One of the first lessons any successful graduate student (and that should read “undergraduate student”) learns is to introduce themselves to the reference librarian who is responsible for their favorite subject areas. They can serve as guides to the existing collection, alert you to new acquisitions, and help you to acquire books that you may be interested in reading.

Know the LOC system, know which sections interest you, and know who is responsible for maintaining those sections at your institutions. You’ll make a librarian’s day when you introduce yourself as being “particularly interested in the QAs” or any other category.

For me, I always visit these sections, at least:

• K7555 – Copyright
• LB – Theory and practice of education
• Q – Cybernetics/Information Theory
• QA – Computers/Programming Languages
• TK – Electronics/Computer Engineering

History of the LOC system: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcc.html

The categories: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/

Location: Bennington College
Term(s): Spring 2012
Class size: 4

In this course, we will apply computing methods in order to develop solutions to real world problems. We will focus on problems that require computing in order to create, collect, process, or visualize data and that offer opportunities to hone our coding and software development skills. Students are invited to bring their project ideas or existing projects in need of development into the class.

Location: Bennington College
Term(s): Spring 2012
Class size: 13

Alan Turing is a central figure in the history and theory of computing. Turing gave the first precise definition of algorithms and computability and a guideline for understanding artificial intelligence: the Turing Test. Turing played a role in the cracking of German military encryption during World War II and in the post-war development of the first digital computers. Turing lost his security clearance and was largely forgotten for the last half of the 20th century because he was homosexual. We will explore the man, his ideas, and his lasting contributions to modern computing.

Location: Bennington College
Term(s): Spring 2012
Class size: 16

What is information? How do you measure it? Is information perishable? Is it scarce? Understanding what information is and how (and whether) it can be created, shared, manipulated, or destroyed is increasingly critical in understanding science, public policy, and civic engagement. This course will explore how our understanding of information has changed over the past 100 years and how that understanding changes how we behave individually and collectively.

Location: Bennington College
Term(s): Spring 2012
Class size: 9

Most of us use free/open source software (the Web, Open Office, R, Linux) or services that rely upon FOSS (Yahoo!, Facebook, Google). In this course we will explore how these software projects are managed, the community of developers working to improve these projects, and the tools and languages they use. We will learn how to read, understand, and contribute to these projects.

My job is not to deliver information, but rather it is to design learning experiences.

- Frederick P. Brooks at SIGCSE 2012

We get to put a dent in the universe.

- Wilson Miner

Wilson Miner – When We Build from Build on Vimeo.

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

– marshall mcluhan

For any matched pair of non-trivial examples
there exists (n == 1) pattern that the creator of the examples intended to highlight
but there also exist (1 < n <= infinity) unintended patterns that students will find.

It’s difficult to live-code programming examples… the conventions we use by habit often invite students to find the unintended patterns.

As an instructor, how do I get students to see the single pattern in which I’m interested, rather than the possibly infinite patterns that exist? Or, is that even the best goal? Should I, instead, be encouraging students to look beyond the first pattern they detect in order for them to appreciate the inherent complexity of interpretation?

Classrooms are, at their best, learning communities. Unfortunately, with the rise of the PERSONAL computer (PC), computing classrooms have evolved to meet the needs of the computer, rather than the learner. In so doing, often both the needs of the computer and the learner go unmet. Consider the all too typical situation of a room that has been retrofitted to provide dozens of electrical outlets and network connections, but with no improvements in the air conditioning. It seems to have escaped the attention of the room’s designers that computers, even at idle, generate many BTUs of heat… as do students! The body heat from 15-20 students in a room is considerable.

I stress the personal aspect of personal computer here not because I think you don’t know what I mean by a PC. Rather, it’s because that individual context, the idea that the computer is meant for individual, personal use is important in a learning environment. PCs are designed with the individual in mind. Even when the idea of having multiple users was adopted in consumer PC operating systems, the idea was still that one user would be logged in at a time, working alone. In the more advanced operating systems, you can switch between the individual user contexts.

What you can’t do easily with a personal computer is collaborate, and that’s a problem for educational uses of computers both in terms of the operating system design and the design of computing classrooms.

Ideally, computing classrooms would include

• room configurations that support collaboration
• movable tables to support small groups, seminars, and lectures
• ready access to power outlets, both on the walls and in the floor
• wired network access for a portion of the users, since not all devices support wireless
• sufficient wifi coverage to support a full class, all downloading needed software at the same time, since not all devices support wired connections (e.g., iPhones, iPads, Macbook Air, other ultrabook format computers)
• a high-resolution projector, so that applications that use significant screen real estate can be projected: Photoshop, Blender, Xcode, other programming integrated development environments.
• network storage that supports collaboration (where will students and ad-hoc groups share files?)
• a storage strategy that supports collaboration (how to handle collisions among students saving?)
• Power outlets that are not sunk into tables, allow transformer bricks (e.g., the Apple iPad or MacBook’s power supply without the extension cable) to be plugged in, and are spaced far enough apart that multiple bricks can be plugged in.
• Additional power support for direct USB charging of devices.
• software that supports collaboration
• MoonEdit,
• SubEthaEdit,
• Google Docs,
• Wikis,
• GIT,
• etc.