Welcome to Day 4!
Welcome to Day 4!
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Welcome to Day 4 of STEM Without Borders Camp. You’re over halfway through this camp and we hope you’re enjoying it and learning a lot. We’ve learned about a lot of new places around the world and explored how Oklahoma reaches them. Today, we’re going to be talking about a new industry and one that makes us even more connected than ever!
Today, we’ll explore:
Today, we’ll explore:
Information Technology
Computer science and coding activities
Getting Started
Getting Started
Information Technology
Information Technology
Information technology - the study or use of systems (especially computers and telecommunications) for storing, retrieving, and sending information.
Oklahoma boasts 70-plus data centers serving as IT lifelines for the likes of ADP, Google, and IBM. In Oklahoma City, 400 companies employ about 30,000 people in IT, high technology, and software development. Major Oklahoma employers in the financial sector include Verizon, with a financial services hub in Tulsa, and Paycom, which is headquartered in Oklahoma City.
IT is one of the fastest growing sectors and pursuing an education in this area means you could work for one of these companies:
Have you ever heard of Apple? I bet you have! Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Tech technology companies, alongside Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.
Apple's retail footprint has since expanded to 510 stores spanning 25 countries and regions, including 271 in the U.S. and 239 combined in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Macao, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Apple is also rumored to expand its retail presence to India, Argentina, Chile, and Peru in the future.
True Digital Security is the trusted name in Security Engineered Solutions from the heart of America. They’re 100% U.S. based, protecting and empowering the connected world from Florida, New York, and Oklahoma. True Digital Security helps their clients manage their data, and ensure it’s safe.
But before we jump right into our new careers as IT experts, let’s learn and practice the language of computer science - CODING!
Binary Coding
Binary Coding
This explanation is adapted from Code.org (https://code.org/curriculum/course2/14/Teacher)
Someone clever once said, “There are 10 types of people in the world...those who understand binary and those who don’t.” Do you think that’s a funny joke? If not, read on to learn more!
What do the words bicycle, binomial, bipedal, and binary have in common? That’s right - “bi.” Bi- is a prefix that means 2. Bicycles have 2 wheels. Bipedal means two legs. Binary means representing information using only two options. Examples of binary include on/off, magnetic/non-magnetic, reflective/non-reflective, and 0 and 1.
The binary numeral system is a way to write numbers using only two digits: 0 and 1. These are used in computers as a series of "off" and "on" switches. The number system that we normally use is the decimal number system. It has 10 digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Binary is extremely important to the computer world. The majority of computers today store all sorts of information in binary form. When you type in the letter “A” on a keyboard, the computer understands it as “01000001.” The next activity helps to demonstrate how it is possible to take something that we know and translate it into a type of binary code.
STEM@HOME Challenge: Coding with Cards
STEM@HOME Challenge: Coding with Cards
You can create code without a computer! In this activity you will write an algorithm that uses conditional statements to create your own card game. An algorithm is a list of steps you can follow to finish a task. A recipe or instructions to a game are examples of algorithms. In computing, a conditional is a statement that only runs under certain conditions and is sometimes called an If-Then Statement. We use conditionals in our daily lives, such as “if it’s raining, then I will take an umbrella.” Conditional statements make a computer seem smart and as though it’s making decisions, but these decisions are based on what a human has programmed it to do using conditional statements.
Materials Needed:
Deck of cards
Pencil
Paper
“Coding with Cards” instruction sheet
Learn another way to play this game
Learn another way to play this game
Algorithms explained by BBC Learning
Algorithms explained by BBC Learning
Learn about conditionals from Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft
Learn about conditionals from Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft
Can you write code to help the Angry Bird navigate a maze?
Can you write code to help the Angry Bird navigate a maze?
STEM@HOME Challenge: Design-Test-Build
STEM@HOME Challenge: Design-Test-Build
Sourced from Girls Who Code
Just like how a good author will go through multiple drafts when writing a book, a good computer scientist will build multiple versions of a product before it’s finished. One process that computer scientists can use to build a product is the design-build-test cycle. In this cycle, computer scientists create a product by moving through three different stages:
Design: Deciding what the product should look like.
Build: Creating a version of the product.
Test: Getting feedback on the product from other people.
Once you finish the test phase, take what you’ve learned and use it in your next design phase. For example, in your tests you might learn that your users have a hard time finding a particular feature. So you might start a new design stage where you tweak your product’s layout to improve the user’s experience. This cycle can be repeated again and again to make a product better and better.
What is a Prototype?
A prototype is an early version of a product, like a first draft of an essay. Computer scientists will often start off by building a prototype, because it lets them quickly put something together so they can get feedback from actual users. It’s better to use a prototype to test than a finished product, because if users don’t like something, it’s easier to make changes to a prototype. Think about a time when you wrote a paper for class. Wouldn’t it be easier to make changes to your first outline than it would be to change your final draft?
Instructions:
Use the instructions linked on the left to create your own mobile app that could solve a challenge or problem or anyone across the world!
Reflection
Reflection
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