All posts by William Doane

Computing Education, Programming

Learning to Write in English like Learning to Program

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Imagine for a moment that you were going to teach writing in standard English in the same way we tend to teach computer programming.

Alright… Let’s learn to write. Before you can write, you need to know about the fundamentals of the language we’re going to use. A language is a collection of words and rules for how you combine those words. Words can be thought of as being of different types that determine the purpose and meaning of the words. For example, two types we’ll work with are nouns and interjections. There are other types, too, but we’ll get to those later.

For now, let’s write your first sentence. A sentence is a valid sequence of words. By valid we mean that the sentence would be recognized by an expert speaker of the language as being acceptable.

So, we need an example of a noun and an interjection to get us started… One frequently used noun is the word WORLD and a common interjection is HELLO.

Continue reading Learning to Write in English like Learning to Program →

Computing Education, Programming

Media-Propelled introduction to Computational Thinking

Eric Freudenthal of the iMPaCT: a Media-Propelled introduction to Computational Thinking project spoke at SIGCSE 2010 about how to engage students who are math phobic with computation and, thereby, with math. Using Python and computation about dynamic systems, students work to understand how code == math == concepts. One issue raised was how ethical it is to mislead students initially about whether they’re learning “math”. Eric’s argument: if students know they’re learning math, they fallback on unsuccessful rote memorization techniques. If, however, they believe they are working with dynamic systems to understand how the system changes as parameters are adjusted, then students engage and experiment.

Critiques & Solutions

Exploit Parallelism

I was reading the old VerizonMath meme recently and began thinking about it in terms of a teaching moment. George Vaccaro was clearly trying very hard to teach the Verizon employees a little something about math, and they just weren’t getting it. Part of the problem is surely, as everyone points out, the lack of math common sense of the Verizon employees involved; a trait all too common in American today.

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Tips & Best Practices, Tools

Endnote: Create a key binding for linking to a PDF (OS X)

I spend a fair amount of time linking PDF documents to records in Endnote. Unfortunately, Endnote requires you to (a) drag and drop, or (b) navigate into submenus to link to a PDF.

In OS X, you can bind a keystroke to any menu item in a specific application using the System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse settings. Use this to your advantage! Endnote lacks a keystroke for “Link to PDF…”, so I created one: Command-Option-L

Now, when I highlight a record in my library and press the key combination, an “Attach…” file dialog box opens up and I select the PDF of the article, web site, etc.

Continue reading Endnote: Create a key binding for linking to a PDF (OS X) →

Evaluations of My Teaching

What Students are Saying About My Teaching (and Their Learning!)

These are comments made by students either on formal evaluations or via informal channels. I’ve tried to leave these unedited, as much as possible, although I’ve removed identifying information and possibly line endings. Otherwise, these are as I received them. I’ll continue to add new comments as they come in.
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Critiques & Solutions, Reflections

Thoughts on Being Contingent

According to a recent AAUP report, 68% of all faculty appointments in American colleges and universities are non-tenure track; over 50% are part-time, so-called contingent faculty. I am one of them and, while I love teaching and, by many accounts, am pretty darned good at it, I’m still a part-time employee, subject to chance, and that causes problems both for me and my students.

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Reflections

Wordle.net Map of My Delicious.com Bookmarks

This image represents the frequency of tags I’ve used to bookmark resources using Delicious.com, a social bookmarking service that allows you (and others) to access your bookmarks from any web-connected computer. It was created using Wordle.net, an interesting visualization tool that will let you feed it a word list, a URL, or a delicious username in order to generate a tag cloud like this. Larger words represent tags used with greater frequency. Since I started using Delicious.com to share links with my students, the map is weighted in favor of course- and programming-related terms.
Continue reading Wordle.net Map of My Delicious.com Bookmarks →

Courses Taught

KUIT476: Web Marketing & eCommerce

Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: Summer 2009, Spring 2010
Class size: ~ 15 students/term

IT476 is a course designed to encourage students to prepare a business plan for an ecommerce venture. Students also create a website to support the business. Attention is given to the legal, advertising, financial, and operational aspects of the business with an eye toward preparation of a workable business proposal.

Reading Materials

  • CIW (2009). eCommerce Strategies and Practices. Tempe, AZ.
Courses Taught

IST673: School Library Media: Technology, Theory, Application & Assessment

Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Spring 2010
Class size: ~ 15 students/term

IST673 is a capstone course in which graduate students collaborate with undergraduate students and in-service educators from local K12 school districts to design, develop, deploy, and assess Web sites developed for use in participating schools.

