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Last week, I went to Romania for an EU ERASMUS+ project meeting about computing in schools. There were four of us from west Wales on the trip – Tomi Rowlands and Erin Good from Ysgol Bro Hyddgen, in Machynlleth, and Wayne Aubrey and myself from Aberystwyth University. The project has been running for a while now and this was our third physical meeting (you can find my blogs on previous meetings here: Perugia; Girona). The aim is to share best practice and materials which can help kids to learn to code in a playful way – it’s a fun project and we’re starting to makeRead More →

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On Saturday 13 June, at 30 sites across the UK, people gathered to learn how to make simple Android apps. The workshop we used was my Android programming family fun day, and we decided to make the first hour of the workshop the actual record attempt. It turns out that the Guinness World Records (GWR) people take it all reassuringly seriously. So each site needed the following: Two witnesses, independent of BCSWomen and the host organisation (in this case, Aberystwyth University – we had Rachel Seabrook, who I met at Science Cafe, and Moya Neale, who I met at my dance class) Two independent stewardsRead More →

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I’m really pleased to be teaching computer vision this year. It’s the subject I research in, it’s what my PhD is in, and it’s my favourite part of computing. Challenging, mathematical, and very very visual. The previous lecturer (Fred Labrosse) is on sabbatical this year, and it’s great to take over from someone as good as Fred; the materials (blackboard, reading lists, slides) are all very thorough. So all I need to do is to update them to my style, shuffle the syllabus a bit, think about assessment, and make fancy videos demonstrating the algorithms we’ll be covering.

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Yesterday was 5/12/13 – numbers which make up a Pythagorean triple – the sides of a right-angled triangle. A guy called Marco Matosic spotted this quirk of the date system and decided to put on an event at the Ceredigion museum, involving various people from around aber. During the day about 150 pupils from local schools came through to stroll around the exhibits and learn a bit about Pythagoras. I was there helping to run the computer installation, with Anne Marggraf-Turley from Coleg Ceredigion and Amanda Clare from aber uni (like me). Amanda and I setting up before the day began Our activity was basedRead More →

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In the last four weeks I’ve been to Gregynog Hall 3 times. Luckily for me it’s a beautiful place – a stately home in the middle of Powys, with superb gardens, and really nice cake. The first visit was with our first year students, who we take there every year for a team building weekend. The second visit was with our second year students who’re going out on industrial year. And the final visit was Monday and Tuesday of this week for a staff awayday. Here’s a picture of dawn mist over the fields in the grounds: I think it’s great that we take theRead More →

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The BCSWomen Android programming family fun day we held in Leeds a couple of weeks ago was a resounding success, and I’ve been spending my spare time between then and now turning the materials into a “Workshop in a box”. The idea is that anyone can take the workshop, and run it, with minimal effort; I’ve provided slides, a handout for attendees, a downloadable pack of assets (sounds and pictures that people can use in apps) and a detailed presenter’s guide which has running order, kit list, room requirements, and tips for making the day go smoothly. It also features lots of cute pictures ofRead More →

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On Monday we had the BCS Mid Wales AGM (fastest AGM in the west – all business dealt with well within the allotted 25 minutes), followed by an Alan Turing Centenary event. This year 2012 marks 100 years since Alan Turing’s birth, and all around the country there are events highlighting his life and work, indeed you can find a very long list on http://turingcentenary.eu/. So in BCS Mid Wales we decided to put on an evening of short (10 minute) and accessible talks on his work. Then we discovered that a friend had written a play about Turing, which is on at the ArtsRead More →

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I’ve been looking around for Turing Test or AI related videos – we’re running an AI technocamp soon and it’s quite often good to have a set of short videos to break things up. This is what I’ve got so far; I’m almost certainly going to use some of the first three; the rest might well form backup or get switched in to place (I’m not sure). But here they are anyway. If you’ve got any other suggestions do leave a comment with them; we’re really only after things that only last a couple of minutes to use as enrichment and/or distraction in workshops withRead More →

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For my interactive web programming module, I set the task of writing a game in HTML5/JavaScript. The brief was to write a game to teach basic Welsh, but I’m kinda laid back about content so if students wanted to do something creative on another topic I was fine with that. Here are the best 6. Block Dodger from Matt Ball – nice clean simple HTML5 graphics, falling blocks game, particularly like “Shrinkers” (shrink your paddle). Goblin Grabber from Jethro Dew – chase the goblins, avoid the baddies, smooth game with on-screen controls for those on touchpad devices. Auto-posts to twitter if you authenticate (nice wayRead More →

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On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I was stuck in the Arts Centre with about 20 kids, some nice people called Sophie & Rain, a load of Lilypad Arduinos and a bunch of electronics components. The plan? 3 days of fun with soft circuits, for schoolkids, for Technocamps. Rain and Sophie put the program together, and it was brilliant – we went from basic circuits through programming, to serial vs parallel, to switches, right up to sensors using light dependent resistors to do things with LEDS. For the whole three days I can honestly say that all of the kids were entirely engagedRead More →