Bored or stressed (or want to develop your algorithmic thinking skills)? Doodledraw a snowflake following our doodle art algorithm, then invent your own algorithms and carry on doodling. From a few instructions a new snowflake emerges, slightly different every time. cs4fn.blog/2026/01/01/d...

Here is my contribution to #genuary #genuary2026 #genuary1 One color, one shape. My color is blue. And this is my shape.

Lego Computer Science continues: learning about the structured program theorem through Lego instructions cs4fn.blog/2025/12/29/l...

There is lots of Norovirus about at the moment so here is a CS4FN article about Poo-linked computer science about Ancient Egypt. Unicode has Poo! (and in the meantime wash your hands well and start the new year well!) cs4fn.blog/2025/12/29/u...

Congrats to the projects (funded by the Civil Aviation Authority and Department for Transport's "Reach for the Sky" £750,000 grant) who'll run a series of events to inspire young people to consider careers in aviation www.gov.uk/government/n... cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

Today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar has a Christmas tree on the front, so the post is about the Wood Computer. A computer both made OF wood (punched paper cards) & designed to help you 'compute' different woods by telling them apart. Merry Christmas :) cs4fn.blog/advent/

Today's post on the @cs4fn.bsky.social CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar lists some of the online ways you can 'track' Santa's sleigh including NORAD, FlightRadar and Google. Also how to see the International Space Station (cloud permitting) - updated for 2025 cs4fn.blog/advent/

Father Christmas is getting ready for the big day on our @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. He's making a list but checking it once (because he remembered to add a parity bit to check for errors). You can try this out as a game with a pack of cards :) cs4fn.blog/advent/

NASA used textile workers to weave the Apollo Guidance Computer's memory with wires and ferrules to create core rope memory, find out how to make your own (MUCH simpler version!) in today's wreath-themed @cs4fn.bsky.social CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar post cs4fn.blog/advent/

Particularly like - don't use clicker apps in class ask them to hum against their choice instead .... (it sounds far more fun)

@tomgauld.bsky.social's XMAS TV ad idea generator algorithm...

Day 20: Today is the last Royal Mail posting date for UK 1st class (23rd for special delivery) and the image on the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar door is a gift tag... so today's post is all about internet addressing! cs4fn.blog/advent/ cc @cs4fn.bsky.social @qmuleecs.bsky.social

It's jingle bells today on the @qmuleecs.bsky.social @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. But they're warning bells, about scams (that can take advantage of the Christmas season). Also take Google's phishing quiz and see how many examples you can spot cs4fn.blog/advent/

Bet you can't guess what theme I chose for the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar post which has a CHRISTMAS CRACKER on the window today (OK I bet you can) cs4fn.blog/advent/ #CyberSecurity and some magical code-cracking. cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

"I wonder if my @cs4fn.bsky.social colleagues have previously written a computing themed article that include reindeer" I wondered while drafting the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar, "that would be handy". Lucky me :-) Find out more by clicking Rudolph's nose cs4fn.blog/advent/ #networks

Today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent calendar picture is a candy cane which reminded me of walking sticks alerting others that the person using it is visually impaired, so today's articles are about computer science research making life easier for disabled people cs4fn.blog/advent/

The year in CS4FN & Teaching London Computing (from @qmuleecs.bsky.social) in 2025: our computing education site for teachers / home educators / librarians had 78,000 global visitors who downloaded our FREE resources 153,000+ times teachinglondoncomputing.org/2025/12/15/t... cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

Today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar picture is of a candle which made me think of optical fibre, which reminded me of optical illusions, so this is a light-hearted (sorry) look at those, shining a torch (or candle) into the CS4FN archives :) cs4fn.blog/advent/

It's tinsel on the @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar's door today so the accompanying post is about broadband speeds (cables!) & a little bit about bunting (did you know Gov UK's website puts tinsel on its Bank Holidays page on Christmas Day?). Plus a puzzle cs4fn.blog/advent/

A woolly bobble hat for today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent calendar to warm your head. You might want to keep your computer cool though, here's how. Also, find out how to sort your bobble hats with the bubble sort cs4fn.blog/advent/ Another 12 days of quality puns like this :-)

Today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing advent calendar picture is of a Christmas stocking, which will take you to a post all about storage and stories about computer memory and memristors. Also how you can use computational thinking to win at 20 Questions cs4fn.blog/2023/12/12/c...

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating" so today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar post, suggested by the Christmas pudding on the window, is about mathematical proofs and using images* to support that, plus a maths-themed puzzle cs4fn.blog/advent/ *not the pudding tho!

Day 10 of the CS4FN advent calendar cs4fn.blog/advent/. Today's post looks at AI chatbots (remember Holly from Red Dwarf?!) and how students often struggle with the concept of file management (Ivy!*) if they don't understand the basics of user-facing computing architecture. @cs4fn.bsky.social

A more food-themed Christmas-Computing post today for Day 9, suggested by the gingerbread biscuit on the CS4FN advent calendar door. The obvious one is 'cookies' but we've included 'spam' too (and a melting snowman puzzle) cs4fn.blog/advent/ cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

We have a FREE bumper pack of our Christmas-and-Computing-themed puzzles to download and print teachinglondoncomputing.org/2024/11/30/c... - prints on A4 and 8.5x11 cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

Day 8 and it's a wrapped Christmas present on the advent calendar window. The post inside contains a bit of computer science history (a gift 'for everyone'), sustainability (unhiding something hidden to make devices easier to repair) & a maths-based kriss kross cs4fn.blog/advent/ @cs4fn.bsky.social

A slightly longer post today on the @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar which matches the picture on the window - a robin. Surprisingly we have LOTS of entertaining bird-and-computing-themed content, even a bird-themed kriss kross puzzle cs4fn.blog/advent/

Amaze your family and friends this holiday showing your mathematical prowess by generating instant magic squares at will. Learn the trick and some computer science about algorithms and how they prove they always work. conjuringwithcomputation.wordpress.com/instant-magi...