Reading Materials

  • DiGiano, C., Goldman, S. V., & Chorost, M. (2008). Educating Learning Technology Designers: guiding and inspiring creators of innovative educational tools. New York, NY: Routledge.
Courses Taught

IST301x: The Information Environment

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Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010
Class size: ~ 80 students/term

IST 301x is an introduction to information studies including definitions and properties of information: creation, transfer, classification, encoding, evaluation, storage, retrieval, and use. The Role of information organizations including libraries, print and electronic publishing industries, and archives is discussed.

Reading Materials

  • Lester, J., & Koehler, W. C. (2007). Fundamentals of information studies: Understanding information and its environment (2nd ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
HTML & CSS, JavaScript, Programming

iPhone Web App Development

This 4-week workshop, hosted by CreativeTechs and O’Reilly Media is an excellent introduction to how to create website-based applications for use on the iPhone. Website-based apps don’t need to go through the notorious Apple review process for applications, since they are essentially web pages built using standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tools and are accessed using Mobile Safari. Once on your app page, users can choose to add the page to their iPhone apps list as an icon, which allows the page to appear without the browser’s chrome (the standard widgets that appear in a web browser: address bar, back/forward buttons, etc.).

Led by Elisabeth Robson, coauthor of Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, these sessions have been wonderful and are well worth your time. Until 2010 February 5, the entire set of recorded sessions + sample book chapters + sample code can be purchased either from Creative Techs or O’Reilly for just 35$.

Courses Taught

KUIT255: eCommerce Development

Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: 2
Class size: ~ 5 students/term

In IT255, students prepare a business plan for an ecommerce business they wish to develop. During the class, students prepare sections of the plan including a market analysis and marketing plan, financial projections, and a comprehension operations plan. Students use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create a draft website for the business and enable payment processing using hosted shopping cart and payment processing services.

Reading Materials

  • Schneider. (2007). New Directions in eCommerce. Thompson Course Technology.
Courses Taught, HTML & CSS, JavaScript

KUIT245: Web Development

Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: 3
Class size: ~ 20 students/term

Students in IT245 create websites using standards-compliant technologies: XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Students learn about site planning, page design, site development, and workflow control. They also implement basic forms processing using hosted forms solutions.

Reading Materials

  • Adobe Systems. (2009). Adobe Dreamweaver CS4: Classroom in a book. Berkeley, CA: Adobe Press.
Courses Taught

CSI201: Introduction to Computer Science

Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Fall 2008, Spring 2009
Class size: ~ 180-220 students/term

CSI201 is an introduction to computer science for majors using Java and the media computation framework developed by Mark Guzdial and Barbara Ericson. Students learn about core topics in computer science and programming (problem solving, iteration, recursion, search, sort, decomposition, etc.) while learning to manipulate digital media files (images, sounds, and videos) using the Java programming language.

Reading Materials

  • Guzdial, M., & Ericson, B. (2007). Introduction to computing & programming with Java: a multimedia approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Courses Taught

IST361: Web Development

Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Fall 2005, Spring 2007, Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2009; Fall 2009
Class size: ~ 30 students/term plus an additional ~15 graduate student collaborators

IST 361 is capstone course applying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to the creation of websites for use by K12 students in the Albany City School District, Albany, New York. Undergraduate students from IST361 work with graduate students in school library media, K12 educators (teachers and school library media specialists), and K12 students collaborate to establish the site design, or “look & feel,” of the final site. Graduate students provide their undergraduate teammates with details of the website’s goals, as negotiated with the K12 educators and students. Undergraduate students, in turn, develop several distinct user interface designs appropriate for the grade level and subject area involved.

Reading Materials

  • Berkun, S. (2005). The Art Of Project Management: O’Reilly Media.
  • Freeman, E., & Freeman, E. (2005). Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
  • Gerantabee, F., & AGI Creative Team. (2007). Dynamic learning, Dreamweaver CS3 : with video tutorials and lesson files (1st ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
  • Lynch, P. J., & Horton, S. (2008). Web style guide: basic design principles for creating Web sites. 3rd. Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://webstyleguide.com/
Courses Taught

IST424: Hardware & Operating Systems

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Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Spring 2006, Fall 2009
Class size: ~ 35 students/term

IST424 introduces students to the fundamentals of computer hardware (transistors, integrated circuits, components, devices, interfaces), software (execution cycle, programming methodology), and operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, Linux).

Reading Materials

  • Burd, S. D. (2006). Systems Architecture (5th ed.): Course Technology.
Courses Taught, PHP

KUIT250: Enhancing Websites with PHP

Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: 1
Class size: ~ 10 students/term

Students in IT250 learn the fundamentals of programming in PHP to enhance websites. Topics covered include fundamentals of programming, processing HTML form data, database connections using MySQL, and using MySQL as a backend data store.

Reading Materials

  • Meloni, J. C. (2004). PHP 5: Fast & Easy Web Development (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology.