

Ask HN: What group activity can I do to get students interested in CS? - jrubinovitz

Hi HN,<p>I'm giving a talk at a college with a NSF funded program to keep students pursuing STEM (science, math, computer science) majors. There are very few CS majors in the group, and I get the opportunity to lead an activity for an hour. Does anyone have any ideas for activities I can lead a group of 8-15 people that will get them more interested in CS? Or maybe a presentation or video I can show them?<p>Thanks guys.
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arturoogroo
Well i think at that age kids are more interested in playing games and things
like that..You could show them how cool games are made, show them some of the
programming that involves, the design of the characters, all that stuff...Put
them some examples of video games like Angry birds, Plants Vs zombies, Fruit
ninja and so on..kids of this age are more interested in smartphone games than
console, so this could be good examples, they just don't know the magic behind
those games...Maybe they could get motivated and start their own game
someday... Good luck!

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jrubinovitz
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I think I'm looking for something more
scientifically demanding. I'm basically trying to convert a bunch of kids
pursuing medical school, most of which probably do not have the chops to get
in. I would love to teach them some basic data mining that has to do with
health science, or dig up some data startups to talk about. I'll keep
researching.

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kellros
I'd suggest you perhaps review the impact systems make by reviewing google
search engine, facebook app platform, adroid/ios/windows8 apps and their
intricacies.

After all, these are the stuff people use daily. You'd have a better chance if
you go into high and low details of implementations ex. algorithms, math and
relevant areas related per system.

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pron
Umm, you can go over Facebook's IPO and Zuckerberg's take, perhaps?

