Daniel W. Lewis

A pre-college professional development program

In this paper, we describe the results of a four-year collaborative project conducted among six higher education institutions and their partner pre-college school systems across the US. The primary goal of the project was to offer professional development to middle and high school teachers to enable those teachers to create modules and courses to excite their students about computing. The project used Alice, a software program that utilizes 3-D visualization methods, as a medium to create a high-level of interest in computer graphics, animation, and storytelling among middle and high school students, to build understanding of object-based programming. More than 100 middle and high school teachers participated in the project, with approximately 80% of those reporting that they had used what they learned during summer workshops in their classrooms during the subsequent years.

General purpose emulation using the Hewlett-Packard 2100 minicomputer

A taxanomy of methods for the implementation of general-purpose emulation projects on the Hewlett-Packard 2100 minicomputer is presented. The HP2100 is intended to be microprogrammed for instruction set extensions rather than general emulation. Problems encountered and solutions found through experience are discussed.

A Review of Approaches to Teaching Fortran

Fortran continues to be taught as a first programming language in many engineering curriculums. Two teaching approaches are predominant: the conventional approach and the preprocessor approach. The latter introduces the concepts of structured programming by using an augmented version of Fortran which is translated into standard Fortran IV by a special preprocessor program. A third approach has been successfully used at the University of Santa Clara. It emphasizes the inherent block structure of the subprogram facility of standard Fortran as the key to top-down program implementation.

ClickHealth, an App to Provide Info on Healthcare to the Homeless

Our Android application, ClickHealth, helps the homeless locate the nearest health care facilities to help treat their health needs. There were two stages to developing the app: researching/planning and developing. Our app has numerous features including a Google Maps view, markers which show the closest hospitals and drugstores, info pages about hospitals, and a favorites tab. ClickHealth provides all important information about each hospital in a convenient fashion, and without using too much data. ClickHealth will help reduce the number of homeless who are in need of health care because of the way it guides users to facilities that accept walk-in patients and allow appointments to be made over the phone.

Housing4All, Helping the Housing Process in Silicon Valley

Homelessness is a large problem in the United States. One of the best solutions for this large population of unsheltered individuals lies in affordable housing, as it allows for individuals to gain substantial footing on a life free from poverty in a safe environment. However, affordable housing complexes are not only very scarce, but also the organizations that own them do not communicate frequently. Because of this, application windows are scattered and the housing applications are extremely fragmented, with each application containing different questions. Our team has designed a mobile solution in collaboration with Catholic Charities to simplify the process of finding and applying to affordable housing in Santa Clara County. The Android application allows users to find affordable housing and apply to any number of housing complexes with one unified application that combines questions from individual applications.

Three heuristics for improving centralized routing in large long-haul computer communication networks

Several algorithms have proven to be useful in computing the shortest path between two nodes in a network. Their complexity depends on the problem definition and size of the network measured by the total number of nodes N. In these algorithms, finding all the shortest paths from a fixed node is a computation of complexity O(N x N). These algorithms have been used successfully in long-haul networks for many years. Recent growth of such networks to large numbers of nodes (e.g., N > 500) demands a more efficient approach. This paper develops three heuristics based on measured topological characteristics of computer communication networks and applies them in the construction of faster algorithms. Determination of the shortest path between two random nodes is then shown to require 50 to 60% less computation.

A hierarchical microprocessor laboratory facility

The microprocessor course offered by the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the University of Santa Clara is a hardware/applications oriented course. Hardware interfacing as well as software is emphasized with laboratory equipment designed to facilitate hands-on hardware experience in a real-time environment. The needs of a real-time laboratory render the use of simulators and other non-real-time debugging tools inappropriate. Students should have individual hardware access as provided by single-board computers, and real-time analyzers or in-circuit emulators. Unfortunately, although such facilities are excellent for hardware development, their utility for software development is very restrictive. A hierarchical organization that provides software (top level) and hardware (bottom level) facilities will be described.

Enhancement of interactive computer systems by distributed intelligence

Distributed processing of text editing and syntax checking is proposed as an economical means of enhancing the performance of a time-shared computer system in an educational environment. Commercially available microcomputer systems are inserted between the host processor and its terminals without modifications to host hardware or software. The limitations characteristic of microcomputer systems are considered relative to the total system performance, and an experimental implementation for performance measurement and prediction is described.