For advanced stuff: Unicode, or "everything we told you about ASCII was wrong" Data compression, from run-length encoding to Huffman's optimal packing (or, "Why Morse code is good")
For the group project: How to test which parts aren't working. (Or "When to partition the hard drive. With an Axe")
The problem with building databases is that they very rapidly get more complicated than people want to thing about. Eg, with a music collection, do you want to be able to track solo artists as part of a group? (Sorry, um, it's Hip-hop, isn't it? So the word is probably "Crew"). So that searching for Beatles also finds John Lennon's Imagine, and, worse, finds Wings stuff... at this point people might be able to handle the modelling, but can't write the validation code.
But yes, actually finding a practical application which is relevant to the student is very important: it means they can start to learn about the intended subject (and see the limitations), because they already understand the context, rather than having to learn about Hotel Accomodation first!
As for the anti-drugs website, try http://www.brookes.ac.uk/health/libra
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Date: 2007-05-18 01:30 pm (UTC)Unicode, or "everything we told you about ASCII was wrong"
Data compression, from run-length encoding to Huffman's optimal packing (or, "Why Morse code is good")
For the group project:
How to test which parts aren't working. (Or "When to partition the hard drive. With an Axe")
The problem with building databases is that they very rapidly get more complicated than people want to thing about. Eg, with a music collection, do you want to be able to track solo artists as part of a group? (Sorry, um, it's Hip-hop, isn't it? So the word is probably "Crew"). So that searching for Beatles also finds John Lennon's Imagine, and, worse, finds Wings stuff... at this point people might be able to handle the modelling, but can't write the validation code.
But yes, actually finding a practical application which is relevant to the student is very important: it means they can start to learn about the intended subject (and see the limitations), because they already understand the context, rather than having to learn about Hotel Accomodation first!
As for the anti-drugs website, try http://www.brookes.ac.uk/health/libra