Communications of the ACM - Self managed systems
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Outreach activities including Computer Science Unplugged demonstrate computer science concepts at schools and public venues based around kinesthetic activities rather than hands-on computer use. Computer Science Unplugged is a global project that has shared many such activities for children to adults using no technology, including how binary numbers represent words, images and sound, routing and deadlock, public/private key encryption, and others. These and other effective outreach programs can combat the idea that computer science = programming or, worse, keyboarding; and can educate the public, interest students, and recruit majors. Many people have used these activities, and adapted them for their own culture or outreach purposes. Come share your outreach ideas and experiences with such activities. Employers, researchers and teachers have noted the need for effective outreach to ensure that students and the public be exposed to, and understand what Computer Science is. CS Unplugged is a collection of activities that are accessible to a general audience, need no technology, are fun, and cover many core areas of computer science. The focus of this session will be discussing activities that introduce computer science concepts and way of thinking, and that are consistent with Jeanette Wing's Computational Thinking [Wing06]. The session is intended to allow exchanging ideas about effective outreach in the community, in K-12, and even non-major classes. There are many variations of these activities, and it is valuable to get practitioners together to share their successes - and not-so-successful events - so that others can benefit from them.