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Ideas for High School Computer Club Activities?
angryLNX asks: "This year, my high school's computer club started running out of project ideas and fun things to do as a club. Over the years, we have done the website, the Linux box and the TV announcement system. Does anyone have any ideas for projects or activities which would be worthwhile? Any good or bad experiences with certain high school computer clubs? Since we're in Connecticut, maybe it would be fun to attend a certain conference in New York?"
... hacking into the system and changing the grades for those who can cough up the dough?
"Derp de derp."
When I was in high school, the main activities of the Computer Club were probably best categorized as "Offsite Archival Preservation."
If so, you might want to consider having them put together a simple game. The important thing is not to be overly ambitious (puzzle games or simple 2d shooters fit this well). The non-programmers can work on art, design, and music.
You could create so called "demos" which requires a bit of everything, programming, graphics and music. More information can be found here. There is already a lot of them out there from C64, Amiga, texas instument calculator demos and PC demos, most of them can be found here. They are useless but then again fun to make :)
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
the Computer Club currently seems to be split into two groups. One group mostly plays multiplayer games such as Tribes, while the other group embarks on lessons on how to use our server, as well as basic tutorials in programming languages we use such as PHP.
That's basically how it is at my school as well. Our computer club is mainly kids who play video games, but thanks to our great technology department we know have something made for the other type. We call it St. Paul's Technical Services, St. Paul's being the school and technical services being what we offer. The school has a laptop program, and with a few hundred machines being on campus problems arise. Mainly we trouble-shoot Windows programs and the like, but from time to time we deal with hardware too. This (2002-2003) year was our first, so it was all kind of "unplanned". But next year is looking much better.
Carpe meam simiam!
Better make that 6 holes after ol' Poindexter decided to put it in the battle bots arena against Die Sector.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you all use PCs, then make the switch to Macs. If you use Macs, then make the switch to PCs. Or switch to something else like Linux, BeOS, or OS/2 and record the sociological effects on the members of your club. Are they happy? Sad? Are any of the members expressing rage while trying to get USB to work in a certain Linux distro across different logic board types?
Could make an interesting doctoral thesis for that rare Anthropology/Computer Science double-major out there.
Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time is enemy action.
Maybe you could upgrade your site so it'll survive a slashdotting?
Why don't you take a look at one of the Mozilla bugs with large community interest (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16399 3 /.) and try to fix them. Some of the are enhancement requests and they would maky a nice Mozilla Firebird or Mozilla Thunderbird extension.
- sorry I am not linking because bugzilla refuses direct links from
For example, some people even pledged money to fix the controversial http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62429 (option to put signature above the quoted text in mailnews). The devs refuse to fix it so it's perfect for an extension.
Back in the day, we had a computer and robotics club. We met after school and built interface boards so we could control a set of stepper motors using either an apple IIe, an old mac quadra, or a commodore 64.
So these old boxes aren't around anymore, but the element of controlling robots with computer programs is essential experience for the high school computer geek. Check out the Lego Mindstorms stuff and give the club members a competition or goal...When I was in school we built a machine and programmed a computer that could open a Master lock without knowing the combination! (no, we didn't iterate through all possible combinations, either)
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
Computers for computers' sake, while educational, can be hard to get excited about. Find out what the other clubs are doing, and see if any of them have projects or programs which have need of your skills. Do you have a rocketry club? Maybe they need telemetry; there have been several Linux-based model rocketry setups displayed here on /. as well as around the web. Is there a bicycling or cross-country running group? See if they use GPS, and if they'd like to have a central system to keep track of runs/rides! Perhaps implement a music score archive webserver for the band! Be entrepreneurial. The most fun and useful computer projects have come about to solve problems, even if the problem in question isn't that practical.
A hero is someone who knows when to run away. I am a hero. -Trent the Uncatchable
these are things that shouldn't be too hard to implement (eg: using the matrix formulation for fully connected backpropagation networks rather than the graph model) and yet have large toy value:
;-)) --- intel's opencv library (google for it) has all sorts of cool demos. possible applications: motion detection, object detection and recognition, maybe even face recognition?
