Tag Archives: #compsci

Google Computer Science Custom Search

My pal, Bill Lomax, sent me this the other day. On Monday, Google “announced the launch of Computer Science Custom Search, a customized search engine for finding K-12 computer science education (CS)resources. Developed using a collection of over 550 CS education websites, such as Khan Academy, Google CS First, Girl Develop It, Bootstrap, ScratchEd, Code.organd Made with Code to name a few, CS Custom Search connects you to computer science education materials and programs. By focusing on a list of websites that provide primarily free and open K-12 CS education resources, the customized search engine ensures that you will find materials that can be readily adopted for your class, after school program, or enrichment for your child.

“CS Custom Search has been designed to support a range of users with varying degrees of experience with CS. For those with extensive experience, CS Custom Search has been optimized to support queries for unique CS topics across a wide range of languages and platforms. For those with less experience, the custom search solution provides recommendations on a range of search topics to ensure that a lack of CS vocabulary doesn’t negatively impact your results.”

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The URL: http://www.cs4hs.com/resources/cscs.html

Internet Arcade

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I’m not a big gamer but I do remember many of my favourites from growing up in the 80’s. As video game production becomes a viable path of study in computer science labs and everyone seems to be engaged in at least one addictive game on their smartphone these days, this site offers a broad collection of old arcade-style video games. From the site: “Containing hundreds of games ranging through many different genres and styles, the Arcade provides research, comparison, and entertainment in the realm of the Video Game Arcade. The game collection ranges from early “bronze-age” video games, with black and white screens and simple sounds, through to large-scale games containing digitized voices, images and music. Most games are playable in some form, although some are useful more for verification of behavior or programming due to the intensity and requirements of their systems. Many games have a “boot-up” sequence when first turned on, where the systems run through a check and analysis, making sure all systems are go. In some cases, odd controllers make proper playing of the systems on a keyboard or joypad a pale imitation of the original experience.”
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The URL: https://archive.org/details/internetarcade

Raspberry Pi

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I’ve really struggled with this recommendation for a long time now. When long-time List member and staunch supporter, Joel Heffner, told me about Raspberry Pi, I was really excited about the concept. And then I saw the $35 price tag. It’s been my habit-turned-solid-policy to never recommend on The Teacher List, a resource that comes with a price tag. Joel and I had some discussion about it and this one time, with a complete heads-up about it costing money, I would like to recommend this device for use in teaching students how to program a computer.

So, what is this Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. It will be better to link to the FAQ page so you can learn more – it’s quite an intriguing little device!
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The URL: http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs

This Day in Computer History