WAIS seminar: Computer Science, the Revolution in Schools

Tuesday 22nd April 2014 Speaker(s): Sue Sentance Organiser: Leslie Carr Time: 22/04/2014 15:00-16:00 Location: B32/3077 File size: 698 Mb Abstract Until recently, "computing" education in English schools mainly focused on developing general Digital Literacy and Microsoft Office skills. As of this September, a new curriculum comes into effect that provides a strong emphasis on computation and programming. This change has generated some controversy in the news media (4-year-olds being forced to learn coding! boss of the government’s coding education initiative cannot code shock horror!!!!) and also some concern in the teaching profession (how can we possibly teach programming when none of the teachers know how to program)? Dr Sue Sentance will explain the work of Computing At School, a part of the BCS Academy, in galvanising universities to help teachers learn programming and other computing skills. Come along and find out about the new English Computing Revolution - How will your children and your schools be affected? - How will our University intake change? How will our degrees have to change? - What is happening to the national perception of Computer Science?

Nano Electronics and Computer Science Research Group

This is the website for the Nano Research group based at the University of Southampton ECS department, and details current research topics and the people connected with these. It shows some of the current research topics undertaken at the center, and gives an outline of what can be done for post graduate courses.

Computer Science? WTF?

What is Computer Science about?

Sample student reflective writing (Computer Science)

4 examples of student reflections

How Minecraft Affects How Young People Learn About Computer Science

Abstract: As one of the newest art forms available to young people, gaming has become an increasing influence on young people’s education, even if not used in a classroom environment. This talk aims to explore examples of how video games have changed how young people understand and learn about certain subjects, with particular focus on how the indie title Minecraft allows them to learn about the world of Computer Science and how groups are looking to forward the cause of education though games.

COMP1004 Programming Principles

These are the resources used for the Computer Science course Programming Principles, designed to teach students the fundamentals of computer programming and object orientation via learning the Java language. We also touch on some software engineering basics, such as patterns, software design and testing. The course assumes no previous knowledge of programming, but there is a fairly steep learning curve, and students are encouraged to practice, practice, practice!

TU Graz: Course: 707.000 Web Science and Web Technology: Lecture 1

In this class, we will discuss the course organization and provide a basic motivation for and introduction to the course. Readings: Web science: a provocative invitation to computer science, B. Shneiderman, Communications of the ACM 50 25--27 (2007) [Web link] Readings: Chapter 1 & 2, A Framework for Web Science, T. Berners-Lee and W. Hall and J. A. Hendler and K. O'Hara and N. Shadbolt and D. J. Weitzner Foundations and Trends® in Web Science 1 (2006) [Web link] Originally from: http://kmi.tugraz.at/staff/markus/courses/SS2008/707.000_web-science/

INFO2009 2012-13 Resource Group 15 - Web Science

Web Science - Group 15 created an interactive infographic which informs prospective applicants about the new Web Science undergraduate degrees offered at the University of Southampton, starting in October 2013. Web Science as a new and exciting field of research is also briefly outlined, supported by two video interviews with Dr Les Car, a web scientist.

Bias in the Social Web

Abstract A frequent assumption in Social Media is that its open nature leads to a representative view of the world. In this talk we want to consider bias occurring in the Social Web. We will consider a case study of liquid feedback, a direct democracy platform of the German pirate party as well as models of (non-)discriminating systems. As a conclusion of this talk we stipulate the need of Social Media systems to bias their working according to social norms and to publish the bias they introduce. Speaker Biography: Prof Steffen Staab Steffen studied in Erlangen (Germany), Philadelphia (USA) and Freiburg (Germany) computer science and computational linguistics. Afterwards he worked as researcher at Uni. Stuttgart/Fraunhofer and Univ. Karlsruhe, before he became professor in Koblenz (Germany). Since March 2015 he also holds a chair for Web and Computer Science at Univ. of Southampton sharing his time between here and Koblenz. In his research career he has managed to avoid almost all good advice that he now gives to his team members. Such advise includes focusing on research (vs. company) or concentrating on only one or two research areas (vs. considering ontologies, semantic web, social web, data engineering, text mining, peer-to-peer, multimedia, HCI, services, software modelling and programming and some more). Though, actually, improving how we understand and use text and data is a good common denominator for a lot of Steffen's professional activities.

Data Science, Microsoft and You

In this session we'll explore how Microsoft uses data science and machine learning across it's entire business, from Windows and Office, to Skype and XBox. We'll look at how companies across the world use Microsoft technology for empowering their businesses in many different industries. And we'll look at data science technologies you can use yourselves, such as Azure Machine Learning and Power BI. Finally we'll discuss job opportunities for data scientists and tips on how you can be successful!