Since we are now in a process of transformation and actualization of every program in our university, I have found the opportunity to change all that and I’ve been working with another professor to fight that engineer mind and transforming it to a more pedagogical point of view, so we can get a program adapted to reality and totally involved with the context of school, teaching and technology. The thing is that our University is expanded all over the country so we have to work along a really big group of teachers, so we hope to make them understand the changes we (my colleague and me) are proposing because we fell that they are still stuck in that engineered point of view, which is not bad but it doesn’t correspond with what needs to be taught in schools in computer science. I must point out that nowadays CS is not mandatory in the national curricula, but that is another conversation!!!

Right now we are teaching:
• Introduction to informatics
• Data Structures and Programming I, II and III (It’s supposed to be algorithms but we have teachers teaching C++ for example)
• Programming Languages I, II (They ended up teaching HTML)
• Databases
• Operating Systems
• Analysis and design of Systems
• Information Systems
• Methodology for teaching informatics
Those are mandatory. We have some optional like:
• Networks and telematics
• Administration of informatics facilities
• Advanced Methodology for teaching informatics

Since computer science is not mandatory in school, not all of our students can get jobs teaching in classrooms, some of them end up doing something else like working in offices or opening up their own business. I have to address that most of our students choose the computer program because they couldn’t get into the engineering faculty (most of our universities are public where they don’t pay anything so we have few new spots every year and the private ones are too expensive) or they feel that it’s a easy program because they think, they only will learn how to teach the use of computers. We do not have a strong CS or Engineering emphasis in Venezuelan schools but we do have students really interested in getting into the engineering field.

So we feel that it’s a long path to walk because it means changing the way we educate in this country. It’s not going to be any easy but we are up to the task!!

We are still working in our proposal. We hope to finish it this week and I will send it to you as soon as it is ready!!

I would be very interested in hearing more about your program– what you’re teaching now, what changes you are planning to make, and, also, what types of jobs your graduates look for. Is there a strong CS or Engineering emphasis in Venezuelan schools?

I met with some of our Computer Science faculty on Monday to discuss what courses/experiences should be included in such a degree. Once we write something up, I will share it here and email you.

http://cs.columbusstate.edu/endorsement/

It took me a couple of tries to get the turret set up just right to get the stunlock going, but I finally managed to get Namir down. The turret got fried halfway through by Namir’s grenades, but it managed to blast away for a good while with the help of my EMPs. I was determined to keep on going because it was the furthest I’d gotten so far (i.e. longest I had stayed alive), so I kept running around the corners, fired off half a clip of headshots from my 10mm with all the sweet upgrades and down he went.

Sounds like a great class, and I would absolutely enjoy discussing this sometime over happy hour.

I think I might have shared this with you once, but I think this might be one way to think about your class objectives:

http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2010/11/26/the-biology-of-sloppy-code/ (and this was thoughtful too http://software-carpentry.org/2012/06/if-you-want-to-teach-isnt-it-only-fair-to-learn-a-few-things-first/)

It sounds like you might be trying to throw your students directly into the wet lab…

For starters, I still remember my first programming class, which I thought was fabulous. It hasn’t changed /too/ much, and you can see the assignments here – http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spring12/cos126/assignments.php.

What they had us do, from the outset, was write programs that output postscript (really, just the simplest turtle graphics), and we drew pretty pictures, and then fractals. So, a bit of math, but felt more like creative drawing. And, off the bat, we were writing code which generated code, and jumping into recursion. It was really clever (though, we wasted a _forest_ of paper trying to print malformed postscript).

The next thing to comes to mind is the pystar project – http://pystar.org/ – an open source curriculum for teaching women (and their allies) to code python. Possibly a cool curriculum to latch onto, contribute back to, and interact with. Similarly, these folks might be interested in this discussion too http://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/edu-sig/

As for particular projects, yeah, I think using apis of services they use would be fabulous. Even just comparing what they can find in the interface vs the api.

This exercise seems well within reach: http://www.applefritter.com/bannedbooks

As is something like this: http://www.weknowwhatyouredoing.com/

I would have to think harder about how an exercise like this could build over time. And, to what extent you might want the different groups programs to interact with each other.

keep us posted!

I saw someone else suggested bringing down the turret, which is a genius idea, but it was still missing a piece. The turret generally won’t fire on Namir because of his constant cloaking. With the EMPs, I can disable the cloaking and stun him so the turret and detect him and blow him to bits.

I had to throw the mine in just the right location, and also I needed to get over toward the mine quickly so Namir would land on it as I’m there. For me, it took a couple extra EMP grenades in that area, but I beat him! Many thanks!

P.S. If anyone needs to find a mine template, there’s one in a locker back in the security room near the top of the elevator.