Using Scratch to Teach Undergraduate Students' Skills on Artificial Intelligence

This paper presents a educational workshop in Scratch that is proposed for the active participation of undergraduate students in contexts of Artificial Intelligence. The main objective of the activity is to demystify the complexity of Artificial Intelligence and its algorithms. For this purpose, students must realize simple exercises of clustering and two neural networks, in Scratch. The detailed methodology to get that is presented in the article.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, workshop presentatio

Leading Undergraduate Students to Big Data Generation

People are facing a flood of data today. Data are being collected at unprecedented scale in many areas, such as networking, image processing, virtualization, scientific computation, and algorithms. The huge data nowadays are called Big Data. Big data is an all encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process them using traditional data processing applications. In this article, the authors present a unique way which uses network simulator and tools of image processing to train students abilities to learn, analyze, manipulate, and apply Big Data. Thus they develop students handson abilities on Big Data and their critical thinking abilities. The authors used novel image based rendering algorithm with user intervention to generate realistic 3D virtual world. The learning outcomes are significant

Complete LibTech 2013 Print Program

PDF of the complete print program from the 2013 Library Technology Conferenc

Doing Good with a Slice of Pi: Ideas for Using the Raspberry Pi as a Low Cost Information Platform in Libraries

In the last decade, librarians have been under pressure to cut costs at every level. These cuts often occur in acquisitions, while other areas such as technology demand fiscal expansion just to meet user demand. In the last few years, University of Cambridge computer science researchers have developed a credit card-sized computer, affectionately known as the Raspberry Pi. Intended to serve as an educational platform for children learning Python programming, the project has far exceeded its original scope. At $35, this small computer can now serve as a creative solution in various areas of librarianship

Developing High Performance Computing Resources for Teaching Cluster and Grid Computing courses

High-Performance Computing (HPC) and the ability to process large amounts of data are of paramount importance for UK business and economy as outlined by Rt Hon David Willetts MP at the HPC and Big Data conference in February 2014. However there is a shortage of skills and available training in HPC to prepare and expand the workforce for the HPC and Big Data research and development. Currently, HPC skills are acquired mainly by students and staff taking part in HPC-related research projects, MSc courses, and at the dedicated training centres such as Edinburgh University’s EPCC. There are few UK universities teaching the HPC, Clusters and Grid Computing courses at the undergraduate level. To address the issue of skills shortages in the HPC it is essential to provide teaching and training as part of both postgraduate and undergraduate courses. The design and development of such courses is challenging since the technologies and software in the fields of large scale distributed systems such as Cluster, Cloud and Grid computing are undergoing continuous change. The students completing the HPC courses should be proficient in these evolving technologies and equipped with practical and theoretical skills for future jobs in this fast developing area. In this paper we present our experience in developing the HPC, Cluster and Grid modules including a review of existing HPC courses offered at the UK universities. The topics covered in the modules are described, as well as the coursework projects based on practical laboratory work. We conclude with an evaluation based on our experience over the last ten years in developing and delivering the HPC modules on the undergraduate courses, with suggestions for future work

Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?

Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors

Prepare for Citizen Science Challenges at CERN

Abstract: To inspire more people to contribute to science, and educate the public about science, two Citizen Science "challenges" were prepared during summer 2013: the CERN Summer Webfest 2013 and the Virtual LHC Challenge. The first part of this report summarizes how to organize a Webfest at CERN and the outcome of the CERN Summer Webfest 2013.The second part gives an introduction to the current state of the Virtual LHC Challenge: a development of the LHC@Home Test4Theory project planned to attract many unskilled volunteers. This work was supported by a grant from the EU Citizen Cyberlab project, with assistance from the Citizen Cyberscience Centre (CCC)