Computer systems

1. Grade 6
   Unit 1 What Is a Computer? A phone, an ATM, a rice cooker with a display: each has a computer inside. What makes it a computer? What does it do?
2. Grade 7
   Unit 1 Inside the Computer Open a computer and what do you find? The parts inside, and how they work together every time you tap.
3. Grade 8
   Unit 7 Physical Computing A computer that senses light, motion and touch, and answers with lights and sound.
4. Grade 9
   Unit 1 How a Computer Really Works From tiny switches to a machine that runs every app: what happens billions of times a second.
5. Grade 10
   Unit 5 Computers in the World Sensors in fields, servers in the cloud: the hidden computers that run the world, and what they cost the planet.
6. Grade 11
   Unit 4 From Code to Circuits What really happens when you press Run, from your Python down to the processor's own instructions.
7. Going Further
   6–8 How Does a Heater, or a Drone, Hold Steady? Switching fully on and off makes a heater overshoot. A gentler rule is how a drone hovers still.
8. Going Further
   6–8 How Does a Traffic Light Know What Comes Next? A traffic light is a short list of states and the arrows between them. So is much more than a traffic light.

Using computers well

1. Grade 6
   Unit 2 Using a Computer Well Where did that file go? Learning to find, keep and look after your work, in English and in Nepali.
2. Grade 7
   Unit 7 Finding and Checking Information Anyone can put anything online. How to search like a librarian, check a claim like a fact-checker, and find where it really came from.
3. Grade 8
   Unit 8 Organizing Your Digital Life “final_final2.docx”, a phone that says storage full, a photo you can't find: keeping your files, phone and cloud in order.
4. Grade 9
   Unit 7 Documents, Email and Online Services School, work and the government now ask for things on a screen. How do you do them properly, and safely?
5. Grade 10
   Unit 6 Fixing Problems and Learning Any New Tool When something stops working, most people give up. Reading the error, searching it, and teaching yourself any new program.
6. Grade 11
   Unit 9 Automate Your Work Rename a thousand files, clean a spreadsheet, fill a hundred letters: programs that save hours.

