🎯 Learning Objectives
Develop the Information Technology learning strand:
- Explore the implications of sharing programs, and learn about free and open source software
💬 Key Vocabulary
- software
- open source
- free
- remix
- reuse
- copyright
📝 Activity 1 – Implications
Follow the link to visit the ‘Naughty elf’ program in Scratch.
The elf will allow you 4 tries to guess its lucky number, which lies between 1 and 20.
The elf picks a different number each time you play and claims you will never be able to guess it.
Take 3 minutes to run the program and explore what it does.
On the project page, you can run the program and interact with it.
You are the user.
- Did you use this button while exploring the program’s behaviour?
- What does the button do?
On the project page, you can run the program and interact with it.
You are the user.
- Have you ever pressed this button on another person’s program?
- What does the button do?
Download the worksheet below and answer the questions posed above about seeing inside and remixing other people’s work.
📝 Activity 2 – Free and open source software
The creators of a program can choose to provide access to its source code: anyone can ‘see inside’ the program to understand how it works, check for errors, suggest improvements, and ‘remix’ it.
This is called ‘free’ (as in ‘freedom’), ‘libre’, or ‘open source’ software.
Sometimes abbreviated as ‘FOSS’ or ‘FLOSS’
Download the worksheet below and search for examples of free, libre, and open source software.
In this lesson, you…
- Took a quiz, to assess learning
- Explored the implications of sharing programs, and learnt about free and open source software
In this unit, you…
Investigated different layers of computing systems:
- From programs and the operating system – Software
- To the physical components that function together as a system to execute these programs – Hardware
- To the fundamental binary building blocks that these components consist of – Logic
🏅 Badge it
🥈 Silver Badge
- Complete the quiz given to you by your teacher.
🥇 Gold Badge
- Complete Activity 1 – Implications and upload the Word document to www.bournetolearn.com.
🥉 Platinum Badge
- Complete Activity 2 – Free and Open Source Software and upload the Word document to www.bournetolearn.com.
🏵️ Where do we go from here?
If you are interested in learning more about artificial intelligence and machine learning, here are some suggestions.
Showcase: AI Experiments with Google
AI Experiments with Google is an impressive showcase of AI projects that you can explore. Make sure you check out Quick, Draw!, which is very well known.
Projects: Machine Learning for Kids
Machine Learning for Kids offers a wide range of projects that you can create, mainly in Scratch. They will allow you to train classifiers for numbers, text, images, and sounds, and use them in your programs.
This 22-minute video provides an overview of the kinds of projects that you can create.
Projects: Raspberry Pi Foundation projects
The Raspberry Pi Foundation offers four projects in which you will use Scratch and Machine Learning for Kids. These are an excellent starting point:
Course: AI for Oceans by Code.org
AI for Oceans is a very interesting ‘Hour of Code’ tutorial on machine learning, created by Code.org. It includes short videos and practical activities.
Information
The Royal Society has created two interactive infographics that will allow you to explore what machine learning is, along with some of its current applications.
‘Artificial Intelligence and Robotics’ is also part of the museum’s ‘Revolution’ exhibition.