My oldest, Connor, is a Computer Science kinda guy. He always has been. When he was little, he would use an etch a sketch and an old keyboard to “program”. As he got a little older, he used to draw a cartoon about a Mac computer. That’s what he did for fun, he has always been drawn to it, it’s how God created him. Now, he’s a senior in College with a Major in Computer Science, a Minor in Technology, Arts and Media and is looking at graduate schools. This summer, he’s working at the MIT Media Lab helping to develop programming languages to teach programming skills to kids. I had to play serious catch up to even be able to converse with him. However, what he has taught me is that in this day and age, everyone needs to know a little about programming and the logic behind all those languages. It’s become so much a part of our daily life that we need to teach it, even when we monitor and keep screen time to a minimum.
What is a Computer?
Our cars, refrigerators, our phones, almost everything has a computer in it and it is important to understand the difference between just a machine and a computer.
A computer needs four things –
Input- This is a way to get information into the computer. A keyboard, a mouse, voice commands, downloaded info, etc.
Processing – It needs the ability to process that information or for the very little, to be able to “think”.
Storage – A computer must be able to store the information and retain it.
Output – There must be a way that the computer gives information back to us. A screen, a printout, a voice command, somethings.
Code.org has a great video and a physical activity to determine what is and isn’t a computer. What is a Computer? I loved doing this activity because while we were sorting images that are computers now, like phones, but weren’t 10, 20, or 30 years ago, we got to have a great discussion about change and technology improvements.
Binary Numbers
Computers store and process information in binary. (bi for 2) Binary is either 1 or 0, yes or no, on or off.
Here’s a great video explaining binary ( heads up, it has a couple kissing briefly and mentions a cocktail party – I would show my kids but just to give a fyi). Binary Numbers
There’s also this book, What are Binary and Hexadecimal Numbers?
All letters are in a combination of binary numbers. There are 8 bits (either 1 or 0) in a byte of information. As wikipedia says, “The byte (/baɪt/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer[1][2] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures.”
So, every letter is a byte of information. I like to have kids make a bead bracelet using their initials to help show this. Code.org has a simpler version where kids just write their bytes on a piece of paper, Binary Bracelet, but I like to get kids to pick two colors, one for ‘1’ and the other for ‘0’ and then have them build their binary initial bracelet. Some kids like to have a space between their byte’s so I just have them pick a neutral color, Here’s a great Bead Bracelet Kit . I also use this opportunity to practice counting by 8’s as 8 bits make a byte. You know, “You have 3 bytes in your bracelet, so how many bits?” “24, because there are 8 bits in a byte and 8×3=24.”
The conversion sheet of binary to letters is on the Binary Bracelet activity on Code.Org.
These obviously aren’t in depth but they are great beginning activities to get kids interested in STEM and to understand some of the basics.
