This Monday I went to Iwaki High School, in Fukushima prefecture, to
give kids a short lecture on computer art as part of the "super high
school" project. It is always fun to teach high schoolers, as they
always seem to be in a state of awe to learn how things are "behind the
hood" (it probably helps that they don't have to have CS classes
everyday, though).
Since I only had 50 minutes for my lecture (with another 50 minutes for the students to prepare a report/presentation on the lecture), I decided to go with how things must be represented as numbers in a computer. We went over on how an image can be broken down into pixels or vectors, and I used fractals and the game of life as examples. They were pretty engaged, and the class was split in half on whether fractals or the game of life were the coolest.
One student was particularly insightful in his report. "So everything in the computers is numbers, and computers are taking a bigger and bigger role in our life -- I personally don't want my life to be just a number in someone's database". Even though I personally disagree with the idea, it made me happy that he took the time to think outside of what was said during the lecture.