One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child released an inexpensive laptop, now tablet.

Read BOTH:

• Given Tablets but No Teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves
•  The Failure of One Laptop Per Child  

Note the publication date for each article.


OPTIONAL Background: A story about the original laptop, before its release in 2007

 Discussion about the pros and cons of the technology, the challenges, and solutions.

Facebook's Algorithms

The last article I had was from 2007.  This article is from Nov 2012:
News Feed, EdgeRank and page posts: what’s really going on with Facebook?

To discuss with class

• How are some of the algorithms implemented?
• What are some of the non-technical challenges that Facebook faces?  How do they attempt to balance the solutions to these challenges?

Some articles about electronic voting

• Election hacked, drunken robot elected to school board Experts warn e-voting systems decades away from security

•  Could e-voting machines in Election 2012 be hacked? Yes.

Some Articles about the Olympics

• Tim Berners-Lee in the opening ceremony -- not enough people know who he is
• Big Data and the 2012 Olympics
• Simulations of crowds at the Olympics - discusses some of the modeling considerations
• Cloud computing and the Olympics - not quite what I was looking for--it wasn't ready yet
• How Technology Continues to Change the Olympics

I'm having the students read the first and last articles.

Wikipedia: A Clue for Vice-President Nominations

Looking to Wikipedia for Clues of Romney VP Pick
Wikipedia may provide clues to Romney's VP Selection - more about what happened in 2008

There's not a lot in these articles, but it is interesting.  I'm going to use these articles in conjunction with the discussion of Google's search results for Santorum.

Algorithms: The Ever-Growing, All-Knowing Way of the Future

Algorithms: The Ever-Growing, All-Knowing Way Of The Future, posted May 14, 2012.

Why I like this article:

• Good introductory article about a variety of uses of algorithms at a high level
• Good for one of the first (if not *the* first) week of class.

Discussion topics:

• How can algorithms be used for good?
• How can algorithms be used for evil?

Computer Science's Sputnik Moment

From the New York Times: Computer Science's Sputnik Moment? I had the students read the overview and three opinions and say which they agreed with and which they didn't. The opinions give students a variety of perspectives and things to think about. I was a little surprised by how interesting the students found this, since the articles were "just" opinions.

Google's n-grams

Digitized book project unveils a quantitative "cultural genome"

While I don't usually like to use press releases, this one is better than the other articles I found about the project.

Why I like this article:

• a concrete article of something a CS1 student could write (processing text file, counting the number of words, using lists/dictionaries) on a small scale
• a surprising application of computer science
• discussion question: does adding computing take the "art" out of humanities?

Updated Resources

We added a resources page, which has links to a preprint of the paper, our SIGCSE 2012 presentation slides, and our newly created wiki. 

Cyborg Lawyer Demands Software Source

• Cyborg lawyer demands software source 
• Life-giving software should be open: GNOME Foundation chief

SOPA and PIPA

Forbes: What are SOPA and PIPA and Why All the Fuss?