CS382:Homework Assignments

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.

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

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.