DSP in high schools: New technologies from the infinity project

The Infinity Project is a joint effort between university educators, high school teachers, administrators, and industrial leaders to establish an engineering curriculum that is taught within the regular high school day. The curriculum teaches students about the design of technology-driven systems and motivates them to learn fundamental concepts of mathematics, science, and engineering. The curriculum currently consists of (1) a course text [1], (2) integrated laboratory exercises with real-time signal processing hardware, (3) summer teacher training institutes, and (4) a web community portal for information sharing (www.infinity-project.org). In this paper, we briefly describe three real-time signal processing laboratory exercises—SketchWave, Coin Counter, and Video Steganography—that are used within the course to both teach and excite students about engineering design, fundamental scientific and mathematical concepts, and the power of problem solving. These representative exercises are drawn from over 200 laboratory worksheets developed for the course and available online for participating schools.