Using graph paper design a 20x20 maze that fills the spaces with lines and right angles.
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Using graph paper design a 20x20 maze that fills the spaces with lines and right angles. The maze must have a start and a finish and only one solution. How can you make the maze more difficult for your friends?
Using any character that you can type with a keyboard design a Caesar cypher. How can you make your cypher harder to decrypt?
If you are not limited to substitution how can you make it even harder to break?
These are some of the motivating activites for my 5th grade CS class.
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Using graph paper design a 20x20 maze that fills the spaces with lines and right angles. The maze must have a start and a finish and only one solution. How can you make the maze more difficult for your friends?
Using any character that you can type with a keyboard design a Caesar cypher. How can you make your cypher harder to decrypt?
If you are not limited to substitution how can you make it even harder to break?
These are some of the motivating activites for my 5th grade CS class.
For almost every project we start by working without the computer, then move to the computer when we need it.
I'm really interested in getting them to design systems and notice how those systems are designed.
I want programs and computing to be a way to "do more" --
And I'm always looking for new lesson ideas!
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For almost every project we start by working without the computer, then move to the computer when we need it.
I'm really interested in getting them to design systems and notice how those systems are designed.
I want programs and computing to be a way to "do more" --
And I'm always looking for new lesson ideas!
When I hear a student say "but how do I make a maze?" ... then he makes it anyway I feel like that was worth it.
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For almost every project we start by working without the computer, then move to the computer when we need it.
I'm really interested in getting them to design systems and notice how those systems are designed.
I want programs and computing to be a way to "do more" --
And I'm always looking for new lesson ideas!
@futurebird *sneaks into class because it looks fun, gets busted due to obvious age
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When I hear a student say "but how do I make a maze?" ... then he makes it anyway I feel like that was worth it.
The question of "how to make a maze harder" is deeper than it looks. More dead ends means the maze is harder. Longer dead ends make a maze harder... But more points where you need to choose which way to go also makes the maze harder. These things work in opposition to each other, making longer dead ends means fewer branch points.
What is the balence that leads to the most confounding mazes.
They are so *motivated* to make something hard for me or for their peers.
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Using graph paper design a 20x20 maze that fills the spaces with lines and right angles. The maze must have a start and a finish and only one solution. How can you make the maze more difficult for your friends?
Using any character that you can type with a keyboard design a Caesar cypher. How can you make your cypher harder to decrypt?
If you are not limited to substitution how can you make it even harder to break?
These are some of the motivating activites for my 5th grade CS class.
@futurebird What answers do you expect for the Caesar cipher question? These are trivially broken with a simple statistical analysis regardless of the alphabet used, so I don't see how the question as phrased has any correct answer. It can of course be a good starting point for discussion.
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The question of "how to make a maze harder" is deeper than it looks. More dead ends means the maze is harder. Longer dead ends make a maze harder... But more points where you need to choose which way to go also makes the maze harder. These things work in opposition to each other, making longer dead ends means fewer branch points.
What is the balence that leads to the most confounding mazes.
They are so *motivated* to make something hard for me or for their peers.
@futurebird I did a small art project painting mazes and got to tell you that shit is so much more complicated than it looks.
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For almost every project we start by working without the computer, then move to the computer when we need it.
I'm really interested in getting them to design systems and notice how those systems are designed.
I want programs and computing to be a way to "do more" --
And I'm always looking for new lesson ideas!
@futurebird Are you familiar with the Nifty Assignments sessions from the SIGCSE symposium? Also check out EngageCSEdu.
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@futurebird What answers do you expect for the Caesar cipher question? These are trivially broken with a simple statistical analysis regardless of the alphabet used, so I don't see how the question as phrased has any correct answer. It can of course be a good starting point for discussion.
I give them the text encrypted by their peers and a Caesar cipher is plenty hard to break for a 5th grader even with a table of letter frequencies.
They discover that there may be spelling errors in their friend's text which they complain to me about as "unfair" but I just say that it's realistic.
I would love to do more, but harder encryption is difficult to present in a way where we can always crack it.
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@futurebird What answers do you expect for the Caesar cipher question? These are trivially broken with a simple statistical analysis regardless of the alphabet used, so I don't see how the question as phrased has any correct answer. It can of course be a good starting point for discussion.
Just to keep in mind the level here (5th grade) they start not knowing what "characters" are. In fact, that's one of the main points of the lesson. What are characters, how can they be stored. (we look at binary too)
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The question of "how to make a maze harder" is deeper than it looks. More dead ends means the maze is harder. Longer dead ends make a maze harder... But more points where you need to choose which way to go also makes the maze harder. These things work in opposition to each other, making longer dead ends means fewer branch points.
