On Dec 8, 2006, at 9:05 PM, Steve Heaton wrote:
G'day all
I'll skip the background as to 'why' but I've recently been working
on a way to explain the Beowulf concept to a classroom of school
kids. No computers required.
I think I've come up with a useful analogy/experiment that might
work. I've posted it here on the off chance that someone else might
want to give it a try if they get pressed into such a situation.
First, some 'newsgroup preempters'. This is designed for school
kids not your typical Beowulf list reader. Sorry but no cars or
harnessing of chickens involved ;) No mentions of heat dissipation
or switching fabrics. This is a non-technical post that someone
might find handy at some point.
Steve,
That's a good idea. Last year, I did something similar. My daughter
asked me
to come to her second-grade class to talk about "the big computer" we
are
building, which is perhaps a younger group than you had.
Some colleagues and I came up with the following:
The teacher handed out copies of one of the classroom books, so
all the kids had the same book. Each child was assigned a page in
the book. We did a couple of different problems. First, distributed
search: who can find the word "blue"? Can the kids (parallel) do
it faster than the teacher (sequential)? Second, distributed counting:
how many times is the word "sky" in the book? Again, race the
kids against the teacher.
I don't know how much they remember about it, but it was fun.
Win Treese
SiCortex, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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