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...

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...

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...

The number of children aged seven and under who are excluded from primary schools is very small and comprises a tiny proportion of children of this age from a very small proportion of schools. Nevertheless, some children of this age group are receiving fixed-period exclusions, occasionally leading to permanent...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...