Presentations, Humor, and Memes
I have been reflecting on the nature of technical presentations. Public speaking can be great fun. When done well, it is a form of performance art. Enjoy it, and help your listeners enjoy it also!
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How Do You Assess Computational Thinking?
There is a big buzz in the field about computational thinking just now. But what is it really? How do you assess it? I offer an initial assessment for a subset of these skills: all comments appreciated!
Finding DARPA’s 10 Red Balloons
Part 2: Launch Day. This is the story of the Georgia Tech team's experiences in the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition designed to see how online social networks could locate 10 red weather balloons moored throughout the continental US.
200 Years of Independence and Internet-Available Information
A quick summary of Web sites about the celebration of 200 years of independence in Latin America.
Too Much Programming Too Soon?
Mark Guzdial and Judy Robertson discuss the role of programming in introductory computer science.
Preparing For the DARPA Network Challenge
In late 2009 DARPA held its Network Challenge, a competition designed to see how online social networks could locate 10 red weather balloons moored throughout the continental US. This series describes one team's experiences in the competition.
Top 100 Software Tools For Learning
A brief article about a compiled list of software tools to support learning.
Mimi Ito on Amateur Media: Incremental, Experimental
When late night comedy can't retain an audience but a man lipsynching in his chair nets more than 700 million views, we know that something is up. What makes amateur media production tick, what makes it successful, and where is it going next?
CSCW Day 3: Homelessness & Technology
As I looked out the window of my plane at the sun setting on the horizon, turning the clouds a deep red, I began piecing my thoughts together for this final blog post on CSCW '10. In Time Travel is Now Possible and Investigating Old Problems in a New Light, I focused my posts on a general overview of the conference papers being presented and in this post I am focusing on just one talk (it was all I was able to attend on the final day due to a flight and some other obligations).
Thinking Globally, Thinking Locally: Infrastructures For Collaboration
What does it take for people to collaborate in spite of geographical, disciplinary and cultural differences? This article looks at the work of two researchers who are how technology can play a role in effective collaborations.
Terms of Service, Ethics and Bias
Data mining researchers, application builders, and social scientists want to collect and analyze data about your activities online. But when do we cross the line?
Imagine you’re a parent who has suffered the unthinkable: your child has died. How do you cope with such a traumatic, painful, and disorienting experience? For some parents, information technologies can play an important role in the grief and mourning process.
Investigating Old Problems in a New Light at CSCW, Day 2
This post will give a summary of one paper each from sessions on Groupware Technologies, the experimental CSCW Horizons, and Everyday Healthcare.
Clay Shirky: Doing Work, or Doing Work?
In a keynote delivered to this year's ACM conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), author and academic Clay Shirky captured the distinction between work and Work.
I will be reporting on two of the sessions I attended this afternoon. One session was on analyzing interactions, which dealt primarily with methods for measuring interactions, and the second was entitled meeting in the middle, which dealt primarily with ways of improving group dynamics and idea generation. While all of the presentations in both sessions were interesting in their own right, I have selected one
presentation
from each to give readers a taste of the innovative research being presented at CSCW.
Paucity to Plethora: Jevons Paradox
I suspect much of computing is still socially conditioned by its roots in computational paucity to recognize fully the true opportunity afforded by computational plethora. Many of us are still wed to a stimulus-response model of computing, where humans provide the stimulus and computers respond in preprogrammed ways.
The Impact of Open Source on Computing Education
Open source provides a large collection of valuable software to the world. There may be downsides to open source for computing education, especially for the goal of broadening participation in computing.
Computer Science Student Recruitment Tips
Some thoughts on effective student recruitment strategies for boosting numbers to CS degrees.
Third Workshop on Search and Social Media (SSM 2010)
Report on Third Workshop on Search and Social Media (SSM 2010).
School Pupils’ Attitudes to Programming: ‘What’s That?’
Very short article about school pupils' lack of knowledge about programming.
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