Digital Media

There is so much out there in the Digital Media world! I will explain some of the things you can experience.

What is Computer Control?

It is a set of instructions that you (the human) put into a machine which then causes it to operate in a predetermined manner.

So basically we actually experience this daily. Here are some examples:

• In the home we will find things such as, Washing Machine, Microwave, Security Alarm, the list goes on.
• Outside the home we will find things like; Traffic Lights, Car's Central locking, Sprinklers, and so on. 

There are many benefits with these machines; they never lose concentration, they don't make mistakes (well if they do then it's purely human error!), they can repeat the same instruction over again, in exactly the same way each time, and they are much cheaper to employ than humans... It doesn't look like us humans are as important and useful as we all thought....

There are some really cool programmable toys for children too. I have been looking at things such as Beebots

These are toys that do as you tell them (well not everything...) you put in instructions like; forward, back, left and right. You have to put, in numbers, the amount of forwards, backs, rights and lefts you want it to do. This can allow children to estimate distances and how many turns to do (which has the idea about degrees without explicitly saying degrees, if you used it with small children), because it doesn't move right it just turns 90 degrees. 

Here is a video of a group of us having a go at it: