This spring, I’m teaching an intensive introductory computer science class called “Make Me Dangerous,” where students learn computational thinking skills, Python programming, how to use Unix, and a variety of topics from the various nooks and crannies of the discipline.
Today was “hands-on hardware day (part I)” for the class, where students disassembled and explored a variety of computers and computing equipment. Through this exercise, students became familiar with the various hardware components in a computer, and formulated some great questions on how computers work at a more fundamental level (for example, how the quartz crystal in the system clock oscillates at a given frequency, forming the main ‘heartbeat’ of the computer as it fetches and executes instructions for programs and the operating system). We also looked at memory hierarchy, talked about how operating systems manage hardware resources, and discussed various evolutions in the hardware space.
Hardware we dissected included: a Sun SPARCstation 5, a raspberry pi, a 300 baud modem, 3 dell desktops of various configurations, and an older dell laptop.
In addition, last week, the class went over to one of the the video studios in VAPA to take pictures in front of a green screen. They then wrote Python programs to remove the green pixels, and replace them with an alternate background. The class has been learning programming and computing using an approach called media computation, where students write programs to create and manipulate images, sounds and video while learning core concepts of programming. It has been an interesting approach and has allowed for a lot of fun projects like green screen day!
