Dr. Brown's Blog

I attended the Mid-Southeastern Regional ACM Conference in Gatlinburg on 11/12/2010. The following are notes on the sessions I found most interesting along with a summary of the best ideas I heard:

An Investigation of the CS0 Boot Camp Technique on CS1 Student Performance
H. Erin Rickard, Coastal Carolina University

Erin Rickland described an experiment at Coastal Carolina University involving their CS0 (Introduction to Information Technology) course. Their CS0 course is open to all majors, but CS majors also enrolled in a “boot camp” lab that involved intensive, repetitive programming exercises in Python. The boot camp was composed of 20 75-minute labs in which students were required to complete 350 short programming “drill exercises.”

The results of this experiment were mixed as boot camp students entering CS1 (first programming class using C) did only marginally better than those that did not attend the boot camp. The boot camp did seem to help with retention and grades in the CS0 course, however.

Coastal Carolina has also moved from Java back to C during Fall 2009. They found that students were having problems using Java and that going back to C helped their success rates. They plan to continue to experiment with the “boot camp” idea, perhaps trying placement exams or allowing students to test out of some of the modules.

An Applet Package for CS0
William H. Hooper and Joyce Blair Crowell, Belmont University

Joyce Crowell and William Hooper discussed the use of a custom applet development package (called CHApplet) that they developed for use in the CS0 course at Belmont University. They described the CS0 course at Belmont (as with most schools) as serving the following functions:

• A “hook” to draw students to the CS major.
• To help prepare CS students for the CS1 (programming) course.
• A “filter” to help determine the aptitude of students for CS material.
• At Belmont, CS0 also counts as a Gen Ed Math requirement.

Belmont’s CS0 course consists of 15 tutorials on applets along with readings that attempt to convey the breadth of the computer science field. Initial exercises teach concepts by allowing students to complete partially written applets. Later exercises allow the students to create applets of their own design using the concepts that they have learned in the tutorials.

William Hooper pointed out that students enjoy creating applets since they allow students to do graphics and to easily share their work over the web for others to see. Their custom CHApplet package provides front end methods to facilitate the use of Java Swing along with helper apps for using various types of media. Belmont uses BlueJ for both their CS0 and CS1 courses.

Real-time Community Building with the Twitter API
Semmy Purewal, Georgia Gwinnett College

Semmy Purewal described several experiments he has conducted involving interactive social media along with a social media toolkit he has developed.

The first experiment involved the use of interactive social media at a “Pecha Kucha Night.” Pecha Kucha is a Japanese presentation methodology in which presenters are allowed to show 20 slides but are restricted to spending only 20 seconds on each slide. Semmy organized a Pecha Kucha Night at which he also projected a live feed beside the presenter of email messages being sent from the audience about the presentation using a Macintosh RSS feed screen saver.

Semmy described this first attempt as something of a disappointment, but he repeated the experiment using Twitter (and hash tags) and had a huge success. He said that it created a very interesting dynamic between the audience and the presenter.

Next, Semmy allowed students to use Twitter and Flicker to update a display that was used by the CS department to tell students about events on campus. He felt that this experiment helped to build community between faculty and staff as both were working together to keep everyone informed and entertained with text and pictures.

Semmy also organized an interactive social media event at “Accepted Students Day” at the College of Charleston. This is a day in which students who have been accepted to college, but haven’t decided if they are going to go to school there or not, come to campus to check out the place and talk to faculty to help them to make up there minds. Semmy connected a live Twitter feed to the JumboTron in the stadium. He said that this event was wildly popular.

Semmy is currently working to connect a Twitter/Flicker feed to the monitors around the campus at Georgia Gwinnett College. Students will have to register to allow them to participate so that messages appearing on the screens can be tied back to the person sending them.

To facilitate this project and to help others do similar experiments, Semmy developed a JavaScript-based toolkit (called Spotter). Spotter makes it easy to incorporate live feeds from Twitter, Facebook and Flicker (and others) on a web page.

From LEGO Robotics Summer Camp Projects to CS1 KAREL Assignments
Cen Li, Middle Tennessee State University

Cen Li organized a week-long summer Lego Robotics Camp for grades 9-12 using an NSF Partnerships for Innovation grant for recruiting of area high-school students and to improve CS retention. The Robotics Camp was one of three summer camps, the others being Alice Programming and Multimedia Programming using Python.

The Robot Camp used the Mindstorm and RobotC curriculums in conjunction with the “Robotics Explorations” book. Cen described several of the exercises and also discussed ways that she would likelychange the camp when they host it again. These changes included better pairing of hardware and software team members and the encouragement of early finishing students to assist the other students. She also mentioned the use of KAREL, a robot simulation environment.

Cen felt that  the camp would help students to grasp object-oriented concepts that they will encounter in MTSUs C++-based CS1 course.

Interesting Ideas from the conference:

• Semmy Purewal’s use of interactive social media for college community building.
• Coastal Carolina moving back from Java to C to improve retention and student success.
• The use of the Mindstorms and RobotC curriculums for teaching robotics and the KAREL environment as a potential for robot-based distance learning.
• Belmont University counting CS0 for Gen Ed Math credit.

I’ve had a great time in Milwaukee this week at the ACM SIGCSE Conference. I didn’t have much time to take in the sights, but I did visit the Eisner American Museum of Advertising and Design and Renaissance Books and ate some great Italian food. I also saw the St. Patrick’s parade (albeit from the 15th floor of the Hyatt).

I’ll close this chapter with a short history lesson on Milwaukee from Alice Cooper:

—> click here <—

I’m attending the Association of Computing Manufacturers Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (ACM SIGCSE) Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week. On Saturday (03/13/2010) I visited the conference exhibits and attended a discussion panel on “Interdisciplinary Computing Education for the Challenges of the Future.”

To be honest, I didn’t get much out of the discussion panel. This didn’t have much to do with the group assembled there. I just feel a little toasted. I think I’ve soaked up as much information as I can for the time being. As Bobbie Drinnon once told me, “You sometimes need to just wring out your sponge.” Right now, I feel the need to do just that.

Anyway, I did want to tell a little about the exhibits at the conference as my stay here in Milwaukee comes to an end. The exhibitors included Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, MIT Press, LEGO Education, BlackBerry, Course Technology, Wiley, and Pearson/Prentice Hall among many others.

Intel was showing off a cool hexapod robot that was build by a student at the University of Arizona. The plastic parts were printed on a $10,000 3D printer. The bot is powered by an Intel Atom processor and controlled by a PlayStation 3 controller. Here is a video describing the build and the finished robot:

• Student at University of Arizona builds complex hexapod robot

I spent some time at the MIT Press booth and found some great books. Here are the books I picked up:

• The Warcraft Civilization
• Artificial Life (Volume 16 Number 1)
• Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence

Pearson/Prentice Hall had some interesting books on teaching data structures in Java. I ordered examination copies of the following:

• Problem Solving with Data Structures Using Java: A Multimedia Approach
• Java Software Structure: Designing and Using Data Structures

And finally, LEGO was showing off their TETRIX kit for education. The metal parts kit can be used to build larger and/or more complex robots using the LEGO Mindstorms.

That’s about it from Milwaukee. Now, back to our regularly scheduled semester…

I’m attending the Association of Computing Manufacturers Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (ACM SIGCSE) Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week. On Friday (03/12/2010) I attended vendor exhibits, a discussion session on App Inventor for the Android mobile platform, and most significantly, a 3-hour workshop on Greenfoot.

I was so completely blown away by the Greenfoot workshop that I’m having a hard time thinking of anything else right now. Greenfoot is the “killer app” that we have been looking for in CSIT to help transition students into computer programming generally, and into Java specifically.

The workshop was taught by Michael Kölling, the initiator of the Greenfoot project and its predecessor BlueJ. In my opinion, Michael Kölling is the heir apparent to the vision of Randy Paush (creator of Alice) who wanted to create a system through which he could teach the world to program computers. Greenfoot makes this vision a reality.

At SIGCSE, there are three hot introductory programming environments being discussed: Alice, Scratch, and Greenfoot. I have used Alice in my CSIT1110 class for a few years. We are planning to use Scratch this semester. I only heard about Greenfoot while reading through the conference program prior to the conference and decided to find out more by signing up for the workshop. I am so glad that I did that.

Greenfoot allows students to begin writing simple 2D games and simulations within minutes of being introduced to the environment. In the meantime, they are learning object-oriented programming concepts and can see their programs as being composed of a set of interacting objects. The visual environment in which the work is done makes this process painless and fun. Another interesting point is that the games students write can be full-fledged video games, not just simplistic versions of games (as in Alice or Scratch).

One of the key ideas behind Greenfoot is that object-oriented concepts can be introduced early and can then be reinforced throughout the learning process. Also, students are actually writing Java code from the very beginning (although they may not realize it).

Instructors can easily control the scope of programming assignments by providing some objects and allowing students to create other interacting objects. This also allows for the creation of “open ended” assignments so that more advanced students can go farther by making their games or simulations do more.

Starting students out with text-based assignments is often a difficult hurdle for them to cross. Many early assignments often revolve around math algorithms which can also be daunting for students (or boring) and as stated before, in closed assignments (such as printing the prime numbers between 1-100) once you have solved the artificial problem (which usually has no real world use) there is nothing left to do.

In Greenfoot, students create code within the context of making the game or simulation do something and therefore their efforts have meaning. Students can understand why they need to create the code to move a character around the screen in order to chase something else, or to move an object in order to simulate some physical process. In other words, students can see WHY they need to write the code.

In my opinion, there is nothing more important in the classroom than for teachers to provide meaning and context for today’s students. Greenfoot allows instructors to do this and as a side benefit, it makes the programming process fun.

If you want to learn to program in Java, download Greenfoot and the accompanying tutorials right now and start having fun. You will be able to learn Java programming and object-oriented concepts by creating games and simulations in a painless and exciting environment.

For more information:

• To get Greenfoot – Greenfoot.org
• To see Greenfoot examples – Greenfoot Gallery
• The Greenfoot textbook – Introduction to Programming in Greenfoot
• For instructors – Greenfoot’s Greenroom

I’m attending the Association of Computing Manufacturers Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (ACM SIGCSE) Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this week. On Thursday (03/11/2010) I attended six presentations of papers, one keynote address to first time conference attendees and one round-table discussion. The following is a summary of what I heard.

Expanding the Frontiers of Computer Science: Designing a Curriculum to Reflect a Diverse Field
Mehran Sahami, Alex Aiken and Julie Zelenski, Stanford University

Stanford revised their curriculum in 2007 adopting a flexible track based model with nine different areas of specialization. They recorded a 40% increase in CS students in 2008 and a 20% increase in 2009. They attribute about half of this increase to their curriculum changes and the rest to other factors that institutions nationwide are also experiencing.

Students can choose an area of specialization (the tracks mentioned were human-computer interaction, graphics, information, biocomputation, AI, theory, and systems ) or can choose not to specialize and simply sample courses among the various tracks. The flexibility their program offers allows students to pursue their own interests and also pulls in students from other disciplines to take CS classes.

Stanford adopted the track-based model due to the rapidly evolving multidisciplinary role of computers. They stressed that they did not feel that they had sacrificed the quality of their program in this process, but rather had tightened the program and made it more relevant by providing more context for CS work. They also sited a 2001 IEEE-ACM report on undergraduate computing curriculum as endorsing a track-based model such as the one they have adopted.

Another interesting thing they have done is to create a probability class for CS majors, taking the class out of the math department and focusing the work on problems more relevant to CS students.

Connecting Across Campus
Mark LeBlanc, Tom Armstrong and Mike Gousie, Wheaton College

This talk started by asking why other departments don’t require computer classes in their majors. The sciences usually require classes from other science disciplines, but not usually classes on how computers are used in their subject of study.

Wheaton has adopted a multidisciplinary curriculum that requires students to take two pairs of “linked courses.” For example, they offer a “Computing for Poets” class that incorporates scripting and text mining to answer research questions in literature which is linked to an English class on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Other examples of linked courses are web design and graphic arts, a biocomputation class using a “DNA as information” metaphor with a philosophy ethics course, a robotics and gaming course with a philosophy logic class and an intelligent systems class with a cognition class in psychology.

The speaker noted that they have had a substantial increase in the number of women taking the connected courses and that the effect of their curriculum change has been to energize their CS instructors and instructors from other departments who now recommend that students take computer science classes.

Women in Computer Science: An Evaluation of Three Promising Practices
Christine Alvarado and Zachary Dodds, Harvey Mudd College

Harvey Mudd College has implemented three practices that they feel have substantially increased the number of women majoring in computer science.

The first of these practices was an overhaul of their introductory computer science class. Their approach in this class has been to demystify computer science and to attempt to allow all students to find something interesting in the field. Students work together in pairs and also have some flexibility in their choice of assignments. Students can choose among assignments based on their experience level and their areas of interest.