Algorithms and programming

1. Grade 6
   Unit 3 Algorithms: Step by Step A computer does exactly what it is told, nothing more. How do you write instructions so clear that nothing can go wrong?
2. Grade 6
   Unit 4 Programming with Blocks Snap blocks together and a turtle draws what you tell it: a square, a star, a mandala. Your first programs, and your first bugs.
3. Grade 7
   Unit 3 Programming: Variables and Choices A game has to remember your score and decide what happens next. Programs that remember and choose.
4. Grade 8
   Unit 1 From Blocks to Python Your first typed programs: the same ideas as blocks, in a language professionals use.
5. Grade 8
   Unit 2 Decisions and Loops in Python Programs that choose and repeat, now in Python, with the turtle you already know.
6. Grade 8
   Unit 3 Algorithms: Searching and Sorting How do you find one name among a million, or put them in order? Some ways are far faster than others.
7. Grade 8
   Unit 4 Functions: Building Blocks of Programs Big programs are built from small parts, each with a name and a job.
8. Grade 9
   Unit 3 Python: Lists, Strings and Dictionaries Real programs handle lots of data. The right way to hold it makes the rest easy.
9. Grade 9
   Unit 4 Algorithms and Efficiency Two programs give the same answer; one takes a second, the other a year. Why?
10. Grade 10
    Unit 1 Bigger Programs Modules, libraries and other people's code: how programs grow without falling apart.
11. Grade 10
    Unit 2 Graphs: Maps, Routes and Networks Towns and roads, friends and links: one idea behind every map app and social network.
12. Grade 11
    Unit 1 Objects and Classes Model the world as things that know and do: a bus, a student, a game character.
13. Grade 11
    Unit 2 Recursion A problem with a smaller copy of itself inside: Tower of Hanoi, fractals and the shortest programs that do the most.
14. Grade 11
    Unit 3 Data Structures Why can undo go back step by step, and a dictionary find any name at once? The shape you give your data decides.
15. Grade 12
    Unit 1 Algorithms for Hard Problems The fastest route, the fewest coins, the closest word: clever methods, and problems nobody can solve fast.
16. Grade 12
    Unit 2 The Limits of Computing Some problems no program can ever solve. How we know, and the million-dollar question still open.
17. Going Further
    6–8 Can Eight Rules Play Tic-Tac-Toe Without Ever Losing? A list of eight plain rules, followed in order, plays a game you can’t beat. Which rule matters most?
18. Going Further
    6–8 Can a Robot Get Out of Any Maze? One rule, without any map, gets a robot out of almost any maze. Which mazes beat it?
19. Going Further
    6–8 How Many Moves to Move 64 Disks? A puzzle with a legend: when the last of 64 disks is moved, the world ends. Should we worry?
20. Going Further
    6–8 How Do You Find the Fake Coin in Three Weighings? Twelve coins, one fake, a balance and three weighings. Why can twelve be done and fourteen not?
21. Going Further
    6–8 Can You Cross the River with the Tiger, the Goat and the Grass? An old river-crossing puzzle turns into a map with dots and lines, and the map solves it.
22. Going Further
    6–8 Can Four Colors Paint Any Map of Nepal? Color all 77 districts so no neighbors match. Four colors are always enough, but finding them is another matter.
23. Going Further
    6–8 How Many Ways Round Bhaktapur’s Temples? Five temples have 12 round trips to try. Thirty would keep the world’s fastest computer busy for tens of thousands of years.
24. Going Further
    6–8 What Does an Ant Do with Two Simple Rules? An ant on a grid follows two rules. For a long time it makes a mess, and then something strange happens.
25. Going Further
    6–8 How Does a Computer Roll a Die? A computer can only follow rules. So where do its random numbers come from, and can they repeat?
26. Going Further
    9–12 How Can a Computer Never Lose at Tic-Tac-Toe? A short function that calls itself plays out every game of tic-tac-toe there could ever be, and never loses.
27. Going Further
    9–12 How Does a Computer Play Chess? No computer can see to the end of a chess game. So how did one beat the world champion?
28. Going Further
    9–12 Who Wins Bagh-Chal When Nobody Makes a Mistake? Tigers or goats? Computers have worked out who wins Nepal’s own game when both sides play perfectly.
29. Going Further
    9–12 How Is a Sudoku Solved in a Blink? Try a number, and undo it when you get stuck. A computer does this so fast that the hardest Sudoku falls in a moment.
30. Going Further
    9–12 How Do Games Build a New Maze Every Time? A perfect maze has exactly one path between any two squares. A random walk that never makes a loop builds one.
31. Going Further
    9–12 How Does a Calculator Find a Square Root? Guess, then improve the guess by a simple average. Each step doubles the correct digits.

Data and representation

1. Grade 6
   Unit 5 Zeros and Ones Photos, songs and messages are all stored as just two symbols, 0 and 1. How can so little say so much?
2. Grade 7
   Unit 2 How Computers Store Everything Letters, देवनागरी, colors and sounds all become numbers inside a computer. How?
3. Grade 7
   Unit 4 True or False: Logic AND, OR and NOT: three tiny ideas that every computer is built from.
4. Grade 9
   Unit 2 Data in Depth Why is a photo 3 MB and a song 4 MB? How numbers, text, pictures and sound are stored and squeezed.
5. Going Further
   6–8 How Do You Always Win at Nim? A game of stones you can always win, if you know a secret that is hidden in binary.
6. Going Further
   6–8 How Does the Mind-Reading Card Trick Work? Five cards of numbers find anyone’s secret number. The magic is something you already know.
7. Going Further
   6–8 How Does a Barcode Catch a Typing Mistake? A shopkeeper types a barcode with one digit wrong, and the computer knows at once. How, without knowing the right number?
8. Going Further
   6–8 Which Card Was Flipped? Turn over one card while a friend looks away, and they find which one. The same trick fixes damaged messages.
9. Going Further
   6–8 How Do You Hide a Picture Inside Another? Change the last bit of every color in a photo and no eye can tell. A whole second picture fits in there.
10. Going Further
    6–8 What Is the Biggest Number a Computer Can Count To? A counter with a fixed number of bits goes round like a meter. What happens when it reaches the end?
11. Going Further
    9–12 How Does a Scratched QR Code Still Scan? A few extra bits don’t only show that something went wrong. They say where, and put it right.
12. Going Further
    9–12 Why Can’t a Formula Convert Bikram Sambat to AD? Bikram Sambat months change their length from year to year. Every converter carries a table.
13. Going Further
    9–12 How Does Romanized Nepali Typing Work? Type “nepal” and get नेपाल. The trick is in which pieces of the word are matched first, and in a list of real words.
14. Going Further
    9–12 Why Did a Rocket Destroy Itself 37 Seconds After Launch? Code that worked on one rocket was used on a faster one. One number got too big for its box.
15. Going Further
    9–12 How Did a Rounding Error Stop a Missile Defense? A tiny error in storing one tenth added up, hour by hour, until a defense system missed.

