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.

Although C# is derived from the C programming language, it introduces some unique and powerful features, such as delegates (which can be viewed as type-safe function pointers) and lambda expressions which introduce elements of functional programming languages, as well as a simpler single class inheritance model (than C++) and, for those of you with experience in "C-like" languages, a very familiar syntax that may help beginners become proficient faster than its predecessors. Similar to Java, it is object-oriented, comes with an extensive class library, and supports exception handling, multiple types of polymorphism, and separation of interfaces from implementations. Those features, combined with its powerful development tools, multi-platform support, and generics, make C# a good choice for many types of software development projects: rapid application development projects, projects implemented by individuals or large or small teams, Internet applications, and projects with strict reliability requirements. Testing frameworks such as NUnit make C# amenable to test-driven development and thus a good language for use with Extreme Programming (XP). Its strong typing helps to prevent many programming errors that are common in weakly typed languages.

C is the most commonly used programming language for writing operating systems. The first operating system written in C is Unix. Later operating systems like GNU/Linux were all written in C. Not only is C the language of operating systems, it is the precursor and inspiration for almost all of the most popular high-level languages available today. In fact, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby are all written in C. By way of analogy, let's say that you were going to be learning Spanish, Italian, French, or Portuguese. Do you think knowing Latin would be helpful? Just as Latin was the basis of all of those languages, knowing C will enable you to understand and appreciate an entire family of programming languages built upon the traditions of C. Knowledge of C enables freedom.

Students put their STEAM knowledge and skills to the test by creating indoor light fixture “clouds” that mimic current weather conditions or provide other colorful lighting schemes they program and control with smartphones. Groups fabricate the clouds from paper lanterns and pillow stuffing, adding LEDs to enable the simulation of different lighting conditions. They code the controls and connect the clouds to smart devices and the Internet cloud to bring their floating clouds to life as they change color based on the weather outside.

This presentation will discuss the skills designers of today and tomorrow will need to remain competitive in the marketplace. We will also discuss the importance of learning to code and how it will prepare you and your students to acquire skills we don’t even know we need yet.

Students apply sound-activated light-up EL wire to create personalized light-up clothing outfits. During the project, students become familiar with the components, code and logic to complete circuits and employ their imaginations to real-world applications of technology. Acting as if they are engineers, students are challenged to incorporate electroluminescent wire to regular clothing to make attention-getting safety clothing for joggers and cyclists. Luminescent EL wire stays cool, making it ideal to sew into wearable projects. They use the SparkFun sound detector and the EL sequencer circuit board to flash the EL wire to the rhythm of ambient sound, such as music, clapping, talking—or roadway traffic sounds! The combination of sensors, microcontrollers and EL wire enables a wide range of feedback and control options.

Based on their experience exploring the Mars rover Curiosity and learning about what engineers must go through to develop a vehicle like Curiosity, students create Android apps that can control LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots, simulating the difficulties the Curiosity rover could encounter. The activity goal is to teach students programming design and programming skills using MIT's App Inventor software as the vehicle for the learning. The (free to download) App Inventor program enables Android apps to be created using building blocks without having to actually know a programming language. At activity end, students are ready to apply what they learn to write other applications for Android devices.

In this culminating activity of the unit, students bring together everything they've learned in order to write the code to solve the Grand Challenge. The code solution takes two images captured by robots and combines them to create an image that can be focused at different distances, similar to the way that humans can focus either near or far. They write in a derivative of C++ called QT; all code is listed in this activity.

This resources is an online video available in the "World Science Festival" open education series. The video "The Cost of 2-D Coding" is included in the Technology section of the series.

This complete set of course materials contains all files used for in-class activities and labs, a full set of lecture slides, project assignments, and a test bank. Topics covered include:

HTML Basics
CSS
Images
Page Layout
Tables
Forms
Multimedia
JavaScript

The act of program creation, using common compilers and assemblers, takes software from an information-rich source code format and transforms it into a difficult-to-read machine code format. The reverse process, trying to convert machine code into a human-readable format, is significantly more difficult and requires high-level intuition and pattern matching skills. This book is going to discuss the disassembly and decompilation of x86 machine code and x86 assembly code.