Category Archives: Computer Science

Alan Turing Google Doodle

Very cool. Alan Turing got his own Google Doodle for a 100th birthday present.

Posted in Computer Science | Leave a comment

Copyright overkill

There really are some things that don’t need to be copyrighted. Take the following example for, well, example. Oracle wanted to protect their IP. Sure, it’s only a Hello World program, but they created this specific one. If you want … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Teaching recursion with Scratch BYOB – take 2

This is a follow up from a post I did about a year and a half ago on using Scratch BYOB to teach recursion. The original way of defining parameters in BYOB were a bit clunky, but it’s gotten much … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science, teaching | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Another good use for mod

Got to admit that mod is one of those topics that I have trouble getting across to my students. Not the idea of what it is and how to do it, but the purpose. The classic isOdd / isEven lab … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science, teaching | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Predicting the stock market with Twitter

Looks like there may be more to Twitter than just a list of what everybody’s cat is doing. Researchers at Indiana University used 10 million tweets to gauge the collective mood of the users and have been able to predict … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged , | Leave a comment

String methods in Scratch BYOB

Each of the last 3 years we’ve been able to get more and more out of Scratch as it went from 1.2 to 1.4, and especially now with the BYOB 3 version from Berkeley. Adding in the ability to have … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Where Americans are moving

Cool use of technology and data mining. Forbes.com has a map that lets you click on a county and see where people are moving into and out of that county. Red is out of the county and red is in … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

CompSci Minor and employment

Came across a new blog to add to my reader last week called CompSci Woman. I’m always on the lookout for articles to give my students that show computer science as something other than the Office Space view of a … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged | Leave a comment

Want a robot to fold your laundry

Read more at Berkely.edu

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Teaching recursion with Scratch BYOB

One of the biggest limits we came across teaching with Scratch this year is the inability to write methods and use parameters.  Methods, returns, and parameters are probably the only major concept in our intro CompSci class that we can’t … Continue reading

Posted in Computer Science | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments