BrightBrains

In 2006, I bootstrapped the Bright Brains (German: Helle Köpfe) course at our department of computer science at the RWTH Aachen University. It was a course designed for gifted elementary school students to discover computer science as taught in the university. We covered topics like the following:

• Error Correction – Why may I scratch a CD?
• The Needle in the Hay Stack – Search and sort!
• Deadlocks and Dining Philosophers – The Set game and decision trees.
• Kara, the robot – Visual programming, simulation and running with real Lego Mindstorms robots.
• Virtual Instruments

Some links:

• 2006: Abschied für Helle Köpfe
• 2007: This is the successor course. I was not involved in this one. http://ds.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/events/hellekoepfe07
• 2008: Another successful course, this time we could interest the tv in this: German video in youtube from the WDR.