31
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
Rubber Duck Debugging.
A few years ago we bought a bunch of cheap rubber ducks. Students with questions have two options. They can either ask their neighbor or explain to the duck what they're trying ...
- 3,009
14
votes
CS-oriented Ice-Breaker Games
Get them to line up (preferably on a wooden gym bench), then get then ask them to get into alphabetical order. You can use this to help learn names, and to introduce sorting algorithms.
I could also ...
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9
votes
CS-oriented Ice-Breaker Games
David Levine and a few colleagues at St Bonaventure developed what is called the First Day Role Play that sounds like what you want provided that your course will have OOP elements. They have a paper ...
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8
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
(You didn't say what ages your students are, so this answer is necessarily a little nonspecific. There is also an article here that you may find helpful.)
First and foremost: don't expect total ...
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8
votes
Accepted
Which resource is best for learning something new in computer science?
"The problem with teaching yourself is that you have a great student, but a terrible teacher." -- author unknown
You've keyed into one of the primary problems of teaching yourself. Without ...
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7
votes
Active learning for boolean algebra
The activity that occurred to me was categorical logic puzzles where you're given a list of hints and have to figure out a set of facts using a grid.
These puzzles are solved by breaking the hints ...
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7
votes
Active learning for boolean algebra
Build logic gates out of dominoes.
Start off by showing this video from Numberphile in whole or in part. In it is a demonstration of how to use dominoes to model logical operations of a computer. It ...
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7
votes
CS-oriented Ice-Breaker Games
A fun exercise is giving the teacher directions to, say, get to and open the classroom door. Of course, the teacher must act like a computer. My engineering teacher did this and it was rather ...
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7
votes
Which resource is best for learning something new in computer science?
It is interesting that you have tagged this question with active-learning, but none of the things you describe are actually active.
Watching videos, no matter how good, or reading books is passive. ...
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6
votes
Using physical activity to explain the nested for loop
Your pupils are already be doing nested loops.
...
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6
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Is blogging , affiliate marketing , E-commerce etc are the fields of Computer Science
None of those are computer science, no. It's hard to say what computer science is because it is a bit of a historical mish-mash, but blogging, e-commerce, and affiliate marketing are not anywhere in ...
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6
votes
Accepted
How to actually learn while building dummy applications that have already been built?
I think you shouldn't be reaching for a tutorial for this project at all. Tutorials are great for learning a new language, tool or approach, but they aren't that relevant when you want to build a ...
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5
votes
Active learning for boolean algebra
I used a card game activity to review Boolean expressions in a CS1 context. You may be able to adapt to involve more abstract propositions and more complex operators.
tl;dr Students play a card game ...
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5
votes
CS-oriented Ice-Breaker Games
Another game that comes to mind is Nim. It has a lot of interesting variations, and I particularly enjoy the subtraction game.
In the subtraction game, you start at ...
- 5,430
5
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
Students will act according to the habits they have built up. The one they have isn't terrible, but you can work to improve it. This answer won't save you much time, initially, but if you can change ...
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4
votes
Using physical activity to explain the nested for loop
Well, you may want to do this outside. You may want to have a lot of time, and for some, you might want to have medical personnel available.
To really do it as an active learning exercise, you need ...
- 36.8k
4
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
It sounds like you don't want to deflect them when they need help but would like them to become more self-directed and learn to solve the "easy" stuff themselves. One teaching technique ...
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3
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
Think through how you debug, and try to make it as explicit as possible. Make up a check-list. When students ask you for help, quiz them about what they did regarding the items on the check-list. "Did ...
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3
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
The best thing they can learn from you is not a memorized answer - it's the process by which you solve problems. Instead of giving them the answer, instead of telling them to go find the answer ...
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3
votes
How to stop being The Oracle
I tell my students if they want to ask me more than one question a day, I am going to start asking them two questions before I answer them. 1) What have you tried. 2) Who else have you asked. If they ...
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3
votes
Quick and easy intro to computer science for kids for an Engineering Field Day
I created a couple of demo programs recently which can run unattended, be explained simply, are familiar, and one can be interacted with.
The first is a simple maze generation method, which draws a ...
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3
votes
How to gamify the learning management system
Let's try a rundown of some points in your question, relating them, where possible, to the system that hosts your question. (You already hinted at that system anyway, and you seem somewhat familiar ...
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3
votes
Accepted
How can I build up the understanding of a project?
I think it would be improper to give you advice on the content of your project. Your professor assigned it so that you would learn something and you will learn more by doing that part yourself.
...
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3
votes
How can I build up the understanding of a project?
Each project manager will tell you that the success of your project refers to planning. This can take some effort at first, but in the long run having a clearly defined project plan will save you time,...
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3
votes
Accepted
How should one go into learning algorithms and data structures? What do you think is an efficient way to do so?
First, if you aren't taking a course, get a good book that has a lot of exercises. Use the exercises to guide your learning. Try to find a way to get some feedback on your attempts.
The way you ...
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3
votes
Accepted
How many of "The Seven Laws of Teaching" are still relevant for teaching computer science today?
These "laws" mostly reflect how people learn, so they are still quite relevant. But going through:
("Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach; or, in other words, ...
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3
votes
What is standard definition of Computer Science
What you seek doesn't really exist. "Computer Science" is an umbrella term that was coined in 1956. According to the Wikipedia article, there were a bunch of terms that were proposed for ...
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2
votes
CS-oriented Ice-Breaker Games
You could have them act out Fizz Buzz.
Players generally sit in a circle. The player designated to go first says the number "1", and each player thenceforth counts one number in turn. However, any ...
- 5,430
2
votes
CS-oriented Ice-Breaker Games
The board game "Robo Rally", published by Avalon Hill, is good for getting people to think about simple programming as well as being fun for up to 8 players.
The basic idea is to navigate robots ...
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