Lesson Resources

There are several activities on binary numbers in this document, all simple enough that they can be used to teach the binary system to anyone who can count! G

In this clip, Prof. Dave Cliff shows us how, thanks to Victorian logician George Boole, logical reasoning moved beyond philosophy to mathematics, an essential step towards our modern digital world. With the help of 25 seven-year-olds, Prof. Cliff creates, for the first time ever, a computer made entirely of children. It runs on nothing but Boolean logic… So will our kid-powered computer manage successfully to add 2 + 3?

This activity introduces the idea of “divide and conquer” using a fictitious but serious problem – a pair of dirty socks have accidently been wrapped in one of the presents that Santa is about to deliver, and he needs to figure out which one to avoid a child getting a nasty surprise.

In this activity students compare different algorithms to sort weights in order.