CS382:Homework Assignments

Schedule of Major Upcoming Assignments

1. Due Friday April 17 - Formatting focus, copy editing focus, scraping tool (toolsmiths)
2. Due Friday April 24 - Metadata focus, second lab test-drives
3. Due Friday May 1 - Reading focus, lab focus (address feedback), software stack (toolsmiths)
4. Due Exam week - Class presentation

Minor assignments TBD as we go.

Due Friday, April 10th

1. CRS and quiz question focus, lab focus (address feedback) are both due today. For the CRS and quiz questions there should be at least 3 of each with answers! For the CRS questions there should be a list of answers with one which is correct. This is worth 15 points for the primary person on the unit.
2. Many of you still haven't done the assignment due on Wednesday the 8th. Please do so before Friday or else your unit will disappear from this class and the bits recycled to feed people elsewhere.

Due Wednesday, April 8th

1. Review your primary unit to make sure you are closely following the revised unit template, particularly the General Education structure.

Due Monday, April 6th

1. Review your primary unit to make sure you are closely following the revised unit template.
2. Focus on the Metadata component of your primary unit. Add the one word summary to the General Education entries, clean-up and complete the other sub-sections, etc.

Due Friday, April 3rd

1. Address all the comments in your primary unit. Move them to the archived section when you do.
2. Complete the Lab component of the unit your secondary unit. Write-up your experiences in the new section of the template. This assignment is worth 10 points.
3. Review your unit to make sure you are closely following the revised unit template.
4. Focus on the Metadata component of your primary unit. Add the one word summary to the General Education entries, clean-up and complete the other sub-sections, etc.

Due Wednesday, April 1st

1. Read the article by Jeannette Wing titled Computational Thinking. Come to class prepared to discuss if this would be a good reading for In Silico (AOT Denning e.g.)
2. Get to work on your lab assignment. Come to class on Wednesday with questions, problems, etc.

Due Friday, March 27th

1. Third pass on units, lab and formatting focus. Make sure you carefully adopt all the new sections and structure in the template. Address all the feedback you have received via email, on the Class Notes page, and in-lined in your unit. Remember to move in-lined remarks to the Comments section rather than deleting them. This is worth 30 points for the primary person and 15 points for the secondary person.
2. (If you haven't already) Read Pilkey's editorial and two reviews of the book he and his daughter wrote, review and review. Come to class prepared to talk about how and where we might incorporate explorations of the limits of models as the basis for developing public policy into In Silico.
3. (If you haven't already) Read through the Concepts, Techniques and Tools list (beneath the unit matrix) and either edit it or come to class with errors of omission and commission.

Due Wednesday, March 25th

1. (If you haven't recently) Read the Visualization, Equation, Predator-Prey, and Chaotic units.
2. (If you haven't already) Read Pilkey's editorial and two reviews of the book he and his daughter wrote, review and review. Come to class prepared to talk about how and where we might incorporate explorations of the limits of models as the basis for developing public policy into In Silico.
3. Read through the Concepts, Techniques and Tools list (beneath the unit matrix) and either edit it or come to class with errors of omission and commission.

Due Monday, March 23rd

1. If you haven't read all the units, do that!!
2. Read Pilkey's editorial and two reviews of the book he and his daughter wrote, review and review. Come to class prepared to talk about how and where we might incorporate explorations of the limits of models as the basis for developing public policy into In Silico.

Due Friday, March 13th

1. If you haven't read all the units, do that!
2. Read the column written by Peter Denning on computation across the disciplines.
3. Read the Class Notes from the last couple of classes, there are many items to follow-up on there.

Due Wednesday, March 11th

1) Read all the units except the one you are primary on. Come to class with comments and ideas for each one. In class we'll go through each unit in turn and collect/discuss your feedback and make entries on the wiki for follow-up.

Due Friday, March 6th at 5p

1) Second draft of your units are due, at minimum these particular points should be addressed:

• Adopt the unit template including directives to complete (evaluation questions, etc.)
• Address reviewers comments (in-line, emailed, in-class and documented on wiki)
• More complete and specific generally
  • Exactly what to read and in what order to read it in
  • Lab details
  • General Education analysis

This assignment is worth 30 points for the primary person on a unit and 15 for the secondary person on that unit. The unit will be graded as a whole and then points deducted proportionally. Each person should send a brief self evaluation to charliep about their contributions to each of the units they worked on before class on Friday.

Due Monday, March 2nd

1) Vlado and the Reviewers with special guest Matt should evaluate Nate's introductory materials (found under General Resources) and come to class with a what's good/not good report.

This assignment is worth 5 points (for each of the Reviewers and Matt)

2) Follow-up on the items we discussed in class which pertain to your units.

These things become valuable when the next draft of your units is due on March 6th.

Due Friday, February 27th

1) Include and complete the template for General Education requirements as we discussed in class for each of your units. The template can be found [here]

This assignment is worth 5 points.

2) Vlado and the Reviewers with special guest Matt should evaluate Nate's introductory materials (found under General Resources) and come to class with a what's good/not good report.

This assignment is worth 5 points (for each of the Reviewers and Matt)

3) Follow-up on the items we discussed in class which pertain to your units.

These things become valuable when the next draft of your units is due on March 6th.

Due Wednesday, February 25th

1) Include and complete the template for General Education requirements as we discussed in class for each of your units. The template can be found [here]

This assignment is worth 5 points.

2) Vlado and the Reviewers with special guest Matt should evaluate Nate's introductory materials (found under General Resources) and come to class with a what's good/not good report.

This assignment is worth 5 points (for each of the Reviewers and Matt)

3) Follow-up on the items we discussed in class which pertain to your units:

• Nate - follow-up with Josh McCoy WRT support for human behavior being a natural phenomena
• Matt and Sam - disease/virus spread for systems dynamics
• Sam - self symmetric systems, something ala Berkeley's Seven Dwarfs for modeling to tie the units together at the end (tell them what we're going to do, do it, tell them what we did)
• Mikio - software to simulate relatively simple systems/equations that exhibit chaotic behavior, Function Flyer and Data Flyer from the Shodor Foundation

These things become valuable when the next draft of your units is due on March 6th.

4) The Reviewers and Charlie will have the first review of your units ready for you to review.

This assignment is worth 25 points for the reviewers.

Due Monday, February 23rd

Re-read all the material published as part of the Scientific Inquiry general education requirement in Earlham's Curriculum Guide. On the wiki for your unit(s) develop a section that has an item-by-item analysis of how that unit does or does not support that item.

This assignment is worth 5 points.

Due Wednesday, February 18th

Full draft of your unit(s) documented in the wiki. Topics to cover include:

• Background reading, one or more pointers/documents and a brief synopsis of what's covered in them
• Lecture notes - outline form
• Classroom response questions - at least three
• Lab activity - materials, process and software
• Scheduling - early, late, dependencies on other units, length of unit

Things to consider and document as you work on your unit:

• How does it incorporate inquiry based learning principles?
• How does it use the notion of scaffolded learning? The magic number is 3.
• Which of the topics, techniques, themes, etc. does it cover from the [Topic Matrix] page?

Be specific about the title, version and source of all the software packages to be used.

This assignment is worth 30 points.

Due Wednesday, February 11th

1) Come to class with questions about the assignment due on the 18th.

2) If you aren't already in SL and the local OpenSim metaverses get there and offer friendship to me.

3) Clean-up and organize your unit(s), move them to a separate page(s), clean-up the cruft on the main page.

4) Address to do items in your unit (Nate - modeling intro, etc.)

Due Friday, February 6th

1) Read this article about the use of classroom response systems: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080717092033.htm There are also a couple of interesting pieces under the "Related Stories" on that page.

2) Address any to do items for your unit.

3) Come with questions related to what is due on the 18th (see above).

4) Send email to Charlie with strong likes and dis-likes WRT units.

Due Friday, January 30

People who've gotten advice (have a "To Do" section on their unit page) should move forward with that and be ready to give a five minute talk again on Friday on your progress. People who haven't yet re-organized and extended their units should do so.

• Updated unit description/follow-up on "To Do" items - 6 points
• New page/organize/background material/software/course module - 3 points

If you haven't gotten "in world", make sure you do that.

• Download/install/connect/friend request - 1.5 points

Charlie is going to start moving forward with the Fire unit.

Due Wednesday, January 28

Everyone should download and install a Second Life compatible viewer (either the SL client or Hippo). Using Fitz/Matt's instructions connect to either SL (requires creating a U/P if you don't have one already) or connect to the local OpenSimulator based region, contact Fitz for a U/P to that realm. In SL offer a friend request to Charliep Hammerer, in our local region you can offer a friend request to charlie peck.

• Download/install/connect/friend request - 3 points

Everyone should cleanup and organize your units based on the patterns left by Charlie and Nate. Use a separate page for each topic and carefully note the syntax for the new page names. If you think one of your ideas is better for a different class, context, etc. move it to the Archive page. For each of your unit ideas find a course module/software/model that directly supports what you envision. Annotate your entries with links to the background reading material, links to potential software/course modules, etc. Come to class prepared to deliver a 5 minute synopsis of what you think the unit can cover, what the big issues are, and how you would suggest proceeding from here.

• New page/organize/background material/software/course module - 6 points
• 5 minute class presentation - 6 points

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. This implies a local OpenSimulator island/region and a viewer such as Hippo or the Second Life client.

People unfamiliar with the idea of metaverses, read the Wikipedia article on Snowcrash to get an idea of the culture surrounding metaverses.

Nate is organizing articles about modeling - reading for the very beginning of the course. What is modeling, what is simulation, how do I make a model of the world?

Everyone needs to go out and find an example/software/model directly supporting their (primary) idea for a course unit. Put a short description of what you find and the URL(s) in your unit's section of the draft unit descriptions.

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.