In the first of two sequential lessons, students create mobile apps that collect data from an Android device's accelerometer and then store that data to a database. This lesson provides practice with MIT's App Inventor software and culminates with students writing their own apps for measuring acceleration. In the second lesson, students are given an app for an Android device, which measures acceleration. They investigate acceleration by collecting acceleration vs. time data using the accelerometer of a sliding Android device. Then they use the data to create velocity vs. time graphs and approximate the maximum velocity of the device.

Students learn more about assistive devices, specifically biomedical engineering applied to computer engineering concepts, with an engineering challenge to create an automatic floor cleaner computer program. Following the steps of the design process, they design computer programs and test them by programming a simulated robot vacuum cleaner (a LEGO® robot) to move in designated patterns. Successful programs meet all the design requirements.

"A Byte of Python" is a free book on programming using the Python language. It serves as a tutorial or guide to the Python language for a beginner audience. If all you know about computers is how to save text files, then this is the book for you. There are many translations of the book available in different human languages.

At its core, the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT product provides a programmable microprocessor. Students use the NXT processor to simulate an experiment involving thousands of uniformly random points placed within a unit square. Using the underlying geometry of the experimental model, as well as the geometric definition of the constant π (pi), students form an empirical ratio of areas to estimate a numerical value of π. Although typically used for numerical integration of irregular shapes, in this activity, students use a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate a common but rather complex analytical form the numerical value of the most famous irrational number, π.

From Code.org:

"In this lesson, students will relate the concept of algorithms back to real-life activities by playing the Dice Race game. The goal here is to start building the skills to translate real-world situations to online scenarios and vice versa."

You develop procedural programming skills in a programming language designed for visual arts and visualization while exploring Earth science topics. In particular, you will learn and practice digital graphics capabilities in order to render Earth science concepts that are otherwise difficult to visualize due to complicated space and time scales. Both spatial and object visualization skills are key to success in the Earth sciences; you will build an awareness of these skills and practice them with an eye to being able to teach them to your own secondary school students.

In this course, you will interact with large, open, freely-available data sets by collecting, plotting, and analyzing them using a variety of computational methods. You will therefore be ready to teach your own secondary school students a range of Next Generation Science Standard skills involving data collecting, manipulation, analysis, and plotting.

You will also read and discuss current research regarding the teaching, learning, and evaluation of visualization skills, as well as multiple external representations of science concepts. For the course’s final project, you will apply your theoretical knowledge and practical skills by developing a teaching object for use with your own secondary science students.

This lesson compares iterative and recursive factorial functions. [Computer Programming playlist: 13 of 23]

This lesson shows how to define a function in Python. [Computer Programming playlist: 10 of 23]

This lesson will help you learn about variable scope and function calls in Python. [Computer Programming playlist: 11 of 23]

This lesson is an introduction to the fibonacci Sequence and a programming challenge. [Computer Programming playlist: 14 of 23]

This lesson is a challenge to write a Python function that can sort in list in-place. [Computer Programming playlist: 19 of 23]

This lesson shows a flowchart for the factorial program. [Computer Programming playlist: 8 of 23]

This lesson discusses 'for loops' in Python. [Computer Programming playlist: 3 of 23]

This lesson shows how to experiment and see what can be done with strings in Python programming. [Computer Programming playlist: 5 of 23]

This is a visual description of the insertion sort algorithm. [Computer Programming playlist: 20 of 23]

This lesson demonstrates implementation of the insertion sort algorithm. [Computer Programming playlist: 21 of 23]

This lesson introduces computer programming within a Python environment. [Computer Programming playlist: 1 of 23]

This lessons shows how to write a Fibonacci function iteratively. [Computer Programming playlist: 15 of 23]

This lesson explains why the example program would not run in Python 3 and how to fix it. [Computer Programming playlist: 9 of 23]

This lesson talks about the basics of lists in Python. [Computer Programming playlist: 2 of 23]