Vviewpoints
Broadening Participation
Reaching a Broader
Population of Students
through “Unplugged”
Activities
Introducing children to fundamental computing concepts through Computer Science Unplugged.
as shown in the example here:
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THE FIRST DECADE of this cen- tury saw growth in outreach to raise awareness of com- puting and the possibility of a career in computing. Some
of these efforts were “unplugged,” not
requiring a computer, but providing an
easy, fast way to present key principles
of computer science to a broad audience. This column highlights Computer Science Unplugged (CS Unplugged;
www.csunplugged.org), activities that
are easy to present, require few materials, encourage collaborative work, and
do not depend on hardware, compilers, browsers, and Internet connections. They work well when access to
computers is limited or nonexistent.
CS Unplugged was developed at
the University of Christchurch in New
Zealand by Timothy Bell, Ian H. Witten, and Mike Fellows, and adapted
for classroom use by Robyn Adams
and Jane McKenzie. 2 Activities include
basic concepts such as computer data
storage, how computers compress information and detect errors, and algorithms for solving common computational problems (searching, sorting,
finding minimal spanning trees,using
finite automata to model systems).
Kids do not simulate a computer (not
a particularly interesting endeavor)
but learn problem-solving skills that
expose fundamental computer science
concepts. 1 CS Unplugged activities
promote group work, problem-solving
skills, and creativity.
For example, a teacher can start
with magnets or self-stick notes of two
different shapes and ask a child to put
a random set of these into a 7 × 7 grid
DOI: 10.1145/2723671
An illustration from one of the downloadable activities on the CS Unplugged website
( www.csunplugged.org).
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