Category Archives: Uncategorized

by

London, in-person: Royal Institution Holiday Workshops with Paul Curzon (and others)

Full list of Royal Institution Holiday Workshops (in various topics, not just computing, electronics or robotics).

Support to attend holiday workshops
The Potential Trust may be able to offer financial assistance to enable children to participate in Ri events and activities if this would otherwise be financially difficult. Please contact Anna Comino-James preferably via telephone on +44 (0)1844 351666, or at their new email address potentialtrust@gmail.com. Once a bursary is agreed, you will make your workshop bookings directly with the Ri.

1. The magic of computer science: Monday 7th April

• Holiday workshops (7 April): 🎩 The magic of computer science (ages 7–8)
11am to 1.15pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is strictly for ages 7-8 only.
• Holiday workshops (7 April): 🎩 The magic of computer science (ages 9–11)
2.15 to 4.30pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this afternoon workshop is strictly for ages 9-11 only.

About the workshop
In this workshop, Paul Curzon will demonstrate real magic tricks, showing the group how they are done so they can do the tricks themselves.

When you learn to be a magician, it turns out you are also learning the skills needed to be a great computer scientist: computational thinking.

Students will then use the magic to learn the linked basics of computer science. They’ll see what computational thinking is all about and how both magicians and computer scientists rely on it.

About Paul Curzon
Paul Curzon is a Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London and a National Teaching Fellow. He runs Computer Science for Fun a magazine about the fun side of computing, and has been giving linked Computing Magic Shows for 10 years.

Paul also runs Teaching London Computing creating inspiring activities for teachers to use in class.

2. Artificial Intelligence, but where is the intelligence? Tuesday 8th April

• Holiday workshops (8 April): ✨ Artificial intelligence, but where is the intelligence? (9–11)
11am to 1.15pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is strictly for ages 9-11 only
• Holiday workshops (8 April): ✨ Artificial intelligence, but where is the intelligence? (12-14)
2.15 to 4.30pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this afternoon workshop is strictly for ages 12-14 only

About the workshop
We all know the movie plots where evil robots and computers take over the world, but what is the reality? This workshop explores artificial intelligence, the field of science that tries to build ‘thinking machines’.

How are they built? Are they really intelligent? And what is intelligence anyway? We will also ask some interesting questions about a well-known ‘thinking machine’, you! Along the way we will play some games including building a working brain out of rope, tubes, and you, and playing snap with it.

3. Coding with LEGO WeDo: Tuesday 8th April

• Holiday workshops (8 April): Coding with LEGO WeDo AM (ages 7–8)
11am to 1.15pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is trictly for ages 7–8 only
• Holiday workshops (8 April): Coding with LEGO WeDo PM (ages 7–8)
2.15 to 4.30pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this afternoon workshop is also strictly for ages 7–8 only

Note that both the morning and afternoon sessions are aimed at the same 7-8 year old age-group.

About the workshop
In this session with Brian Egles, you will work in pairs to build a variety of models using motors and sensors based on the LEGO WeDo kit. Models include wild animals, amazing mechanisms, adventure stories and football themes. You will code your LEGO models and see them come to life and respond to the world around them.

4. Electronic and Electrical Control: Wednesday 9 April 2025

• Holiday workshops (9 April): ⚡️Electronic and Electrical Control AM (ages 9-11)
11am to 1.15pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is strictly for ages 9-11 only.
• Holiday workshops (9 April): ⚡️Electronic and Electrical Control PM (ages 12-14)
2.15pm to 4.30pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is strictly for ages 12-14 only.
With Jeremy King.

About the workshop
Participants will be working as Electronic and Electrical Engineers with some Mechanical Engineering aspects. They will design and build an increasingly complex electrical and electronic control system. Working in pairs they start by making a pressure switch and use this to control a pre-made electrical buggy to perform four tasks. Using a slide switch there are then three more tasks of increasing complexity. After the last task the buggy should be traveling backwards and forwards between two fixed objects automatically.

Using an on-board computer there are a further four tasks where a programme is built up on the computer to control the buggy to start and stop at specific places. For the twelfth challenge three ‘stations’ are laid out, the buggy needs to be programmed to start at station A, stop at station B briefly, go on to C then return to B & A, all automatically. This activity is modelled on the driverless underground Tracked Transit at Heathrow that transports passengers from Terminal 5A, to 5B to 5C, stopping on its return.

