Recently added to the @CS4FN blog – a round-up of computing stories, classroom ideas and discussion points – 2 July 2024 | Teaching London Computing: A RESOURCE HUB from CAS LONDON & CS4FN

CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun) is our sister site for schools and is full of articles and stories about computer science aimed at a school-age audience: https://cs4fn.blog. You might already receive free print copies of our magazines to give to your students or use in class (if not you can sign up here using the purple form); our most recent magazine is Issue 29, on Diversity in Computer Science (take a look at the PDF).

We regularly publish new blog posts there and as we expand on a topic we create a portal for it, to gather in one place all our articles on a particular theme (see our full list of portals here). Some of these articles or themes will also form the basis for a later edition of the CS4FN magazine, along with new articles.

Teachers tell us that they use our stories and magazines to spark discussion in the classroom, or for independent reading (particularly for our primary-aged magazines), alongside the classroom teaching resources that we publish on this site.

Here is a selection of recently-published blog posts from CS4FN that we hope you find interesting.

Do let us know if / how you use our resources, follow @CS4FN on Twitter & Paul Curzon on LinkedIn.

1. Debugging at a distance

NASA’s interstellar probe Voyager 1 went silent until computer scientists transmitted a fix that had to travel 15 billion miles!

Launched in 1977 Voyager 1 has been travelling away from Earth ever since, sending back data across the universe (it’s 15 billion miles from our planet now but radiowaves bring us the data with ease). Recently the interstellar space probe started sending gibberish and NASA wondered if time might be up for the distant traveller. Find out how computer scientists worked out why Voyager 1 was sending nonsense, and how they managed to fix it.

2. Puzzle over how images are stored

Coordinate conundrum puzzles and vector graphics

Learn about vector graphics, one way in which computers can store images, by solving grid-based coordinate puzzles aka ‘join the dots’, and perhaps creating your own. You can print out free A4 graph paper here. Also think about the difference between SVGs (scalable vector graphics) and pixel-based images (used for photographs) and why different storage methods suit different image types. These are a companion to our popular Pixel Puzzles, for younger kids to colour in.

3. The history of email attachments

Mary Ann Horton and the invention of email attachments

A piece of computer science history (1970s) from of our LGBTQ+ Computer Science Greats series this post looks at the work of Mary Ann Horton who developed the uuencode / uudecode program that allowed us to send email attachments, not just plain text emails.

4. Solve the puzzle to find where the tombs are

From Egyptian Survey puzzles to computational thinking

An example of how we use games and puzzles to introduce computing concepts: learn about strategies and computational thinking through play. We included a couple of Egyptian Survey puzzles (where you are given some incomplete information about the location of tombs on a grid and must work out the position of all the tombs) in our recent ‘Primary Puzzles Issue 1’ booklet for primary kids, see below.

5. Primary Puzzles booklet for kids – free copies available

We’ve just published the first in our series of mini puzzle booklets for ~8-12 year olds and sent these out to our subscribers; we’re working on Issue 2. We have spares so sign up here (using the green form) and we’ll send you some too. Or you can print pages from the PDF version, and print out some certificates for students too.