Looking for a Christmas present for someone interested in Computing and Magic (ie you know someone just like me) or to add to your own Christmas List ... then maybe our book (with the late Peter McOwan) Conjuring With Computation is the perfect present. conjuringwithcomputation.wordpress.com

Today's Audible daily deal is @aptshadow.bsky.social 's Service Model. This is a standalone tale of Charles, a robot who doesn't quite always get what has gone wrong. www.audible.co.uk/pd/Service-M...

It was fun thinking up ways to link Christmas icons to computer science-related things. This bauble made me think of printed circuit boards so today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Advent post is about circuits, and there's even a circuit-themed puzzle cs4fn.blog/2023/12/06/c...

Day 5 of the CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calender and the window shows a snowman. You might think there's no link with computing but you'd be wrong! a) you can make a water-based computer and b) compacted snow made me think of data compression ;) cs4fn.blog/advent/ cc @cs4fn.bsky.social

"On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me..." 4. “Four calling birds!” One of the issues with Wi-Fi can be interference. Demonstrate this with a simple class game!

cs4fn.blog/advent/ There's an ice-skate on today's @cs4fn.bsky.social Advent window so the post inside is a chilly look at neutrino detection, digitally modelling a skater's spins and finding some computer science in the film 'Frozen' (and a kriss kross puzzle).

Film Futures: A Christmas Carol New in the series where, for a bit of fun, we rewrite the plots of movies to include computer science. What might happen if Scrooge was a computer scientist? Find out on the CS4FN blog. cs4fn.blog/2025/12/04/f...

Print, fold & puzzle over our Christmas HexaHexaFlexagon (a finite state machine) on Day 3 of the @cs4fn.bsky.social CS4FN Christmas Computing Advent Calendar. Click the snowflake and help Father Christmas find all his presents cs4fn.blog/cs4fn-christ... - inc free PDF booklet on flexagons & CompSci

Advent Calendar Day 2 from @cs4fn.bsky.social: a pair of mittens on the door so the computing theme is pairs... and gloves: paired devices, gestural gloves, pair programming, digital twins & a self-working (algorithmic) card trick: "Two cards make a pair" + colouring in cs4fn.blog/2023/12/02/c...

Here's how to make a Magic Square. There's an algorithm involved (a set of steps) so it's a mix of maths, computer science and magic! Wow your friends, divert your enemies :) From the @cs4fn.bsky.social archives cs4fn.blog/2025/12/01/h...

Pinch Punch(cards) - the @cs4fn.bsky.social Christmas Computing Advent Calendar is back cs4fn.blog/cs4fn-christ... Click on the coloured image on each 'window' (new each day) then marvel at how I've managed to link it thematically with computer science! Today: woolly jumpers = knitting & coding.

Sounding out a Sensory Garden How @qmuleecs.bsky.social 's Nela Brown added interactive sound to a sensory garden, aiming for it to be informal but have educational and social value, even though it was outside. cs4fn.blog/2025/11/30/s... (from the archive for disability history month)

My cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com books. Lots more here: www.theguardian.com/books/series/tom-gauld-s-cultural-cartoons

Film Futures: Elf For a bit of fun, in this series, we look at how movie plots could change if they involved Computer Science. Here we look at an alternative version of the Christmas film, Elf. cs4fn.blog/2025/11/29/f...

For Disability History Month, find out about Adrian Stokes, who was born with spina bifida. He was one of the pioneers who originally created the world spanning Internet cs4fn.blog/2025/01/11/a...

Scéalextric Stories by Tony Veale (from the archive) Stories follow paths with surprising "twists" and "turns" along the way. The track often turns out to be circular, with the heroine finally returning to the beginning. Can use this race track idea to create stories? cs4fn.blog/2025/11/24/s...

Happy Dr Who Day...a day to also celebrate Delia Derbyshire, the amazing electronic music pioneer who created the theme tune long before pop stars were creating electronic music cs4fn.blog/2025/05/05/s...

Interested in music? Computer Scientists and Electronic Engineers do completely new things with it. cs4fn.blog/music/

For disability History Month find out about how former Senior Lecturer at @qmuleecs.bsky.social Tony Stockman became an expert in data sonification, initially to make it possible to do his PhD cs4fn.blog/2025/11/22/t...

It is global entrepreneurship week: read CS4FN stories about tech entrepreneurs from a variety of backgrounds on our blog cs4fn.blog/tech-entrepr...

Any budding computer scientist should read 'The Machine Stops', a short story published in 1909 by EM Forster of period drama fame. How reliant on computers should we become? How important is dependability? Here is my CS4FN article inspired by reading it in school English cs4fn.blog/2025/11/16/t...

Here is the CS4FN review of Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. The absolute most fun way to learn about Computer Networking on any planet in any universe whether real, imagined or riding through space on the backs of elephants standing on the back of a turtle. cs4fn.blog/2025/11/15/g...