MOOCs Need More Work; So Do CS Graduates
Mark Guzdial assesses the first full year of massive open online courses, while Joel C. Adams considers the employment outlook for CS grads.
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The "Hour of Code" was a hit, with over 15 million people trying out programming.
Hour of Code: Observations from a Middle School Classroom
I volunteered at a middle school for the Hour of Code and helped students learn basic programming. Here are some observations that are relevant to CS education.
The Lure of Live Coding; The Attraction of Small Data
Mark Guzdial ponders a new set of research questions, while Valerie Barr considers the utility of one person's data.
Spanning the Chasm of the K–12 and Post-Secondary Relationship
This article describes the sometimes fraught relationship between K–12 computer science teachers and university computer science faculty. It decribes how CSTA has navigated this divide and attempted to bring hamony to this often troubled union.
From humble beginnings 26 years ago to today, the annual SC conference has shaped our community and our technologies.
Big Data Analyzed By Big Compute, Big Compute Creates Big Data
The science and engineering communities have worked together through several 1,000x leaps in computing capability, each time managing to push the boundaries of the application of these technologies to the problems faced by our society. Last night I had a clear view that the transition from pan-petaFLOPS to exascale computing is interesting because it is both accelerating a move into the big data era, and being shaped by the arrival of big data from other disciplines well outside the traditional supercomputing community. If we are thoughtful as we proceed into this new era, we have a unique opportunity to create something much more effective, relevant, and useful than we ever have before.
A Summit on Computing Education in South Carolina
A summit of legislators, business leaders, officials from the Department of Education, and teachers convenes in South Carolina to advance computing education in the state.
Building a Computationally-Literate Workforce
Students must leave their formal training ready to take up the state of the practice in fields that routinely use computational tools, and ready to advance the state of the practice in fields that have been slower to adopt. While the academic community works through internal processes to adapt to the changing needs of their students, the computational knowledge gap is filled by employees and technical conferences.
Building the HPC Community, Shaping Early Careers
The SC conference series provides a valuable opportunity each year to shape early research careers in an event where the whole community meets to exchange news, build collaborations, define research directions, and learn about technology.
For These Companies, It All Started With the Decision to Adopt
SC13 is featuring sixteen companies on the exhibit floor that have adopted HPC as part of their core business and, as a result, have transformed their ability to compete and succeed. From NASCAR to diapers, the HPC Impact Showcase is designed to provide inspiration and role models for organizations that think advanced computing is not relevant to what they do, or that it is out of their reach.
This Saturday the world's largest, and most influential, conference on high performance computing opens in Denver. Over the next week new advances in supercomputing research will be presented, new products will be announced, and important relationships will be kindled or renewed. And, yes, all of this really does matter to you: the impact of high performance computing is felt everywhere throughout our culture, in big ways and small, and impacts each of us every day.
Computing Does Not Support Its Infrastructure
All large, multinational companies that depend on their intellectual prowess are able to avoid most taxation. Two factors enable the trend: first intellectual property (IP) as product designs and software are hard to value in financial terms; second, the creators of software IP do not care about what businesses do with their products — they just as soon give them away — as long as they get paid. The infrastructure components that supported their education, the underlying research, and the communication facilities are to be supported by others. Transitioning to a fair balance requires more than patches to fix loopholes.
ACM Multimedia 2013 – Best Papers and the Revision Process
This year ACM Multimedia had a new revision process that may be of interest for other ACM conferences. Let's review it and see also the best papers selection.
Considering Privacy Issues in the Context of Google Glass
Jason Hong ponders why there has been so much negative press coverage of Google Glass with regard to privacy, considering the issue from two different perspectives.
Data Science Workflow: Overview and Challenges
I provide an overview of the data science workflow and highlight some challenges that data scientists face in their work.
ACM Multimedia 2013 – The First Day
ACM Multimedia, the foremost conference on multimedia, has started in Barcelona (Spain). Let's see what are some highlights of the first day.
ACM Multimedia 2013 – Challenges and Competitions
The program of ACM Multimedia is very diverse: apart from oral and poster presentations, panels and keynotes there are challenges and competitions. Some may really help your work.
Results From the First-Year Course MOOCs: Not There Yet
The empirical results of first-year MOOCs are in. We're not there yet in terms of retention, learning, or access.
Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Research At the Interface Between Disciplines
The importance of interdisciplinary work, particularly in applying mathematics and computer science to biology, was a topic emphasized throughout the Heidelberg Laureate Forum.
Helping Scientists, Engineers to Work Up to 100 Times Faster
Philip Guo explains how programming skills can make scientists and engineers more efficient and creative.
Trip Report on Dagstuhl Seminar on Live Coding
Live coding is programming performance with generates music for an audience, often in a collaborative setting. It's a jam session on laptops with rich research implications.
Heidelberg Laureate Forum: Meet Your Role Models
This blog posts highlights two of my favorite moments from the second day at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum. I had the pleasure of speaking with Vinton G. Cerf and Charles P. Thacker, two people I consider to be role models.
Shape the Future of Computing
ACM encourages its members to take a direct hand in shaping the future of the association. There are more ways than ever to get involved.
Get InvolvedCommunications of the ACM (CACM) is now a fully Open Access publication.
By opening CACM to the world, we hope to increase engagement among the broader computer science community and encourage non-members to discover the rich resources ACM has to offer.
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