CS382:Homework Assignments

Due Monday, January 26

Read through the links under "In Silico" on the main class page. Fitz and Matt are going to demonstrate (and have instructions on the wiki!) on how to connect to either OpenSim and/or SecondLife and walk us through it.

Due Wednesday, January 21

1) Unit descriptions all posted.

2) Look-up information about one of your topics in Wikipedia, find "authoritative" sources on the net that provide background information. Organize annotated URLs, etc. on the wiki. Describe the modeling aspects of the unit on the wiki. General Ed stuff with respect to topics.

3) Think about the role(s) you are going to be comfortable in, or not.

4) Come to class prepared to do a vetting tour using the Dogma guidelines on Wednesday.

Due Friday, January 15

1) National Public Radio has been doing an irregular series on museums titled "Museums In The 21st Century" [1]. The most recent segment was "Interactive Games Make Museums A Place To Play" [2]. Some of that segment is about what museums are doing in the metaverse and with technology generally, some is more generally about what makes good game/educational tool design broadly.

One of the people interviewed is Jane McGonigal [3], she talks about guidelines that I think we could very usefully apply towards building the materials for In Silico. Listen to [2] and make notes about your thoughts WRT what she says.

The rest of the series has segments about museum finances, architecture, K-12 programs, etc.

• [1] Museum series - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98130030
  
• [2] Game segment - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99244253
  
• [3] Jane McGonigal - http://www.iftf.org/user/46

2) Descriptions of the relevant science general education requirements can be found here: http://www.earlham.edu/curriculumguide/academics/analytical.html Contrary to what I said in class I think we should consider having In Silico meet both the abstract and quantitative reasoning components of the analytical reasoning requirement. Read through this and come to class prepared to talk about these.

3) Think about the unit topics we discussed on Wednesday and identify two specific ideas for us to talk about. Write a short description for each, something along the lines of:

Protein Folding - From the PDB to an image of a simple folded protein. Uses existing models and simulation tools to take the description of a protein from the Protein Data Bank and generate a simulated protein from that. Running existing models, scientific data store, visualization. Requires a lecture on the underlying physics/chemistry/biology.

Don't be limited by the specific topics we discussed in class, now is the time to let your mind wander. Be prepared to post your two descriptions on the class wiki as soon as it's available.