Modeling and Simulating NASA’s Launch Abort System

http://www.ck12.org/book/21st-Century-Physics—A-Compilation-of-Contemporary-and-Emerging-Technologies/r1/section/13.4/Modeling-and-Simulating-NASA%2527s-Launch-Abort-System-%253A%253Aof%253A%253A-21st-Century-Physics—A-Compilation-of-Contemporary-and-Emerging-Technologies/

A nice discussion on Modeling and Simulating NASA’s Launch Abort System. Includes a link to an Etoys implementation that students can play with.

 

A UK network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11

http://codeclub.org.uk/

Volunteers run Code Clubs at local schools. Primary schools host Code Clubs, once a week. Kids attend once a week and learn the basics of coding.   Code Club helps volunteers and schools find each other then creates and provides projects for volunteers to teach at club sessions.  

They say that the site will have Scratch lessons by the end of August 2012.

 

repl.it – online environment for interactively exploring programming languages

http://repl.it/

It is an online environment for interactively exploring programming languages. The name comes from the read-eval-print loop, the interactive toplevel used by languages like Lisp and Python.

All code processed by repl.it runs entirely on your computer, with no server-side evaluation. It uses language interpreters written in JavaScript to execute your code and keep track of state

pybotwar – Robot battle simulation with robots coded in Python

https://code.google.com/p/pybotwar/

 

pybotwar is a fun and educational game where players write computer programs to control simulated robots

Kahn Academy Computer Science section

Kahn Academy has a section on computer science that is incredible. It uses JavaScript and the Processing library to teach programming from the basics to some advanced topics. 

 

http://www.khanacademy.org/cs

 

 

The best part is that it combines a video tutorial with an interactive editor that is just fantastic. Here are some examples of that

 

http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/using-math-expressions/836931789

 

 

http://www.khanacademy.org/cs/1-welcome-to-codecanvas/882454257

ROVER — A game for two players

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/robotics/home/ROVER_nf.html

This activity is good for getting students used to writing detailed programs for robots. 

 

A similar game is http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/392975main_Rover_Races_Activity.pdf 

Solar Powered Lego Robot Workshops Are a Hit with Students and Teachers

http://engr.arizona.edu/news/story.php?id=483

UA Engineering program uses solar-powered robots to teach middle school kids about the challenges facing solar as a viable energy source

 

JPL Education Web site for the Mars Curiosity Rover

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/curiosity_resources.cfm

 

Tying a robotics activity to the Curiosity rover might be a good idea. Here is some basic info about Curiosity. No activities yet.

 

History of computing slides

http://www.heikell.fi/downloads/computing.ppt

An incredibly complete set of slides talking about computing technology from the very beginning. 

The slides aren’t really organized well but there’s a lot to learn in them.