Cyber Bridge Summer 2010
Kris Stewart, Professor, Computer Science

Kris Stewart enjoys teaching courses in 3D Game Programming as well as in Computer Ethics. She would appreciate an opportunity to interact with middle and high school teachers over the summer to pursue these topics and demonstrate to a larger group of individuals how exciting this field can be. With the excitement, we also consider why we need to ensure responsible use of computers.

As a Professor of Computer Science, hired at SDSU in 1984, she has seen the field grow and change tremendously. This is a fascinating field and engaging college students is a constant challenge. Reflecting this broad field are the topics suggested.

Summary of thoughts 16july2010

09july2010: My first overview of scratch.mit.sdsu - the programming language scratch is a useful, web-based, point-and-click implemented language that provides access to a wide range of projects shared by other educators.

Wendy Kris' youth as a Marine Corps Brat.
14July2010 - shared the "InfoLab" and "Netiquette" pages, hoping this is useful for the team.
InfoLab and Netiquette

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/home.jsp [NSF and the Birth of the Internet]
Note the Number of Computers and Baud Rate

Technology Timeline for Kris.

This summer I will be working on a module for our SDSU ethics course to tie together the history of the Internet with the need for an informed citizenry in America. A recent NPR radio show informed me of the Human Kind exploration of journalism in the current Internet age. Humankind, especially the module on the module An Informed Republic.

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At SDSU, we have a course that is required of all CS majors, CS 440 Social, Legal and Ethical Issues in Computing, that the faculty see as essential for a CS major to develop a broad understanding of the role their future career using computers will have on themselves as well as others. After teaching this course to CS majors, where a similar background and attitude can be assumed, the course CS 301 Computers and Society evolved at SDSU as a General Education Upper Division Science elective. Teaching CS 301 has been an eye-opening experience since the student population itself is much broader than in CS 440 and the more general background can be useful for a muck wider population.

The textbook that has been used is Gift of Fire: Social, Legal and Ethical Issues for Computing and the Internet by Sara Baase [Pearson Pub].

Video games have seen tremendous growth in use and marketing. Students often have vast experience in these computer worlds and want to see more. As educators, we can suggest explorations that can widely their understanding of science and motivate future deeper study. A starting point to develop a comfort level in the game world might we using Whyville [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyville]. NASA's Jet Propulation Laboratory (JPL) has developed a site for virtual field trips of their Pasadena lab. [http://virtualfieldtrip.jpl.nasa.gov/smmk/top]

An online programming introduction can be pursued using MIT's scratch system. For example, Fantasy RPG v6
By the way, you have to be careful with acronyms. I was reading a textbook on the trolley [RPG Programming using XNA Game Studio 3.0] and the person next to me asked: "Are you a terrorist?". For the first time, I connected RPG = Role Playing Game with RPG = Rocket Propelled Grenade.

The Association for Computing Machinery [ACM] has formed the Computer Science Teachers Association [ www.csta.acm.org/] as The Voice for K-12 computer science education and its educators. Please let me know if you are interested in pursuing this.

Another possible 3D world to explore could be Aztlan Island in Second Life. Please view the YouTube video of President Weber cutting the ribbon opening SDSU on Second Life.

Computer Game Programming can also be taught as a software engineering exploration of an computing environment that is very familair to students. At SDSU, CS 583 3D Game Programming is an elective for CS majors. Currently, we are using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio framework in the C# language. This allows the creation of 2D scrolling or puzzle games fairly easily. With a stronger math background, more involved 3D games can be created once students are comfortable with the coordinate systems needed to specify 3D objects in the 3D world. Depending on the interest of participants we can explore exploration or deep programming using C#, using XNA Creator Club. [http://creators.xna.com/en-US/education/]

Peggy Ward            learnbydesign@gmail.com and peggy.ward@yahoo.com 
Caley O'Neil            caleyo@aol.com
Mark Jensen            markiej619@gmail.com
Esteban Navarro      enavarromoh@gmail.com

Peggy teaches Spanish for Spanish Speakers
Caley teaches public relations and English
Mark teaches chemistry
Esteban teaches newspaper (in Spanish) and computer multimedia   

Our school information is as follows:
Montgomery High School
3250 Palm Ave.
San Diego, CA  92154
619-216-1888
Principal:  Lee Romero
website:  www.suhsd.k12.ca.us/moh
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back to stewart.sdsu.edu Stewart's home page