spacer
School of Computer Science The University of Adelaide Australia
Computer Science Home
Staff Only
text zoom: S | M | L

School of Computer Science
Level 4
Ingkarni Wardli Building
THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE
SA 5005
AUSTRALIA
Email

Telephone: +61 8 8313 4729
Facsimile: +61 8 8313 4366


You are here: Computer Science > users > outreach> cs4hs

Professional Development for Teachers

The School of Computer Sciece, supported by Google program Educator PD, provided each year one or more workshop to middle and high schoolteachers. The program is lead by Dr Cruz Izu, and has been running since 2012 (formerly known as CS4HS)

Computer Science for High School Resources

Materials develop in previous years are available for teachers through the links below.

2015 Workshops

Google Maps workshop materials
    2015
  • GoogleMaps Unit Plan
  • Workbook for the 2015 workshop can be found HERE
  • Activity kml files site 2012
  • LEGO Mindstorms robots with Enchanting is an easy-to-use graphical programming tool for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots. It is based on Scratch from the MIT Media Lab, and powered by leJOS NXJ (Java for the NXT). Enchanting is free and open-source.
  • Enchanting tutorials on youtube
A followup session on the 7th of November introduced Processing and other highly interactive graphical programming environments:
  • Processing is free. Download it from here (Windows,Linux,Mac) - runs on top of java.
  • A great CS4HS tutorial for Processing by Ursla Wolz can be found here. Note, that the video capture examples will run only on an older version of Processing. The new version has different tools for video capture.
  • We also had a quick look at some browser based graphics libraries paper.js (very pretty, interactive graphics), raphael (smart highly portable interactive graphics) and Processing.js (a library taking processing graphics to the browser). We have used JavaScript and Raphael to build interactive games in our first programming course here at Adelaide - its great! All of these libraries are free.
  • We didn't really cover this formally but I did disscuss this briefly at the end. Codea (a creation of three former Adelaide students) is a games and simulation programming environment on the iPad. Codea's programming language is based on Lua a scripting language often used for games programming. It comes with simple examples that demonstrate how to make the code interactive. The Codea app costs money ($9.99 AUS at last count) but there are games that can be loaded into it for free including Cargo-Bot the very first game app in itunes actually programmed on the iPad (Cargo-Bot is free).

More Useful links to resources

  • CS Unpluggled is a collection of free learning activities that teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. No computer equipment needed, hence the name. YouTube channel for CSunplugged has videos to support/show how to run the activities.
  • Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.
  • Scratch is a graphical programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art.
  • CS for Fun is a site which shows present interdisciplinary computer science research in a fun, accessible and offbeat way.
Google UoA