Prof Paul Curzon of Teaching London Computing, cs4fn (Computer Science for Fun) and chi+med* gave the keynote talk at the IFIP KEYCIT (Key Competences in Informatics and ICT) conference earlier today in Potsdam, Germany.

His talk / workshop “Unplugged computational thinking for fun” covered some of the ideas we encourage teachers to use when introducing computational thinking into the classroom. Paul included the Locked In activity, Invisible Palming (magic, with a computer-human interaction angle) and the Create-a-face activity – all of which are free to download, easy to use and highlight that computational thinking isn’t just about computers but about people too.

They are also part of wider thematic workshops, more information below:

• Locked in activity – this is also used in the ‘Computational Thinking: Searching to Speak‘ workshop
• Invisible Palming – this comes from the ‘Invisible Palming! Intelligent Paper? So what is an algorithm?‘ workshop
• Create-a-face – is part of the ‘Programming unplugged: learning programming without computers‘ workshop which is being run on Wednesday 9 July 2014 in Hackney (it’s free and tickets are available from the link).

The talk was recorded and we’ll share the video when we have it. Meanwhile others have been kind enough to share short video snippets of the free workshops for teachers that Paul does, and here’s a photo from his talk today.

*chi+med means Computer-Human Interaction for Medical Devices and is a project looking at ways in which interactive medical devices can be made safer.