The second practice was participation in Grace Hopper Celebrations (GHC) for women in their first year of the CS program. This participation appears to allow the women to form more of a sense of community. GHC also offers scholarships to women in computing. (The Wikipedia article on Grace Hopper notes that the quote “It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.” is often attributed to her.)

The third practice was to provide a paid research experience for first/second year female students. They hire 10-12 women to do summer research projects which have included writing games and participating in robotics competitions.

As a result of these three practices, the percentage of the women at Harvey Mudd majoring in CS now exceeds the percentage of men (as a function of the total number of women/men at the college).

What is Computation?
Keynote Address by Peter Denning, Naval Postgraduate School

Dr. Denning’s lunchtime address focused on his definition of what “computation” consists of. He briefly discussed the history of this question and the recent refocusing of attention on the problem of defining computation. He then gave an overview of the “halting problem” and the related work of Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church and Emil Post. He also alluded to recent work on natural computation as calling into question some of our assumptions about what constitutes a computation.

Quoting Edsger Dijkstra that “computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes,” Dr. Denning described a semiotic (though he never used that word) model of computation in which “representation is more important than algorithms.”

Dr. Denning mentioned the book, “Finite and Infinite Games” by James P. Carse which is philosophically related to the halting problem and the Jennifer S. Light’s essay “When Computers Were Women” about the women (one of them the wife of John Mauchly) who programmed the ENIAC.

I found Dr. Denning’s talk interesting, but was confused by his lack of reference to semiotics as the model of computation he described obviously borrowed extensively from this field.

Social Networking: The New Computer Fluency?
Tarsem S. Purewal Jr., The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

This talk was given by my friend and colleague Dr. Semmy Purewal from UTC. He told me about the SIGCSE conference when I met him at the 2009 Mid-Southeast Regional ACM Conference in Gatlinburg (for which I am indebted to him).

Dr. Purewal discussed a “Social Networking” class he taught at the College of Charleston in Spring 2009. He described his objectives in the class as being to impart practical CS knowledge, to improve retention in the CS program and to discuss the social and ethical implications of social media technology.

Some of the questions Dr. Purewal raised in the class concerned the amount and accuracy of the information shared on social media sites. For example, where does one draw the line on what information to share and does the information chosen to share paint a “real” view of the person?

Topics covered in the class included network technology, security and privacy, computational thinking, web entrepreneurship, social, legal and ethical issues. During the course of the class, students used Facebook, Twitter, job search sites, Wikipedia, Google Docs, and mint.com (in addition to other tools) and discussed their underlying technologies. Other topics included TCP/IP, cloud computing, WEP vs WPA, media site/IP tracking, password selection, encryption, and social media business models.

The class was primarily small group discussion-oriented and made liberal use of YouTube and online lecture material.

As with all of the work I have seen from Dr. Purewal, this class was well constructed and executed and challenged students to look beyond the course material toward the social and ethical implications of our technology.

Educating the Next Generation of Spammers
Joel Sommers, Colgate University

Dr. Sommers described an interesting networking class that he teaches at Colgate University that has no prerequisites and aims to be flashy and inspiring in order to draw students into the CS program. The purpose of the class was to familiarize students with the “underside of the Internet,” to “learn by doing,” and to introduce students to the problems and promise associated with the production and consumption of computers and Internet-ready devices.

The class starts out by looking at the underlying technologies of the Internet (TCP/IP, packets, etc.) and the use of traceroute to examine packet routing. Dr. Sommers then discusses spam, how spam filters work and the use of the open source tool SpamAssassin to filter spam. Subsequent topics include web performance prediction, TCP/IP performance monitoring, estimating personal power consumption, breaking simple ciphers, port scanners, intrusion detection, and finally firewalls and other means of protection.

During their personal power consumption assignment, Dr. Sommers has students attempt to estimate their personal daily power consumption by using a digital multimeter on electronic devices under various performance conditions. He has students bring in their Xboxes and other other electronic devices and measure their power consumption. The result of the project is an estimate by each student of how much coal they cause to be consumed on a daily basis. He said the result were often quite scary (sometimes greater than 2 pounds of coal per day).

Dr. Sommers said that the course was great, but the setup for classes is often very complex. While students love the class, he said that it makes the IT people at Colgate very nervous.

