Online-live-lectures

In conjunction with the Institute of Coding, we plan a series of live online lectures, some for computing teachers, some for students, some for everyone. Watch this space for details.

See Using Zoom for more information on how to attend our events, check your audio etc.

Upcoming Talks

Information on new talks will be added here when available.

Potential future talks could include

  • The Magic of Human Computer Interaction
    why understanding people matters, designing to avoid human error
  • Magic of Computing (series)
    using magic tricks to teach computing topics
  • Recursion
    On Recursion
  • Artificial Intelligence: but where is the intelligence

Past Talks

  1. The Chocolate Turing Machine
  2. Improving computing activities using Semantic Waves
  3. Teaching programming: the importance of dry running programs
  4. Computational thinking: searching to speak
  5. The Magic of Computer Science (part I)
  6. The Magic of Computer Science (part II)

 

1. The Chocolate Turing Machine
Paul Curzon
Wednesday 13th May, 4.30pm
[Slides and resources]
*** NEW *** Video below (added 29 June 2020)

 

 

 

2. Improving Computing Activities using Semantic Waves
Paul Curzon
Wednesday 20th May, 4.30pm BST
[Slides and resources]

 

 

 

3. The Importance of Dry Running Programs
Wednesday 3 June, 4.30pm BST
Paul Curzon
[Slides and resources]

 

 

 

 

 

4. Computational thinking: searching to speak
Wednesday 10th June: 4.30-6pm BST
Paul Curzon
[Slides and resources]

 

 

 

 

 

5. The Magic of Computer Science (part 1)
Wednesday 17th June, 5.00pm to 6.30pm BST
Paul Curzon
[Slides and resources]

To become a great computer scientist you need some of the same skills and understanding of great magicians. In this series of talks we will look at a series of links between magic and computing. There are many connections: to computational thinking, to core computer science topics and to human-computer interaction, for example. Magicians rely on people making mistakes. When people make mistakes using technology it is important to look at how to improve the system, rather than blaming the person, if disasters are not to repeat and lives are to be saved.

6. The Magic of Computer Science (part II)
Wednesday 1 July 2020, 4.30pm-6pm BST
Paul Curzon
[Slides and resources]