Overview

Students develop (and are eventually provided with) commands for a "Human Machine Language" designed to perform operations on playing cards. The lesson highlights the connection between programming and algorithms by showing that different techniques for solving the same problem can be expressed in the language.

Vocab

• Algorithm - A list of steps to finish a task.
• High Level Programming Language - A programming language with many commands and features designed to make common tasks easier to program. Any high level functionality is encapsulated as combinations of low level commands.
• Low Level Programming Language - A programming language that captures only the most primitive operations available to a machine. Anything that a computer can do can be represented with combinations of low level commands.

Resources

• Minimum Card Algorithm - Activity Guide (copy as MS Word, Google Doc)

• Human Machine Language - Activity Guide (copy as MS Word, Google Doc)