What is the balence that leads to the most confounding mazes.
They are so *motivated* to make something hard for me or for their peers.
@futurebird add stairs and multiple levels of maze
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The question of "how to make a maze harder" is deeper than it looks. More dead ends means the maze is harder. Longer dead ends make a maze harder... But more points where you need to choose which way to go also makes the maze harder. These things work in opposition to each other, making longer dead ends means fewer branch points.
What is the balence that leads to the most confounding mazes.
They are so *motivated* to make something hard for me or for their peers.
@futurebird it is very different also for a maze you can see from the top, versus one where you are immersed in. A long corridor with the end visible will be walked through by nobody. But making a bend at the end to lure people on and make them lose time, doesn't make much sense on paper.
Also there is the trick (in immersion again) of always turning left or right, that can be countered by making that choice an endless loop. But I think that is countered by the extra rules you got. -
For almost every project we start by working without the computer, then move to the computer when we need it.
I'm really interested in getting them to design systems and notice how those systems are designed.
I want programs and computing to be a way to "do more" --
And I'm always looking for new lesson ideas!
@futurebird Regarding lesson ideas, one of the skills I'd like to see more of is empathetic user observation. Perhaps they could first play a game of checkers and then make a two-person checkers game? My thinking is that they'd make a version, watch people play it, see how the controls or display could be better, iterate, and then watch again to see if an improvement really improved things.
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I give them the text encrypted by their peers and a Caesar cipher is plenty hard to break for a 5th grader even with a table of letter frequencies.
They discover that there may be spelling errors in their friend's text which they complain to me about as "unfair" but I just say that it's realistic.
I would love to do more, but harder encryption is difficult to present in a way where we can always crack it.
@futurebird I figured statistical cryptanalysis would be a bit above the kids' level. What sort of the strategies do they use to make their cipher harder? Do they realise that it doesn't actually matter?
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@futurebird I figured statistical cryptanalysis would be a bit above the kids' level. What sort of the strategies do they use to make their cipher harder? Do they realise that it doesn't actually matter?
Using a set of characters that look similar DOES matter. Things like using period, comma and the colon... it makes finding small words and trying them in the test key much harder.
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The question of "how to make a maze harder" is deeper than it looks. More dead ends means the maze is harder. Longer dead ends make a maze harder... But more points where you need to choose which way to go also makes the maze harder. These things work in opposition to each other, making longer dead ends means fewer branch points.
What is the balence that leads to the most confounding mazes.
They are so *motivated* to make something hard for me or for their peers.
@futurebird Don't neglect the common failing in pen-and-paper mazes of their often being far easier to solve in reverse!
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The question of "how to make a maze harder" is deeper than it looks. More dead ends means the maze is harder. Longer dead ends make a maze harder... But more points where you need to choose which way to go also makes the maze harder. These things work in opposition to each other, making longer dead ends means fewer branch points.
What is the balence that leads to the most confounding mazes.
They are so *motivated* to make something hard for me or for their peers.
@futurebird quite some time ago (90s) I wrote an autogen function for a maze that took pseudo random seeds in such a way that one could skew various things (number dead ends, turn left to get out, right to get out etc. could also rotate an existing maze). Adding in the fluff was easy but it took me weeks to get something working on just making a valid maze). I dunno if I still have that code.
Also you probably hear this a lot, but I'll say it: your classes sound phenomenal!
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@futurebird it is very different also for a maze you can see from the top, versus one where you are immersed in. A long corridor with the end visible will be walked through by nobody. But making a bend at the end to lure people on and make them lose time, doesn't make much sense on paper.
Also there is the trick (in immersion again) of always turning left or right, that can be countered by making that choice an endless loop. But I think that is countered by the extra rules you got.@futurebird Another neat trick in live mazes is to have the same crossroads junction repeated. Having people wonder if they are in the same place again.
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@futurebird I did a small art project painting mazes and got to tell you that shit is so much more complicated than it looks.
I drew a maze in 6th grade that none of my classmates could solve. It wasn't complicated but I had accidentally put in an optical illusion so that the way out looked like a U-turn to where you started.
But it was still a legit maze, if you took the fake U-turn you got out.
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Using graph paper design a 20x20 maze that fills the spaces with lines and right angles. The maze must have a start and a finish and only one solution. How can you make the maze more difficult for your friends?
Using any character that you can type with a keyboard design a Caesar cypher. How can you make your cypher harder to decrypt?
If you are not limited to substitution how can you make it even harder to break?
These are some of the motivating activites for my 5th grade CS class.
@futurebird You might find this interesting:
https://archive.org/details/Input1-07P193-224/page/n1/mode/2up
It's a random maze drawing program from Input Magazine.
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