Category Archives: Mini-lessons

Short lessons that can be used to fill some time. The subject doesn’t have to be computers!

Conway’s Game of Life and Cellular Automata

Posted on by herbcle

http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html

Conway’s game of life is always a fun thing to show kids learning about computer science.

Here is a nice, simple applet to play around with the Game of Life

http://www.ibiblio.org/lifepatterns/

Another good one:

http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/cellular-automata/game-of-life/

If you really want to keep up with the world of GoL:

http://pentadecathlon.com/lifeNews/index.php

An epidemic simulator

http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/cellular-automata/epidemic/

Here’s a simple ant colony simulator:

http://vlab.infotech.monash.edu.au/simulations/swarms/ant-sort/

TED Conference videos

Posted on by herbcle

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/list/page/1

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Some especially good ones:

1. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/9 – Dean Kamen: Rolling along, helping students and the third world

2. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/14 Golan Levin: The truly soft side of software

Micron’s K-12 Resources

Posted on by herbcle

http://www.micron.com/k12/

Micron believes that supporting math and science education is critical to cultivating tomorrow’s technology leaders. That’s why Micron provides teachers with opportunities and tools designed to excite students about science, math, and engineering using hands-on, real-world applications. In addition to content rich Web resources, Micron provides classroom presenters, workshops and site visits in Idaho and Virginia. As well, Micron provides an interactive Web resource to introduce students to high-tech career options

Visual cognition lab

Posted on by herbcle

Not really anything to do with computers but if you want to talk about the human “computer”, the brain, here is an area that is interesting:

Surprising Studies of Visual Awareness

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/djs_lab/demos.html

Includes this famous video:

http://viscog.beckman.uiuc.edu/grafs/demos/15.html

What’s the Difference between Looking and Seeing?

http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~rensink/flicker/