What awesome CS would you teach the youth of Georgia in 1 class?

So it looks like I’ll be spending 6 weeks of my summer at Georgia’s Governor’s Honors Program (GHP). Students get assigned to a major and minor and basically get 6 weeks of super-intense boarding school. They apply for this, and some don’t make the cut.

I’m looking forward to GHP. I’m looking forward to the chance to teach a completely different group of students. This is kind of class teachers dream about – intelligent, motivated, naive enough to believe your lies. The CS classes will be in the context of a mathematics curriculum which I suspect will present its own challenges. I’m also looking forward to hanging out with a group of professors who would sacrifice 6 weeks of their summer to live on-site and get paid not much. That I think will make for some awesome lunch discussions.

A third perk is the opportunity to teach “seminars”. These are short evening classes that basically can be about anything you can convince a few students to come by and hear about. I’m hoping to use this to try out all the wacky neat-o technologies and techniques I never have an excuse to inflict on the students. I’m already thinking of dusting off my Big O and P/NP lectures. Why? Because I am insane. Maybe also one on Kodu, a super easy game framework by Microsoft that may have little pedagogical purpose but there is something to be said for making a game in 5 minutes using only an xbox controller. And perhaps something with microcontrollers…who knows?

What about you blog-reading people? What fun thing would you just like to inflict on a bunch of high school students? Group theory? Celluar Automata? I am all ears.

For you Seattle-ites: when I’m not tormenting the youth of Georgia, I plan to be in Ben’s place once again living like a drifter. A drifter with a unwavering, ninja-like focus on writing his proposal. But this drifter would not mind grabbing a coffee or drink with any old friends who happen to be out in his direction. I’ll be there from early May to mid-June.

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