School of Wizardry and Computer Science – A First Insight into the World of Computer Science
In this module, some „magic tricks“, give students an insight into computer science. The module is designed as a learning circle with 6 different stages which can be passed in arbitrary order. The students make wands and work their way up from a newbie to an experienced magician. Some parts of the module are based on the project Computer Science Unplugged by Tim Bell.
The students get to know the following topics in a playful and magic way:
- magic numbers (binary numbers)
- Conversion from decimal to binary numbers and vice versa
- Encoding from letters into binary numbers
- Purpose of such an encoding regarding the possibility of data transfer over a cable
- Cast a magic spell on images (image representation)
- Conversion of black-and-white images into binary numbers and vice versa
- Magic cards (error detection)
- Detect errors in a two-coloured post-it pattern
- The computer (how a computer works)
- Get in contact with computer components
- Understand the interaction of computer components/li>
- Towers of Hanoi (recursion)
- Wooden game to get an idea of recursion and its usefulness
- Hexed paths (path optimization)
- shortest path finding in wonderland
What Nele thinks about this module (translated from German):
What did you learn in this module?
> I learned magic tricks that are great fun, I schowed them my whole family and everyone was impressed what I can do.
What did you like most?
> That the "magic teachers" were super friendly and that they explained the matter well, especially the trick with the interchanged cards where you have to find out which card was interchanged.
About which topic do you want to learn more?
> About the encrypted magic script you had to do with cards.
Publications to this module :
- speech & paper at INFOS 2011
- speech & paper at "5. Münsteraner Workshop zur Schulinformatik" (Münster’s 5th workshop on educational computer science)