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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.
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.
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.
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.
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Have your school sign up with the American Computer Science League (ACSL). Very fun and competitive.
www.acsl.org
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
> 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