Episode 1: Beads, Pebbles and Dust
How the abacus taught us to count. A free 5-minute video with our own drawings.
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Lesson 1: Beads, Pebbles and Dust
A 10-page printable lesson that follows the video step by step: pause times, questions, a worksheet and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Lesson 1 is free, so you can try it with your class.
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Episode 2: The Shipwreck "Computer"
Bronze gears from a Greek shipwreck, and the first machines that could do sums. A free 6-minute video.
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Lesson 2: The Shipwreck "Computer"
A 12-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, two worksheets with a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 3: The Computer That Was Never Built
A loom that reads punched cards, Babbage's engines, and Ada Lovelace's notes. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 3: The Computer That Was Never Built
A 12-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "be the engine" game with counters, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 4: Holes in Cards
A census that took years to add up, and the machine that read holes in cards with electricity. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 4: Holes in Cards
A 12-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "be the tabulator" card-counting game, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 5: Turing and the Codebreakers
An imaginary machine from 1936, the Enigma puzzle, and the machines built to help solve it. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 5: Turing and the Codebreakers
A 12-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a paper tape machine, a turning-wheel cipher, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 6: ENIAC, Baby and UNIVAC
A computer the size of a room, the women who programmed it, and the big argument: which computer was first? A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 6: ENIAC, Baby and UNIVAC
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "Paper Baby" stored-program game, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 7: The Transistor and the Chip
A slab of germanium, a prize for three, and a prediction that the parts on a chip would keep doubling. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 7: The Transistor and the Chip
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, logic gates played with counters, doubling sums, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 8: Big Iron
Computers rented by the month, languages that looked like maths and English, and a five billion dollar gamble on one family of machines. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 8: Big Iron
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "be the compiler" game, numbers built from four boxes, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 9: Minicomputers and UNIX
A computer with a screen for one operator, a space battle game, an $18,000 machine for one lab, and a system rewritten in C and then moved. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 9: Minicomputers and UNIX
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "chalk disk" file list, a "Move it" game on two pretend machines, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 10: A CPU on a Chip
An order for calculator chips, four engineers, the Intel 4004, and a processor sold for twenty-five dollars. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 10: A CPU on a Chip
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "program the chip" game with counters, numbers shown with four bits, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 11: Computers Come Home
A computer sold as a kit, a club of hobbyists, three ready-built machines in 1977, the first spreadsheet program, and the home computers of the early 1980s. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 11: Computers Come Home
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a 256-box memory grid, a paper spreadsheet with "what if?" questions, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 12: The IBM PC and the Clones
A personal computer built in a year from off-the-shelf parts, an open design, and the compatible machines that made it a standard. A free 8-minute video.
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Lesson 12: The IBM PC and the Clones
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, "make or buy" sums, a "clean room" rule-finding game, a ten-counter market share model, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 13: Windows, Icons and the Mouse
An imaginary desk that linked documents, the mouse and a famous demonstration in 1968, a research computer that was never sold, and the Lisa, the Macintosh and Windows. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 13: Windows, Icons and the Mouse
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "roll the mouse" grid game, pictures made from squares, a "three windows" puzzle, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 14: From ARPANET to the Web
The first computers joined in a network, messages cut into packets, the at sign, networks joined into an internet, and the Web that began at CERN. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 14: From ARPANET to the Web
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a packets game with paper strips, a gateways model, a paper web of linked pages, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. No computer needed. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 15: Computers in Your Pocket
A 24-pound computer you could carry, a low-power chip from Britain, a black laptop with a red pointer, a wooden model in a pocket, and a phone, music player and internet device in one. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 15: Computers in Your Pocket
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, halving and weighing sums, a "count the steps" design game, a hundred-square model, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 16: The GPU
Game graphics in the 1990s, a chip its maker called a graphics processing unit, many sums at once, science on graphics chips, and a thousandfold speed-up in ten years. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 16: The GPU
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, pixels coloured by rule, "hand over the sums" and "share them out" games, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 17: The Cloud
Sharing one big computer by turns in the 1960s, a rack of 80 PCs, renting storage and computing by the hour, and the buildings full of computers behind it all. A free 8-minute video.
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Lesson 17: The Cloud
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a "take turns" sharing game, racks, hours and gigabytes sums, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 18: Machines That Learn
A machine from 1958 that learned to sort cards, the lean years, a library of labelled pictures, a network trained on two graphics cards, and the awards that followed. A free 8-minute video.
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Lesson 18: Machines That Learn
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a paper "sorter" that learns from its mistakes (our own model), counting games, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. No computer needed. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 19: Large Language Models
A 1966 program with canned replies, the 2017 paper behind the Transformer, models that predict the next piece of text, and the chat assistants that followed. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 19: Large Language Models
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, a paper next-word model built from a tally table (our own model), why a fluent sentence can still be untrue, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. No computer or AI tool needed. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
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Episode 20: AI on Your Own Desk
The series finale: small desktop computers with 128 GB of shared memory, why the largest models still run in data centres, and a look back from the abacus. A free 7-minute video.
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Lesson 20: AI on Your Own Desk
A 13-page printable lesson that follows the video: pause times, questions, "will it fit?" memory sums, a timeline card sort across the whole series, a cut-out timeline, and a quiz with answers. Ages 11-14. Pay once, reuse with your own class.
$8 · Buy