Data and analysis

1. Grade 6
   Unit 6 Information and Data How many students walk to school, and how far? Collecting facts, putting them in a table, and drawing a chart that tells the truth.
2. Grade 7
   Unit 5 Spreadsheets and Data A class survey becomes a table, the table becomes answers. And what to do when the data is messy.
3. Grade 10
   Unit 3 Databases and SQL A school keeps thousands of records. How does a database find any one in an instant?
4. Grade 10
   Unit 4 Data Science Clean the data, chart it, and draw only the conclusions it really supports.
5. Grade 11
   Unit 5 Modeling and Simulation Throw a ball, launch a planet, spread a flu: build the world in code and watch what it does.
6. Grade 12
   Unit 5 Data, Evidence and Decisions Does it really work, or does it only look that way? Statistics for real questions, with data from Nepal.
7. Going Further
   6–8 Why Do Snakes and Ladders Games Take So Long? Nobody can work out the average game in their head. Ten thousand games played by a program can.
8. Going Further
   6–8 Can You Land on the Moon? A few lines of arithmetic, repeated each second, are enough to fly a lander down to the Moon.
9. Going Further
   6–8 How Far Does a Wandering Ant Get? An ant takes 100 random steps. How far from home does it end up? Less far than you think.
10. Going Further
    6–8 How Can Throwing Rice Find π? Grains of rice thrown at random on a square drawing can work out one of the most famous numbers in mathematics.
11. Going Further
    6–8 How Does a Cold Spread Through a School? One sick student, a whole school. A small change in how many each one infects changes everything.
12. Going Further
    9–12 Why Can’t Anyone Forecast the Weather a Month Ahead? Change a weather model’s starting numbers in the sixth decimal place, and in a few weeks it forecasts different weather.
13. Going Further
    9–12 Why Do Traffic Jams Appear Out of Nowhere? One driver brakes for a moment, and a jam forms that drives backwards through the traffic.
14. Going Further
    9–12 Which Way Would Rain Flow from Your Roof? Send each square’s water to its lowest neighbor, and Nepal’s rivers draw themselves from heights alone.
15. Going Further
    9–12 How Often Does Nepal Shake? Small earthquakes are common and big ones rare, in a pattern so regular it makes a straight line.

Creating

1. Grade 6
   Unit 7 Making Things with a Computer A poster, a report, a slideshow: making something clear and good to look at, and giving credit to others whose work you use.
2. Grade 8
   Unit 5 Making Web Pages Every web page is text a browser turns into a page. Write your own, and make it easy for everyone to use.
3. Grade 8
   Unit 6 Photos, Sound and Video A photo that's bright and sharp, a voice you can hear clearly, a short video people watch to the end: making them on a phone or a computer.
4. Grade 8
   Unit 11 A Project for Your Community Find a real problem near you and build something that helps, with the people who will use it.
5. Grade 9
   Unit 8 Making Web Apps Pages that respond: buttons, forms and games, with JavaScript.
6. Grade 10
   Unit 8 A Project in a Team Find a real person's problem and solve it together: plan, build, test with them, improve.
7. Grade 11
   Unit 10 Building an App People Use From an idea to people using it: design on paper, build, listen, and build it better.
8. Grade 12
   Unit 3 Software Engineering How does a team build software that keeps working for years, while many people change it?
9. Grade 12
   Unit 9 Capstone Project Your biggest build: a real project for a real user, planned, tested, released and presented.
10. Going Further
    9–12 How Does a Computer Make a Sitar-Like Note Out of Noise? Fill a list with random noise, go round it averaging neighbors, and the hiss becomes a plucked string.

Safety and society

1. Grade 6
   Unit 8 The Internet and Staying Safe The internet joins you to billions of people. How do you find what is true, keep your secrets safe, and stay kind?
2. Grade 7
   Unit 8 Keeping Data Safe Fake prize messages, stolen passwords, lost files: how attacks work and how to stop them.
3. Grade 7
   Unit 9 You and Your Screen Why is it so hard to stop scrolling? How feeds are built to hold you, how an app picks what you see, and how to take back control.
4. Grade 7
   Unit 11 Computers and People Who built the computers we use, who can use them, and the jobs they make and change.
5. Grade 8
   Unit 9 Data, Privacy and You Every app collects data about you. What do they collect, why, and who decides?
6. Grade 9
   Unit 6 Secrets and Security How can you send a secret through a network anyone can listen to?
7. Grade 9
   Unit 10 Computing and the Law Who owns your data, your photos and your code? The rules that govern computing, in Nepal and the world.
8. Grade 10
   Unit 9 The Future of Computing What comes next, who gains and who is left out, and where you might fit in.
9. Grade 11
   Unit 7 Cybersecurity in Practice Every flaw an attacker uses was first a line of code nobody checked. Can you find it, and fix it, first?
10. Grade 12
    Unit 7 Cryptography and Trust The mathematics of secrets made simple: how a browser trusts a bank, and what a blockchain really is.
11. Grade 12
    Unit 8 Technology, Policy and You What should the rules be, what is intelligence, and where do you go from here?

Artificial intelligence

1. Grade 6
   Unit 9 Computers That Learn Nobody wrote rules telling a phone what a cat looks like. So how does it know? Teach a computer yourself and find out.
2. Grade 7
   Unit 10 How Machines Learn A computer learns from examples. What happens when the examples are bad, or one-sided?
3. Grade 8
   Unit 10 Generative AI A chatbot writes like a person. How does it do that, when should you trust it, and when not?
4. Grade 9
   Unit 9 Machine Learning Build a model that learns from real data from Nepal, and find out how good it really is.
5. Grade 10
   Unit 7 How Large Language Models Work Inside the chatbots: tokens, training, why they make things up, and how they differ from a mind.
6. Grade 11
   Unit 8 Neural Networks Train a network to read handwriting, Devanagari too, and see what it really learned.
7. Grade 12
   Unit 6 Building and Judging AI Systems Choose the right AI, or none; measure it honestly; find whom it fails; deploy it responsibly.
8. Going Further
   6–8 Can You Beat a Computer at Rock-Paper-Scissors? You think you choose at random. A program that only counts what you did before thinks otherwise.
9. Going Further
   9–12 Can Matchboxes Learn to Play? Three hundred matchboxes of colored beads learned noughts and crosses with no rules told. The same idea later learned Go.
10. Going Further
    9–12 Can a Computer Fool You into Thinking It’s a Person? A program with a few dozen rules and no understanding at all, and people told it their secrets.

Networks and the internet

1. Grade 7
   Unit 6 Networks and the Internet How does a message from Bhaktapur reach a phone in Pokhara, or New York, in less than a second?
2. Grade 9
   Unit 5 How the Internet Works Addresses, names and rules that let billions of different machines talk to each other.
3. Grade 11
   Unit 6 Clients, Servers and the Web Behind every app is a server answering questions. How they talk, and how to build both sides.
4. Grade 12
   Unit 4 Systems at Scale How a service with millions of users stays up, and what happens when it goes down.
5. Going Further
   9–12 How Did Google Find the Best Page on the Web? A page matters if pages that matter link to it. A surfer clicking at random forever finds which ones they are.

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