Teaching the Principles of the Hacker Curriculum to Undergraduates
Michael Locasto, George Mason University; Sergey Bratus and Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College

This presentation described a “Hacker Curriculum” used at Dartmouth College for training undergraduates  for the Secure Information Systems Mentoring and Training Program and for the their Cyber Security Initiative (CSI). The curriculum is presented in a 10-day, 8-9 hour/day summer program (SISMAT) that includes traditional classroom lectures, real world experience through an paid internship and follow-on research. Students must sign a non-disclosure agreement and undergo a background check in order to participate.

Administration at Dartmouth became more interested in the CSI following a recent security breach which compromised some administrative salary information.

The Hacker Curriculum used in the program is intended to force students to question their trust/control assumptions of computing and networking technology and to provide them with a “Security Culture Shock” as the realization of the implications of these assumptions begin to sink in. The assumption behind the curriculum is that just as doctors can kill as well as heal, and policemen can be destroy as well as protect, and locksmiths can break into places as well as help us to lock them, hackers can help secure systems as well as intrude into them.

The Hacker Curriculum stresses learning from failure modes as opposed to the traditional teaching paradigms which stress respecting API and other system boundaries. Students are encouraged to use reconnaissance and discovery as a means of learning. Techniques discussed in the class include packet sniffing and interception, various injection methods, spoofing and firewalking.

Teachers in the program take students to the Black Hat DefCon with the idea being that only when they know the “dark side” can they be turned toward the light. A good point made during the presentation is that instead of shunning the hacker community, we should attempt to learn from it and use it for “white hat” purposes.

Additional information can be found at:

• www.hackercurriculum.org
• www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sismat/

“Birds of a Feather” Roundtable Session – Apple’s New Tablet Device in CS Education
Daniel Neumann, Indiana Wesleyan University

Since the iPad isn’t slated to ship until April 2010, this session was a mostly speculative round-table discussion of how it might be used in education. Some of the topics discussed were the iPad as a “Harry Potter” type book (the realization of the moving picture newspaper from the “Harry Potter” movies), as a truly interactive library of books that realizes the potential of hypermedia, as a platform for lecture podcasts, as a platform for cloud applications and as the final realization of Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad.

Other implications of the introduction of the iPad that were discussed included the increased3G/4G usage (2000-fold increase over the next couple of years?), the impact on application cost expectations (many apps are $0.99 on the Apple App Store), the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded by the platform, the possibility of Apple challenging Amazon as a book store and the possibility of their adoption of a book rental model.

It was also noted that early adopters will get bragging rights, but the device will likely need to evolve as the iPod did before it becomes a truly great platform.

All in all, this was a lively discussion, but almost entirely speculative. I enjoyed it anyway.

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More to come as the conference continues…

Here are the slides I presented with my presentation on EduPunk at the 2009 Mid-Southeastern ACM Conference in Gatlinburg on 11/13/2009.

Jim Groom coined the term “EduPunk” in a blog entry in May 2008. The concept was covered in the Chronicle of Higher education the next month. I came across the term last summer through Twitter and have come to identify with the ethos.
The Punk movement manifested itself in a variety of ways, but the essential elements seem to me to be:

• Creativity
• Individuality
• Authenticity
• Non-conformity

These properties converged to create a “Do it Yourself” attitude which didn’t look to authority for how to do things, but instead found what worked for the individual as a vehicle of their own creative expression.

Although the “official” definition of EduPunk says that followers of the movement don’t use conventional tools of information transmission, I consider this a superficial element. The deeper issues are those that the EduPunks share with Punks.

Students and teachers need outlets for their creativity. In my CSIT1110 Introduction to Computer Science class I’ve tried to find interesting and fun ways for students to express themselves. This approach follows in the footsteps of Seymour Papert who wrote the book “Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas,” who advocated games and other hands-on activities to foster interest and to make learning fun.

The CSIT1110 class creates web pages, programs robots, creates visual language programs in a 3D environment (Alice), and look at virtual worlds and games as part of their class work. Many of the assignments are open-ended so that students are “given permission” to be creative.

Too often, the educational system seems to be an attempt to crush the individuality out of students in favor of producing miniature copies of their instructors. Instructors also often ridicule and demean their students because of how they are different.

We should be trying to utilize these differences to channel energy into “productive” experience. This might be analogous to “Akido Education”. Akido is a martial art that attempts to use an attacker’s energy to the defender’s advantage. Instead of attacking students for playing video games, using cell phones and being addicted to various forms of media, we should be looking for ways to either incorporate these things or at least understand them well enough to see how they might facilitate learning.