Other switches and tasks are available to those who would like to solve additional challenges.

5. LEGO robotic explorers: Wednesday 9th April

• Holiday workshops (9 April): 🤖 LEGO robotic explorers (ages 12–14)
11am to 3pm, £55 (£44) – in person – this morning workshop is trictly for ages 12–14 only

About the workshop
In this session with Brian Egles, you will work in pairs to program a small LEGO mars rover. You will first learn how your robot can be programmed to move around and to behave autonomously to avoid obstacles using sensors.

You will then solve a number of problems based on life on the international space station and on mars exploration. These are taken from the UK and international “First LEGO League” challenge run annually by the IET and other global partners.

This workshop is strictly for 12–14 year-olds and will include a 30 minute lunch break. Students should bring lunch and a drink.

6. Card tricks and computing: Thursday 10th April

• Holiday workshops (10 April): Card tricks and computing (ages 9-11)
11am to 1.15pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is trictly for ages 9-11 only
• Holiday workshops (10 April): Card tricks and computing (ages 12-14)
2.15pm to 4.30pm, £40 (£32) – in person – this morning workshop is strictly for ages 12-14 only.

About the workshop
Join us for an exciting workshop with Barbara Pellegrino where math meets magic! In this hands-on session, you’ll dive into the fascinating world of binary and ternary number systems, all while learning card tricks that bring these concepts to life. Whether you’re a beginner or a maths enthusiast, this workshop will make abstract concepts like binary and ternary systems both fun and memorable!

Subscribe to be notified whenever we publish a new post to the Teaching London Computing blog.

This blog and post is funded by EPSRC on research agreement EP/W033615/1.

QMUL CS4FN EPSRC logos
by

Teaching London Computing – Newsletter #12 Summer 2023

This is the full text of the 12th newsletter which I (Jo B) email to all the UK teachers on our Teaching London Computing subscription list. Despite the name we support teachers across the UK and our resources can be freely downloaded by anyone anywhere in the world.

If you would like to sign up to received emailed copies of the newsletter please use the orange form here.

Table of Contents

  • 1. New issue of CS4FN, on Diversity
  • 2. Conjuring with Computation: new magic and computing book
  • 3. Events
  • 4. DfE Consultation: Generative artificial intelligence in education
  • 5. Podcasts

TLC Newsletter 12 – Summer 2023

This is the Summer 2023 issue of the Teaching London Computing newsletter, a copy of which can also be found on our website [here = this post], our previous issues live here.

As always please feel free to share this newsletter by forwarding it to colleagues in case they’d like to sign up too – new readers can sign up using the orange form on this page.

You are receiving this email because you’ve previously signed up to the ‘TLC mailing list’ to hear about new courses and resources etc but if you no longer want to hear from us please let me know and I’ll remove you. Follow us on Twitter @cas_london_crc or @cs4fn.

1. New issue of CS4FN

Issue 29 is all about Diversity in Computing with a particular focus on Black computer scientists.

The magazine contains articles about… Kimberly Bryant, Gokop Goteng & Hadeel Alrubayyi, bias in facial recognition (wrong man arrested), Joy Buolamwini & Timnit Gebru’s gender shades audit, Mark Dean (the first African American to receive IBM’s highest honour), Johanna Lucht, Clarence Ellis, Freddie Figgers, Satoshi Tajiri, Al-Jazari, machine-readable passports can discriminate against Indigenous people’s names in Canada (and elsewhere), Sadiqah Musa & Devina Nembhard, Christopher Strachey and Sameena Shah.

Read the magazine online or download the PDF.

See also our wider Diversity portal (on the CS4FN blog) – we want young people to see examples of people who look like them (and also to see examples of people who don’t* look like them) who are contributing to computing and computer science research and enjoying their work.

Diversity portal logo

If you’re a UK-based school teacher / librarian you can subscribe and we’ll send you FREE class sets of the next issue (we can also send single copies to homeschooling parents) https://bit.ly/subscribecs4fn.

*See the podcast section below, podcast (a).

2. Conjuring with Computation: new magic and computing book

Also out now is Conjuring with Computation a new hard-back book by Paul Curzon and Peter McOwan (who died in 2019) which is available from book shops (also available as an e-book). The accompanying website gives some background to Peter and Paul’s use of magic as a fun and engaging way to teach students about computer science and computational thinking.

The book doesn’t quite manage to explain the whole of Computer Science using magic, but it has a good go, covering topics including algorithms, data representation, control flow, information security, abstraction, decomposition, generalisation, HCI, ethics, display tech,
notation, logical thinking, testing, formal verification, invariants, divide & conquer, multimodal interaction, procedures/functions, interfaces, error correcting codes, graphs, user experience & creativity.

“We did the first version of our “The Magic of Computer Science” workshops in 2005 as a Saturday morning activity for school students. We went on to do a variety of versions, sometimes together, sometimes separately at both primary and secondary schools, universities and science festivals across the UK, teaching the magic along with Computer Science, Maths, Science and Engineering.

We planned and wrote much of the book together with Peter supplying virtually all of the magic. After Peter’s untimely death, I completed it over the next few years with the kind support of Peter’s family. Having loved magic all his life it was something Peter really wanted us to do so it seemed right to carry on.” – Paul Curzon

There are a couple of free bonus chapters to download too. We also have plenty of free magic-themed booklets for you to download as PDFs to use in the classroom.

3. Events

Not surprisingly there are quite a few Artificial Intelligence themed events coming up. A fuller list is here but there’s a selection below.

Thursday 6th July (7 – 9.30pm) – in person (suitable for 18+) at the Camden Club: The Turing Institute’s Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas in London – “As part of London Data Week, we’re bringing CoDI to The Camden Club for a night of edgy, exciting AI and data science-based entertainment with a comedy twist.” [Info | Registration]

Tuesday 11th July (6.30-8.30pm) – in person at Science Gallery London, BBC Global News Podcast recording: AI Special [Info | Registration].

Tuesday 18th July (2-3pm) – the BCS is hosting a free AI Debate for Students which your class can attend online or have streamed into the classroom [Info | Registration].

The Royal Institution in London is running several Holiday Workshops including some that are computing related.

Wednesday 26 July 2023, £35/28 – Intro to the BBC Micro:bit
• 11am to 1.15pm, ages 7-8
• 2.15pm – 4.30pm, ages 9-11

Thursday 27 July 2023, £50/40- Making music and sound with BBC Micro:bit
• 11am to 3pm, ages 12-14

Paul Curzon is also running a handful of sessions in August.

Monday 14 August 2023, £35/28 – Artificial intelligence, but where is the intelligence?
• 11-1.15pm, ages 7-8
• 2.15-4.30pm, ages 9-11

Friday 18 August 2023, £35/28 – The magic of computer science
• 1-1.15pm, ages 7-8
• 2.15-4.30pm, ages 9-11

4. DfE Consultation: Generative artificial intelligence in education

The Department for Education has just launched a consultation / call for evidence on “Generative artificial intelligence in education” [in England only] which closes at 5pm on 23rd August. They are keen to hear from all education sectors: early years, schools, adult education, universities, and presumably from teachers of all subjects.

“We would like to hear your views and experiences of the use of generative AI tools in educational settings in England. This includes tools such as:

ChatGPT
Google Bard
Claude
Midjourney

We’re also seeking to understand perspectives on the potential benefits and risks of this technology around its use in education.“ [Info | Survey]

5. Podcasts

Podcast logo for The Life Scientific with Jim Al-Khalili

a) In this episode of The Life Scientific Jim Al-Khalili interviews Anne-Marie Imafidon, founder of Stemettes, about her career in computing / coding. At 25 minutes she tells an anecdote in which a white male colleague struggled to believe that she (a young Black woman) knew what she was talking about, wasting time for the project they were working on.

b) In this episode of Word of Mouth Michael Rosen talks to professor of computational linguistics, Emily M Bender, about chatbots.

Podcast logo for Word Of Mouth with Michael Rosen
Podcast logo for Really No Really with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden

c) The US-based Really? No, Really? podcast with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden has several episodes relating to computing, including Brain-computer links, Rogue AI + Flying cars (4 April 2023), World War Microchip, Rare Earth Mineral Issues + Suspicious Fires (11 April 2023) and AI…A visionary’s unique take! (9 May 2023). The podcasts are also available as videos on YouTube.