Daniel D. Garcia

Kinesthetic learning in the classroom

We present a tutorial (based on [1]) focusing on kinesthetic learning activities, i.e., physically engaging classroom exercises. These might, for example, involve throwing a frisbee around the classroom to represent transfer of control in a procedure call, or simulating polygon scan conversion with rope for edges and students for pixels. The session begins with a brief kinesthetic learning activity to motivate the value of these activities. We follow with a variety of examples, and discuss how to use these successfully in the classroom. The audience then divides into facilitated groups to design their own activities. Finally, we all mingle to share and discuss the results. These results are posted on a public web forum---the KLA wiki [2]---for continued discussion and generation of new ideas.

Gaussian power with cylinder vector field representation for corneal topography maps.

The corneal maps displayed on commercially available corneal topography instruments are really one-dimensional, defining quantities only along a meridian, and ignoring shape information along any other direction. Both axial and instantaneous power have the drawbacks that there is a singularity at the center data point on the videokeratograph axis, and the computed powers and appearance of the corneal map change depending on the videokeratograph axis or on the location of asymmetries. We propose a new representation for corneal topography maps, Gaussian power with cylinder vector field, that has no singularity, and faithfully produces power values and corneal map patterns that are independent of videokeratograph axis or location of asymmetries.

Social navigation for educational digital libraries

Abstract An educational digital library may store a wealth of diverse educational resources targeting different audiences from young schoolchildren to graduate students to school and college teachers. With the growth of the volume and the diversity of the library, it becomes increasingly difficult for the users to find resources, which are relevant to their age, educational needs, and personal interests. Social navigation techniques could provide valuable help in this context guiding users to the most useful information. Social navigation works by processing traces of past user behavior and using the assembled “collective wisdom” to guide future users. The paper reports our work on the design of social navigation infrastructure for Ensemble, a major educational digital library. We present the organization of both sides of the social navigation process: how social wisdom is collected and how it can be used to guide portal users to valuable resources. We also report the results of our most recent evaluation of the social navigation infrastructure.

The beauty and joy of computing

We last presented our Beauty and Joy of Computing (BJC) course in a special issue of ACM Inroads in June 2012 [13]. At the time, we taught BJC in two of the first five CS Principles national pilots at UC Berkeley and University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Many things have changed since those early days, with more than two hundred high school teachers offered BJC professional development (PD) through four NSF grants, a transition to our blocks-based online software platform Snap! (based on Scratch) with cloud support [18], and a partnership with professional high school curriculum developers at EDC (Education Development Center), who are working with us to further refine our curriculum. Through partnerships with EDC, the New York City Department of Education, and CSNYC, our NSF-funded BJC4NYC project will bring BJC to 100 high school teachers in New York City, the largest and one of the most diverse school districts in the country. Finally, after two years of preparation, we launched our Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) BJCx via edX on Labor Day 2015 [4]. We are simultaneously offering it as an edX Small Private Online Course (SPOC), allowing high school teachers to use it as an e-book, complete with autograding and a class dashboard. More than sixteen thousand learners from all over the world signed up! In this article, we share our philosophy, an update on our course design principles, a general flow through our curriculum, the impact BJC has had, and conclude with lessons learned.

The first five computer science principles pilots: summary and comparisons

Attracting Diverse Students As indicated in other articles in this issue, a major goal of the CS Principles effort was to attract a population of students that includes many who are not predisposed to study computing. The field not only battles negative stereotypes, but its labor pool must be enlarged both to meet expected demand, but also to introduce more diverse opinions, especially considering the importance of social media. The results are very encouraging.

Ensemble PDP-8: eight principles for distributed portals

Ensemble, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Pathways project for Computing, builds upon a diverse group of prior NSDL, DL-I, and other projects. Ensemble has shaped its activities according to principles related to design, development, implementation, and operation of distributed portals. Here we articulate 8 key principles for distributed portals (PDPs). While our focus is on education and pedagogy, we expect that our experiences will generalize to other digital library application domains. These principles inform, facilitate, and enhance the Ensemble R&D and production activities. They allow us to provide a broad range of services, from personalization to coordination across communities. The eight PDPs can be briefly summarized as: (1) Articulation across communities using ontologies. (2) Browsing tailored to collections. (3) Integration across interfaces and virtual environments. (4) Metadata interoperability and integration. (5) Social graph construction using logging and metrics. (6) Superimposed information and annotation integrated across distributed systems. (7) Streamlined user access with IDs. (8) Web 2.0 multiple social network system interconnection.

Line of Sight and Alternative Representations of Aberrations of the Eye

Several methods for representing pupil plane aberrations based on wavefront height, slope, and curvature are discussed. The choice of reference axis and reference surface is shown to strongly affect the appearance of the representation. Special attention will be paid to the use of the line of sight (the line from the fixation point to the center of the pupil) as the reference axis. We show that the line of sight is ambiguous and does not determine the amount of prism in the wavefront.

Berkeley Foundation for Opportunities in Information Technology: A Decade of Broadening Participation

The Berkeley Foundation for Opportunities in Information Technology is a decade-old endeavor to expose pre-college young women and underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities to the fields of computer science and engineering, and prepare them for rigorous, university-level study. We have served more than 150 students, and graduated more than 65 seniors who have gone on to attend some of the top institutions in the country. Some of the lessons we have learned include the importance of sustained funding to support a continuing year-round program, world-class leaders and resources, and family and alumni involvement. In this article, we share the inner workings of our program, from its foundation during the dot-com heyday through today, in hopes that our best practices can be useful to others working toward the goal of broadening participation.

CS principles professional development: only 9,500 to go!

Our grand challenge is to scale high-quality computer science curriculum and instruction to reach all high school students. CS10K -- an NSF and ACM-sponsored project -- is working to do just that by supporting curriculum development, computer education research and professional development through the Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21) program at NSF. Professional Development (PD) is a key piece of the project, as we need to train 10,000 teachers to teach rigorous computing courses in 10,000 high schools by 2016 -- the school year that a new Advanced Placement Course will be rolled out. This panel will provide an overview of the PD landscape and then each panelist will discuss the unique aspects of their PD project for high school teachers.

Enhancing digital libraries with social navigation: the case of ensemble

A traditional library is a social place, however the social nature of the library is typically lost when the library goes digital. This paper argues social navigation, an important group of social information access techniques, could be used to replicate some social features of traditional libraries and to enhance the user experience. Using the case of Ensemble, a major educational digital library, the paper describes how social navigation could be used to extend digital library portals, how social wisdom can be collected, and how it can be used to guide portal users to valuable resources.