via Curmudgeon - Responses to Intimacy at a Distance

While I'm not an advocate of abandoning the classroom for the computer screen, a thought experiment occurred to me during this presentation, which I put to the panel, and now put to you. Suppose that the status quo is learning at a distance - the teacher is at a computer with a video camera and microphone, the students all at home at their computers. The teacher conducts class remotely, the students are able to respond via chat. And suppose that we've been doing this for a long time, that we know it to be effective when done right, that some teachers are better at it than others, but that, generally, we're satisfied with this mode of delivery. Then one of our colleagues sends us an email:

"I did an interesting thing the other day. I invited all of my students to come and meet me. I rented a meeting room, and we all got together and discussed the class material. I think it went pretty well, and I had the feeling that the students thought so too. I'm not sure if it enhanced their learning experience at all, but I'm going to keep doing it on occasion."

ABCNEWS.com : Silicon Insider: Is IT Ready?

You've no doubt heard about IT, the most hysteria-provoking new product rumor since the Apple Newton.

As the story goes, genius inventor Dean Kamen - creator of the drug diffusion pump and the celebrated new iBot go-anywhere wheelchair - has invented a new product of earthshaking potential. He is not saying what it is, and he has sworn others to secrecy, but we do know the following:

It is also code-named Ginger. It is not a medical product. It comes in two models (Metro and Pro), the former likely to cost less than $2,000.

Kamen showed it Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and John Doerr. Bezos reportedly made his "loud, honking laugh" of appreciation. Jobs said it would cause people to re-architect cities and compared its importance to the PC. Doerr likened IT in magnitude to the Internet, and then invested in it...

[more]

Sounds like a Sinclair C5 to me. What does IT stand for - my guess 'Itsibitsy Tricycle' ;-)

Adam Curry was kind enough to mention this site in his link to the IT hype. Whilst visiting, I noticed that Adam had linked to a Slashdot | Who Were Your Best Teachers? article:

There are countless professors and teaching assistants who make learning computer science fun and exciting for students. Would Slashdot readers like to share a couple of great stories?

Adam went on to say that:

I think SlashDot is onto something important here. There is a growing shortage of Teachers worldwide. I believe it is because the role of educators has been de-hero-ized by the media, government and parents ourselves.

Many students in the past have commented on my performance as a teacher - via the teaching evaluation questionnaires - and I am very proud to say that some of these students even admit that I have been their best teacher. Such praise is one of the few reasons that I stay in academia. I also believe that the role of educators has been de-hero-ized by the very institutions that employ lecturers as it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify concentrating on being a good teacher as promotion, tenure, etc., pays little, if any heed, to such skills.

As a long-standing member of faculty in a Computer Science department it is a mite annoying to see our new, wet behind the ears, graduates go out and get a starting salary that is very close to, or that even matches, mine. One of these days UK universities will have to wake up to the fact that the recruit and retain good staff they will have to pay the appropriate remuneration, After all medics, vetinarians, dentists, and law lecturers are paid a discetionary higher rate. But I'll get down off my hobby horse now!

I posted the following problem for my exam-exempted students to ponder whilst those less fortunate than themselves were sitting the LLP exam yesterday afternoon. [Caveat: no warnings were reported by the particular compiler that was being used at the time this problem was first set for an exam - 1994. I believe the current Borland compiler issues three warnings but it's perfectly valid C and has no syntax errors - only semantic one(s) so the code should compile and run as is. But don't cheat and use the compiler to (help) work out the answer. Feel free to post answers here. FYI, hardly anyone that attempted this problem in the extra coursework came even close to answering this part of the question correctly. And they could have used a compiler to help them!!]

4 (a) The following C source text has been compiled without any errors or warnings being reported:

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
    unsigned char c;
    int j,n;
    for (c=getchar(),j=0,n='\n';
         c!=EOF;
         (j%5==0)?putchar(n),putchar(c):\
         putchar(c),c=getchar(),j++)
     exit (0);
}

Nevertheless, due to some simple coding errors, the program does not split the input lines on every fifth character as intended. Answer the following questions:

1. What does the program, as given, actually do?
2. What mistakes have been made by the programmer that prevent it working as intended?

