A google article today talks about how you can do a more efficient job search by subscribing to feeds from Craigslist, for example. That way you can respond quickly to new opportunities. Sounds like a great tool for graduating students!
The article also mentions some other helpful RSS feeds, like for the weather and investments, but the job search struck me as particularly helpful.
Jerry makes a good argument about the danger of teaching programming superficially with no reference to pointers and memory. This will be the first year in which EPS II skips any coverage of pointers, in an effort to make the course easier to handle.
The trouble, I think, is that we are trying to do too much in the first programming course, not that memory should not be covered. We also need to keep in mind that students are not going to become professional programmers on the basis of this single course. This course marks the beginning of their adventure, not the end.
The originally cited article (STSC CrossTalk - Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow? - Jan 2008 ) refers to computer science education, which I think is a higher standard than the education of all engineers who use computers as one of their tools.
However, this is the first year that we are thinking of removing pointers. The hope is that we will be able to cover algorithm design and implementation more thoroughly without losing the students at that critical juncture when they have all the basic pieces. The approach may backfire, but it is certainly worth taking a look.
Apparently a new drug funded by DARPA removes the cognitive impairment effects in sleep-deprived monkeys. After being kept awake for 36 hours, the monkeys sniffed a little hormone (orexin A) and their performance on cognitive tests match well-rested monkeys. I wonder if this will turn out to be the wonder drug abused at universities. In the meantime, it will be of great benefit for all the people with sleep disorders or people who need to stay alert for long periods (esp. pilots and soldiers). I imagine that until they test this on people, it will be difficult to know if there are other side effects.
The U. of Iowa website now claims that my friend Cliff Missen is a remarkable person. An I thought he was just special (ed).
Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie has published a list of 19 overused phrases. Sweet. Apparently the top 19 is the new top 10. 19 seems a little random, but perhaps there has been a surge of clichés in the post-9/11 world. It’s a perfect storm of wordsmiths taking on the establishment. It seems like the organic thing to do would be to host an emotional webinar on the subject, so more people can add a little pop to their language by decimating their poor language use. It’s a nice way for academia to give back to the community. Back in the day, people were better at avoiding clichés. No so much anymore. What are you going to do? It is what it is.
Seriously, the problem with clichés is that they serve to terminate thought, providing a stopping point for a thread of thought that may venture too close to a cognitive dissonance. Consider, for example, the phrase “post-9/11.” Supposedly “everything” changed with 9/11. Terminating thinking at this point avoids comparisons of various alternatives, because the listener implicitly accepts that because everything changed, his or her instincts and formerly held beliefs are no longer up to the task of assessing policy or responses to events.
Powered by WordPress
