Last Thursday we tried the binary counting activity(pdf) from the Computer Science Unplugged site. All in all I’d say it was a great way to introduce them to the concept. I had to make my own worksheet, the one included on the page was a little simple and complicated at the same time and the one I made allowed me to make the jump to ASCII and what the binary numbers actually represent. They really seem to enjoy writing things in code and working out all of the zeros and ones was a great activity to keep some of them busy while I helped the slower students out. The activity itself only includes five cards or bits and I don’t know if I clearly explained the need for eight bits to everyone. The students who worked a little faster than everyone else seemed to get it. I was able to extend the activity for the faster ones by asking them to make the extra three cards, they had to figure out how many dots should be on the next three cards. Drawing 128 dots meant they were busy until at least the end of class.
At out last department meeting there was extended discussion about whether binary numbers should be included in the curriculum for the Intro to Computer Operations classes. Personally I think students should grasp it conceptually but its not really important for them to be able to figure out what number 00110011 represents. This activity is perfect for just this purpose.
Today I followed it up with some True/False questions.
- The zeros and ones in binary code really represent off and on.
- There are people in South America that speak in binary code.
I am happy to say that more students got number one right than number two wrong. There were a few however who thought the idea of people in the Amazon walking around going “zero,zero,one,zero,one,zero,one,zero” seemd perfectly reasonable.
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