Welcome to CS Prep!
The program:
This afternoon program is designed to provide students with the opportunity to discover basic computational thinking principles through fun activities. Computational Thinking is a fundamental skill just like reading, writing, and arithmetic that everybody can benefit from in their education and everyday life. Thinking computationally helps people to develop solutions to a wide range of problems, but it does not necessarily require a computer to learn it. Therefore, some of our activities will involve computers, while others use other technological devices such as robots, and others use no technical device at all. With this program we hope to encourage a future generation of problem solvers to tackle problems in different domains by using a computational approach.
I am looking for volunteers to help me running sessions. If you are interested and are a CMU student, please send me an email.
The school:
The Pittsburgh Milliones 6-12 University Preparatory (UPrep) School is located in Pittsburgh's Hill District neighborhood. Formed by a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Public Schools, University Prep embraces a total college-going culture in and outside of the classroom. The faculty and diverse learning community together demonstrate that a public secondary school can connect all students to relevant post-secondary opportunities, regardless of previous academic performance, serving as a model of innovation and excellence in urban education. All learners are expected to graduate from high school to further their education. (cited from the UPrep webpage)
Schedule:
| Date | Topic | Team |
|---|---|---|
| 20-Jan-10 | Error Detection & Correction | Jana, Carol Frieze |
| 27-Jan-10 | Binary Numbers | Jana, Carol Frieze, Anthony Velázquez |
| 03-Feb-10 | Algorithms: minimum spanning trees | Jana |
| 24-Feb-10 | finite state automata | Jana |
| 03-Mar-10 | Algorithms: testing and proofing | Jana, Cathleen Stuetzer |
| 10-Mar-10 | Information theory, entropy, decision trees, repetition of binary numbers | Jana, Cathleen Stuetzer, Beatrice Anghelache, Qiu-Ju Yin |
| 17-Mar-10 | Algorithms: Sorting networks | Jana, Tawanna Dillahunt |
| 14-Apr-10 | Introduction to programming with Alice | Jana |
| 5-May-10 | Programming with Alice | Jana |
| 27-May-10 | Programming with Alice | Jana |
For more information on some of the exercises we do in this program see:
Tim Bell, Ian H. Witten and Mike Fellows (2002). Computer Science Unplugged. URL: www.unplugged.canterbury.ac.nz|
For more information on Computational Thinking see:
Jeanette Wing (2006). Computational Thinking. Communications of the ACM 49(3). URL: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf
Acknowledgement
The program is supported by Women@SCS and was formed in coordination with the School of Education and the Learning Policy Center at the University of Pittsburgh - many thanks to everybody involved for their help and efforts! I am especially grateful to Beatrice Anghelache from CMU for helping with artwork, to Andrea Miller and Lauren Zasadil from UPrep for their assistance with many of the sessions, and to the Gelfand Center at CMU for providing transportation.