Isn’t WikiPedia horrible? No, it isn’t. Sure, there are “bad” sources of information, but shouldn’t this just be another starting point of discussion? Another point should be the flexibility afforded by electronic media over printed material. The ability to change rapidly is a very important characteristic of electronic media.

Instead of criticizing “kids these days” or how things are so much worse than “in the old days,” instructors would seem to be better served by keeping up with what is going on in the world around them in order to be able to truly act an authority instead of just trying to pose as one

An authentic individual stands out as different. Most often they are ridiculed and misunderstood in their day, only to have their position vindicated with the test of time. In CSIT1110 we talk about great minds who have held onto their individuality in the face of adversity.

From the teaching side, there is power in being yourself (or some sincere version of yourself) with students. Many of them will respond in kind and this is an opening to learning.

Education is changing rapidly. The availability of open source software and the Web 2.0 environments that emerged as a result are just the beginning. Social media and collaborative environments are emerging that will allow distance learning to be better than face-to-face class offerings.

The day in which education is provided free to all is on the horizon. Traditional educational institutions need to be looking for different delivery and financial models if they are to survive and remain viable.

The EduPunks are at the forefront of the educational revolution. So… are you an EduPunk?

I attended the 2009 Mid-Southeastern ACM Conference on Nov 13, 2009 in Gatlinburg, TN. I’ve attended (and presented at) this conference for the last four years. I think it gets better every year. ETSU and UT-Chattanooga were well represented by students and faculty. I’ve included a summary below of the best presentations I saw (including the one I gave):

Are You an EduPunk?
David Brown, Pellissippi State Community College

Abstract
Taking inspiration from the Punk movement, EduPunks are educators rebelling against the corporate, cookie-cutter educational system in favor of new and progressive learning strategies. EduPunks seek to overturn the established order by discovering for themselves what works in the classroom. Eschewing traditional techniques, they seek inspiration from games and popular media in order to create radically new kinds of educational environments.

Summary
I showed an 8-page comic book that illustrated many of the “alternative learning strategies” that I have tried in CSIT1110. The presentation appeared to be well received.

Tech-related Coommunity Outreach – Experiences and Opportunities
Semmy Purewal, University of Tennessee – Chattanooga

Semmy presented some of the community service work that he has begun to incorporate into the CS program at UT Chattanooga. He started “Free IT Athens” as a non-profit computer recycling program utilizing CS students as volunteers to refurbish donated computers. They sold the refurbished computers to the community for $25. Outside volunteers could earn a new computer with a few hours of work. They have processed over 1000 computers. So far, this program is voluntary and not for credit. He also mentioned some similar efforts (www.freelinuxpc.org, www.hfoss.org, www.laptop.org).

I would like to invite Semmy to come to PSCC and tell us about the program he set up in Chattanooga. This is a potential interdisciplinary “Green-IT” community service project.

Visual Logic with Java
Kathy Winters, University of Tennessee – Chattanooga

Kathy is using “Visual Logic” (Course Technology software) in her introductory Java class. Visual Logic allows you to easily draw flowcharts and then “execute” them to see the output that the algorithm will produce. She uses a book that has 4 chapters of Visual Logic followed by 7 chapters of Java that utilize the same algorithms as have been flowcharted, but coded in Java.

I was highly impressed with the flowcharting tool. The only drawback I found was that Kathy said that she didn’t think that you could do functions in Visual Logic. This is a tool that we might ought to look at either for CSIT1110 or CSIT1510 or both.

Computational Science from the Undergraduate Classroom to Internships
Angela Shiflet, Wofford College
Angela described the Computational Science program at Wofford which is basically like a minor in CS, but is geared toward science students. Classes include programming, data structures, data modeling and simulation and web/database. Students learn about using computers in their discipline as in genome sequencing, climate modeling, genetic computation, oceanic modeling, heat diffusion, plant growth, spread of disease, predator/prey models, etc. The program has been very successful in helping place students after graduation. It has also brought a greater number of women into their CS classes. She reported that one-half of the Computational Science students are female.

This program made me think of the possibility of creating a Computational Science certificate at PSCC that might be attractive to science students.

Assembly on the PlayStation 3
William H. Hooper, Belmont University

William described his assembly language course that utilized a Sony Playstation 3 (PowerPC 970 processor) running Linux. I was very excited by the idea of using a PS/3 until he said that you couldn’t access the GPU from Linux (no graphics). He did show some cool examples including calling assembly routines from C and his session was packed with students.