(b) As well as being in error, this program is badly written and violates good programming practice. Rewrite it to make it as readable and as understandable as possible, eliminating the original mistakes in the process.

I was interested to read that Joel plumped for the same ORINOCO PC Card that I enthused about a month or so ago. Of course, the real reason to be visiting Joel's page was to read who had the worst web programmers in the world. A salutory lesson for all aspiring web programmers.

The BBC's WebWise - Guides - Publishing your pages by Giles Turnbull

Why bother with HTML coding when some websites can do it for you? WebWise's Guide to making a stress-free webpage.

[snip]

The three services we shall examine are EditThisPage (http://www.editthispage.com), Free Conversant (http://www.free-conversant.com), and WikiWeb (http://www.wikiweb.com).

Guess which came out as the most powerful of the three ;-)?:

FREE CONVERSANT

There's no doubt that Conversant is one of the most powerful systems available for managing a website, but it is complex and not recommended for absolute beginners - even an accomplished internet user should devote some time to learning the ins and outs of the system, but with that done, they will have the chance to build a very impressive website.

We've created a Conversant site here for you to have a look at: http://www.free-conversant.com/bbcwebwise/

via David [SiT] Carter-Tod - Google's University Search:

Google offers free SiteSearch (enables users to search your university website) and optional WebSearch (enables users to search the Internet) to universities and educational organizations worldwide.

UC Berkeley is one of the early adopters and as one of my heroes - David Patterson - is a Professor at UCB an obvious thing to try was: UC Berkeley - Google Search Results

Searched pages from berkeley.edu for Computer Architecture. Results 1 - 10 of about 5,260. Search took 0.11 seconds.

Prof Patterson is teaching the Spring 2001 CS 252 - Graduate Computer Architecture class. One of the reason's I really like Prof Patterson's whole approach to teaching is summed up on that page and, in particular, ;-):

Lecture notes will be available in pdf and powerpoint formats, with 6 per page for pdf for conventinent (sic) printing.. (Powerpoint is for instructors who want to give lectures themselves based on CS 252. Note that I still use a Macintosh, so they were created in Office 98 Powerpoint--98, not 97--, in case that helps Microserfs.)

It's been a while since I migrated a version -- [52.225] CAD... -- of my final year honours class Computer Architecture and Design II into the second year of the CS degree at Strathclyde. CAD II was based on the excellent Patterson and Hennessy textbook - Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach which I see is in Beta draft, 3rd edition. Must try and get hold of a copy. I still have a copy of the hardback First Edition of the book autographed by David Patterson and John Hennessy when I went to visit them in California eight or nine years ago.

The Register

...the chairman and CEO of AltaVista's parent company, CMGI, David Wetherell ... said the company would be pursuing its search engine patents and we can expect lawsuits coming this quarter.

Of course, the intended coup of the Internet search engine market comes in the form of some lovely management speak: "Even though AltaVista's doing well in the advertising space, we just think that in order to really ensure strong growth they ought to leverage their position in search licensing to a greater extent." ... "We believe that virtually everyone out there who indexes the Web is in violation of at least several of those key patents."

This certainly threatens to eclipse the furore that surrounded Amazon's 'abuse' of patents! Better start looking for prior art...

IBM and NCSA Create World's Fastest Linux Supercomputers in Academia

Armonk, NY, January 16, 2001 -- IBM and The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign today announced that NCSA will install two IBM Linux clusters, creating the world's fastest Linux supercomputer in academia. NCSA's clusters will have two teraflops of computing power and will be used by researchers to study some of the most fundamental questions of science, such as the nature of gravitational waves first predicted by Albert Einstein in his Theory of Relativity.