've not doubt guessed by my spelling. ;-)

[Dr. Lambert]

Robyn,
When I did a high school activity, I asked a former high school teacher who had used a lot of unplugged activities in his class (I know class is slightly different from outreach). It's just one person's opinion, but he is very effective. He said he used the following in his high school class:
-Perfect: Binary Numbers, Programming Languages ("first day exercise“).
-Image Representation to introduce computer graphics to the students.
-Text Compression (used a popular song that the kids would recognize) I did this, and it worked well. I got them to tell me what to eliminate, and they participated in this part. Then I went on to talk about lossy algorithms, including jpeg and mp3. There are no activities like this in the book, but you can use the image representation as a start. If you do binary numbers and this activity, there probably won't be time for another activity anyway. For this age, you can shorten the binary numbers to just counting 0 to 16, then ask them how to represent color, characters, sound. They'll get the idea quickly, and you can move on to image representation (B&W in the book and color).

I also did isbn numbers when doing the parity trick. There's probably something more relevant to them than that.

Used briefly to introduce a topic: Twenty Guesses or the Card Flip Trick
Sorting Networks Algorithm, Minimal Spanning Trees, Treasure Hunt could have been more challenging
Did not use:
§Battleships (pretty involved),
§Lightest and Heaviest (too much equipment)
§Orange Game (but should have)
----
Another unrelated (and passive) video that I recommend is the Pathways videos at the University of Washington. I particularly like the fire fighter. You could even show that as they're coming in.

Good luck.
Lynn

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Dr. Lynn Lambert, Ph.D, Computer Science
Associate Chair
Physics, Computer Science and Engineering
Christopher Newport University
Newport News, Va 23606
(757) 594-7826

[Tim Bell]

> I have a great Stroop effect story.  We were at a science museum presentation
> with my parents and my kids, where they tried this on the audience.  My
> youngest was great at it.  My mother asked how he could do it so easily. 
> Well, he was only 2, and knew his colors, but couldn't read ;-)

That's happened to me too! Also, people with bad vision (or at the back of
the room) find it easier!

> I think my goal differs from the "usual" CS Unplugged goal because I'm not
> necessarily trying to teach any particular CS topic, but rather give a quick
> "feel" for what CS might be like -- the kinds of challenges a computer
> scientist might face in her daily work, and what she might do to solve them.

Actually, the goal of Unplugged was always to get interest in the topic, not
to teach it. But these days it's used a lot for teaching, so we're writing
more classroom materials.

Actually, almost any activity works well if you are confident and competent
with it, and can engage the audience. The real point is to communicate that
there are interesting people (like yourself) who are interested in
interesting problems (like the one you present). The fact that you're
thinking this hard about it means that you're probably will achieve this!

cheers,
tim

[Robyn Kozierok]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Dr. Lambert <lynn...@gmail.com> wrote:

Another unrelated (and passive) video that I recommend is the Pathways videos at the University of Washington. I particularly like the fire fighter. You could even show that as they're coming in.

I downloaded the videos from University of Washington, but hadn't previewed them yet.  I'll take a peek.  Thanks!

Thanks for all the details on how the other activities work with HS kids.

--Robyn