per for a “robot” (another participant) to follow to stack a set of cups into a particular configuration. Another organization, Kodable, has activities that teach kids how to program by having them program each other using a graphical set of instructions (for example, squat, jump, rotate, grab) to navigate obstacles and reach a goal. CS Unplugged is included, along with these unplugged activities, as part of the Hour of Codef for schools that either do not have computers or that want to include other computing activities beyond computer programming.

Since it was first introduced in 1998, the growth in the use of CS Unplugged by organizations and teachers provides evidence that this method of introducing computing to kids is a valuable resource regardless of whether or not they have access to computers. As computing professionals, we should encourage the addition of unplugged activities in our schools to help children see the ingenuity, creativity and teamwork involved when working on computational problems. We should help to create, study, and evaluate new unplugged activities for teachers to use to reach a more diverse population of children. Through these efforts, we just might connect with young people who never thought computing could be a potential career path, and change their minds.

 

f http://hourofcode.org

References

1. Bell, T., Alexander, J., Freeman, I., and Grimley, M.

Computer Science Unplugged: school students doing real computing without computers. Journal of Applied Computing and Information Technology 13, 1 (2009).

2. Bell, T., Witten, I.B., and Fellows, M. Computer science unplugged: Off-line activities and games for all ages.

Computer Science Unplugged, 1998; http://www. csunplugged.org.

3. Kolb, D. Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984.

4. Taub, R., Armoni, M., and Ben-Ari, M. CS Unplugged and middle-school students’ views, attitudes and intentions regarding computer science.

Trans. Comput. Educ. 12, 2 (Apr. 2012).

5. Wing, J. Computational thinking. Commun. ACM 49, 3

(Mar. 2006), 33–35.

Thomas J. Cortina ( [e-mail]) is Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is an advisor for Computer Science Unplugged and for the AP Computer Science Principles curriculum. He is a member of SIGCSE, co-chairing SIGCSE 2011, and he is a senior member of ACM. He has demonstrated the use of CS Unplugged at numerous workshops for K– 12 teachers.

Copyright held by author.

“islands,” with children traveling from one island to another on “pirate ships.” As a child arrives at an island, the island’s overseer (a teacher or another child) gives them two options to travel from that island to another island: A or B. Depending on which letter the child picks, they are sent to one or another island to then answer the same question. Their goal is to find their way to Treasure Island, and as they move from “island” to “island,” filling in a map with their choices, they are forming a finite state automata. Students will share information to find the fast-est path to Treasure Island, the longest path (which involves cycles), all of the paths, and so on, describing them as a regular expression. Later, the teacher can show how they can look at this problem abstractly as a set of states with directed edges labeled “A” and “B,” and how automata can be used to describe other complex systems like traffic lights and vending machines.

CS Unplugged activities are gender
neutral and encourage participation
by all groups. Illustrations in the ac-
tivities show pictures of boys and girls
performing the activities. The Nation-
al Center for Women in Information
Technology (NCWIT), has included CS
Unplugged in its materials for teach-
ers to encourage girls to learn about
information technology and pursue
a career in IT.a Exploring Computer
Science, a curriculum for secondary-
level students that has been used
successfully in school districts with
significant minority populations like
those in Los Angeles and Chicago,
has included CS Unplugged in its unit
on problem solving.b Carnegie Mel-
lon University uses CS Unplugged in
its TechNights workshops to encour-
age middle school girls to learn about
computer science,c and Howard Uni-
versity has used CS Unplugged to in-
crease awareness and appreciation of
computational thinking for African
American students.d
CS Unplugged has also been used
in events sponsored by AccessCom-
putinge at the University of Wash-
a http://www.ncwit.org/resources/computer-
science-box-unplug-your-curriculum
b http://www.exploringcs.org
c http://women.cs.cmu.edu/technights/
d http://www.scs.howard.edu/research/PEECS
e http://www.washington.edu/accesscomputing/
ington for young people with dis-
abilities. For example, blind children
with their canes sitting in a row of
chairs represents an unsorted array.

The children learn various compar-ison-based sorting algorithms by comparing the lengths of their canes and moving to the appropriate chairs depending on whose cane is longer. When sorting by birthdays they shout out their birthdays according to an algorithm. This allows a group of children to stand up together to move in unison to the next chair, thus demonstrating a parallel sorting algorithm. The concept of a parallel algorithm and broadcast become quite real to the children in the process of executing the algorithm in their chairs.

With a little creativity, the activities in CS Unplugged can be adapted for any population. In fact, the CS Unplugged website lists numerous extensions for each of the original activities, submitted by volunteers all around the world. The activities have had such an impact that the CS Unplugged curriculum, originally published in English, has been translated to a number of languages such as Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese ( Brazilian), Polish, Russian, Slovenian, and Japanese.

CS Unplugged is not the only unplugged way to introduce computing ideas to kids. Tinkersmith, an organization based in Oregon, has developed a number of activities for K– 12 students that do not require computers including Binary Baubles and My Robot Friend. Binary Baubles involves using hands-on techniques to have kids encode text using ASCII, and other methods. My Robot Friend requires participants to write programs on pa-

With a little creativity,
the activities in
CS Unplugged
can be adapted
for any population.