1) acquire a cheap webcam (i recommend the not-so-cheap route of firewire + an orange micro ibot) and use it to do something neat (this is what i do for a living
2) playing with neural networks (personally, i recommend implementing your own neural network package and then using it to solve some kind of problem --- maybe use it together with #1 to recognize things?)
3) robots (www.kipr.org has a boatload of info on this, as well as how to get starter kits)
4) ???
if you'd like help with #1 or #2, give me a yell and i'll do what i can to help (i have a linux toolkit that makes talking to firewire cameras a reasonably pleasant task)
Get out to the elementary/middle schools. The technology education they are getting is a joke and so MS centric many will never be functional without Uncle Bill's CrackOS. Show them OpenOffice, teach kids HTML without using MSWord, code up a (secured) gradebook app or homework list in PHP on Apache/MySQL for the teacher/parents to view. When they get advanced, show the kids how to program in ECMAScript, PHP, Perl, or C. Hold a community education night to teach adults how to use a computer effectively. There is plenty of things you can do to help out, just poke around and see what the Elementary teachers are screwing up.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
One or two tables, one to three trains per table, one computer per table controlling the trains and switches, and a bunch of machines for developing the code. It'll give the keeners a leg up on the university-level real-time course, perhaps some insight into concurrency, and demonstrate the destructive potential of bugs. No, I didn't go to MIT. But I am grateful for the influence of their Tech Model Railroad Club.
The Seventh Rule: Take others more seriously than yourself, particularly when you are leading them.
Have your school sign up with the American Computer Science League (ACSL). Very fun and competitive.
www.acsl.org
Games? Why not download the source to Quake2 and play with the code? The other fun part comes in compiling and playing your version. Making mods for it is was also suggested, why not have two groups? One in charge of the game and the other of the mod?
Programming? If you're not interested in programming games, then look through the source of another program that might be of interest.
Now if programming isn't what you're looking for... then maybe helping your school migrate to OpenOffice? Get rid of the Office lincense will reduce the cost to the school, so it might be worth it. Then plan 2 would be to migrate them to Linux! With both these projects it will require you to provide some training and support. (Both good resume keywords for when you eventually reach the job market.) Maybe take a look at the LTSP and see if you're be interested in that.
There are SOOO many things to do, it's just a matter of finding something that you and the rest of the CC is interested in. It looked like you'd already worked on a few good ones.
Good luck!
-P
People like things to be customized and personalized. A cool project I'd like to see is a distro-creation kit for schools that might include a distro like Knoppix customized with:
- splash screens with school logo
- school colors as appropriate
- directory (if your school permits such, make sure all students with listed numbers are fully aware of their inclusion in advance)
- likewise, yearbook pictures or just some fun snapshots
- first-person-shooter with layout of your school. (But no weapons! Just call it a 3D tour, ok?)
- Mozilla / other browsers with useful-to-students links
- a lot of educational software
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Then high school kids should not be provided with the tools to create such a simulator, if it's so dangerous. Game publishers should be sued for including map editors with their games.
It should also be illegal to create a game map based on any actual structure. Because high school kids are too stupid to recognize the difference between games and reality. And it's better for them to sit around doing nothing, alone, because their club dissolved after having nothing to do.
Any student caught looking too hard at the structure of the school itself, should be approached and placed in a rehabilitation program. Drawing a map of the school on a piece of notebook paper should result in two weeks suspension. School officials must make random house calls to observe students' living areas and ensure no maps or plans are being constructed.
Students should be blindfolded between rooms, and room locations switched on a regular basis, so that student will no longer know the layout of the school by heart. An added precaution would be the handcuffing of all students at the door, and chained manacles at each desk with just enough chain to access their desk area. Any resisting students can be placed on permanent sedation.
...
Why not volunteer to help out the IT staff & school district, as mentioned in this other /. story?
Yes, I myself am in this club, and frankly, we have nothing to do. Our advisor himself is a complete idiot who feels the need to use key phrases and buzzwords to make up for what he doesn't understand. I'm not even sure why he's the advisor at all. What we need is a good project that would confuse him and keep him quiet, while we just go about doing it.
> Does anyone have any ideas for projects or activities which would be worthwhile?
Change the name of the club, hide the computers away, clean up the place, and invite some girls over.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade