Summer 2010
The latest issue of the CAS newsletter 'Switched On' is now available. Click on the 'Summer 2010' link above.
Links to further resources and information covered in this issue:
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HUB LEADERS TRAINING DAY
The report of the training day can be found at hubLeaders.pdf
Links to material mentioned in the Teachmeet session can be found here: http://cashubsters.wetpaint.com/
FORGING LINKS WITH OTHER ORGANISATIONS
Alec Titterton, SSAT National Network Co-ordinator for Maths and Computing Colleges can be contacted at alec.titterton@ssatrust.org.uk
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CONTROL TECHNOLOGY IN THE FOUNDATION STAGE
Further information about BeeBots can be found at http://www.beebot.org.uk/
GETTING PUPILS TO THINK IN ICT AT KEY STAGE 3
Some of the pupil work using Alice mentioned in the article can be viewed at http://bit.ly/a6YEAt
Mark Clarkson provides a sample scheme of work for year 9 using Alice. The entire moodle course can be downloaded. See http://voyager.egglescliffe.org.uk/mwc/mukoku/
Alice can be downloaded from http://www.alice.org/
You can purchase the excellent textbook, Learning To Program With Alice from Amazon. There are two versions. To get a feel for the book you can see the first two chapters via GoogleBooks: http://books.google.co.uk/books
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SCHOOLS SIGN UP FOR THE OCR PILOT GCSE COMPUTING
The new OCR GCSE Computing Specification can be found at http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/type/gcse_2010/ict_tec/computing/index.html
The online community to support teachers introducing the course can be joined here: http://community.ocr.org.uk/community/gcse_computing/home
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BUILD YOUR OWN GAMES WITH A NEW FREE RESOUCE
The homepage for Kodu is here: http://fuse.microsoft.com/kodu.html
A very helpful forum can be found here http://boards.kodux.com/
To get started try these basic tutorials from the Kodu blog
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INTRODUCING OBJECTS FIRST: HAVING FUN WITH GREENFOOT
Greenfoot can be downloaded free from here: http://www.greenfoot.org/ where a link to the textbook can also be found. The Greenroom is here: http://greenroom.greenfoot.org/
ENGAGE PUPILS WITH LOCAL COMPETITIONS
Details of the Awards Day for Animation10! Can be found on their website http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/Animation10/
More details of the Coventry BCS competition can be seen here: http://coventry.bcs.org/competition.php
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A MAGICAL OFFER FROM CS4FN
The two volumes of magic can be downloaded free from here: http://www.cs4fn.org/magic/magicdownload.php
THE NEW MACHINE INTELLIGENCE TURING LECTURE
The Turing Lecture can be viewed here: http://tv.theiet.org/technology/infopro/turing-2010.cfm
A PAUSE FOR THOUGHT
Project Euler can be found here: http://projecteuler.net/
The brute force solution to the problem is given in pseudocode below.
Set TOTAL to 0;
for every number NUM from 1 to 1000 do
if NUM mod 3 = 0 OR if NUM mod 5 = 0 then
add NUM to TOTAL;
OUTPUT total
This can be implemented in Python like this:
print sum(x for x in xrange(1, 1000) if x%3==0 or x%5==0)
For this problem, we can reduce 1000 operations to a handful by using the inclusion-exclusion principle, also known as the sieve principle, like so.
def sum1toN(n): return n * (n + 1) / 2 def sumMultiples(limit, a): return sum1toN((limit - 1) / a) * a sumMultiples(1000, 3) + sumMultiples(1000, 5) - sumMultiples(1000, 15)
In Big O notation, the brute-force algorithm is O(n) and the efficient algorithm is O(1) (assuming constant time arithmetic operations).
We hope you have enjoyed this issue. If you would like to contribute to further issues please send correspondence, suggestions and features to newsletter@computingatschool.org.uk
Autumn 2009
CAS PUBLICATIONS
Computing: The State Of The NationCAS Conference Report 2009
Programming Activities For KS3
Order a free copy of Hi-tech Trek
Links to further resources and information covered in this issue:
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CAS AIMING TO INFLUENCE INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING
The work of the students can be seen after Dec 1st at http://tinyurl.com/casnews011Page 3
EDUCATE, ENGAGE, ENCOURAGE : THE COMPUTING MESSAGE
Give Your Kids The IT Edge (PCPro)
Back To The Motherboard (TES)
The Wired article on the 'Processing'
ICT For The UK's Future (Royal Academy of Engineering)
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ENCOURAGE YOUR PUPILS WITH THESE COMPETITIONS
Animation10The British Informatics Olympiad website
'BUILD YOUR OWN BLOCKS' LEARNING WITH SCRATCH
An excellent introductory article on ScratchBuild Your Own Blocks
Page 5
MATHS MATTERS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
Maths Matters videosPage 6
A PAUSE FOR THOUGHT
| 1. | |
| A := A + B | |
| B := A - B //B:=(A+B)-B =A | |
| A := A - B //A:= (A+B)-A =B | |
| For non-arithmetic operators (and in general) consider exclusive OR (XOR); for strings only consider concatenate and split | |
| 2. | |
| (square) Area grazed is 1/4 of a circle of the length of the tether | |
| (triangle) Area is 1/6th of circle | |
| (circle) Consider two circles intersecting, one the field, and the other defined by the tether. The moon shaped area not grazed must also be A/2 and the shape is known as a LUNE. | |
| The area of a lune is a hard classical problem - see for example http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Lune.html | |
We hope you have enjoyed this first issue. If you would like to contribute to further issues please send correspondence, suggestions and features to newsletter@computingatschool.co.uk
