Bringing the LHC and ATLAS to a regional planetarium

An outreach effort has started at Michigan State University to bring particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider, and the ATLAS experiment to a general audience at the Abrams planetarium on the MSU campus. A team of undergraduate students majoring in physics, communications arts & sciences, and journalism are putting together short clips about ATLAS and the LHC to be shown at the planetarium.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, presented at the 2011 meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Societ

Integrating mobile robotics and vision with undergraduate computer science

This paper describes the integration of robotics education into an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum. The proposed approach delivers mobile robotics as well as covering the closely related field of Computer Vision, and is directly linked to the research conducted at the authors’ institution. The paper describes the most relevant details of the module content and assessment strategy, paying particular attention to the practical sessions using Rovio mobile robots. The specific choices are discussed that were made with regard to the mobile platform, software libraries and lab environment. The paper also presents a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of student results, including the correlation between student engagement and performance, and discusses the outcomes of this experience

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

Auditing the ICT experiences of teacher education undergraduates

The importance of teacher education graduates having appropriate information and communication technology OCT) for learning competencies and experiences is well documented. However, without well developed processes for auditing the ICT experiences of undergraduates it should not be assumed that teachers enter their profession with the required ICT competencies to support their students' learning. This paper reports on the first phase of a project to audit the ICT experiences of teacher education undergraduates. It finds that the individual experiences of undergraduates can vary considerably depending on their choice of majors, electives or specialist teaching areas. It further finds that high percentages of students perceive themselves to have no competency with a range of ICT applications that would support the more motivational and interesting aspects of ICT integration for student learning

Use of Instructional Technology as an Integral Part of a Non-Major Science Laboratory Course: A New Design

The use of instructional technology to learn and teach science is a natural approach for today's undergraduate. This online journal article discusses the advantages and outcomes of adding computers to a non-major laboratory to serve as the research laboratory notebook. The computers converted the course into a dynamic student- centered classroom. Cooperative teams became very active in doing inquiries, using the tools of technology to gather background information and presenting the information in a variety of forms. The article also provides student and instructor comments supporting the design of this new biology non-major laboratory course. Educational levels: Graduate or professional