SIGCSE 2012: Robots, Mobile Apps, Visualization & More

Oh, wishing once again I could have been in several places at the conference at once! Perhaps someone out there can develop a Conference Clone. Saturday, although only a 3/4 length day, was as packed with events as the prior days. The torrential downpour in the morning played in my favor, as, in spite of sleep deprivation, by the time I walked the .8 mile to the convention center I was happily soaked and feeling full of life. Nature has a way of doing that.

First up were the presentations by finalists in the Undergraduate Student Research Competition. There were 5 students and all of them had done very nice work and made equally nice presentations. One of them was about "green computing" and energy consumption. The student was Stephanie Schmidt (Sonoma State University) and her research title: "Modeling the Power Consumption of Computer Systems with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs)". Another excellent presentation and body of research was presented by Elizabeth Skiba from SUNY Geneseo : "Experimentally Exploring Algorithmic Descriptions of Three-Dimensional Geometry". I had visited her poster the day before. Although I know very little about the subject matter (some serious physics here) I was able to follow her talk quite well and was not at all surprised when she subsequently won 2nd place in the competition. I believe Elizabeth is graduating soon - I hope she gets some great job offers.

Due to the lack of that Conference Clone, I was unable to attend the paper presentation "Mobile Apps for the Greater Good: A Socially Relevant Approach to Software Engineering" by Victor Pauca (Wake Forest University) and Richard Guy (University of Toronto) but I read the paper and was very excited by its contents. They write words close to my heart  about the potential for exciting more students about computing and career possibilities by presenting them with real life socially relevant projects to tackle. Strange coincidence, but the day before I left for the conference I turned in my next Inroads Magazine column (it will appear in about 3 months) which specifically targets mobile devices for innovation in the classroom. The SIGCSE paper discussed the authors' implementation of a software engineering class where students created assistive technology iOS apps for people with disabilities; student teams used the Scrum methodology in their projects for real clients. The authors bring up the challenge of intellectual property questions, which was also a hot topic at the conference (see yesterday's post about Hal Abelson's talk). Their work will be something to keep an eye on, especially if you teach and are interested in developing socially beneficial curriculum.

There was the Robot Circus which was so much fun!!! One of the little robots (shown here on the left) kept crossing over the official boundary and heading straight for my feet. Somehow, it always turned at the last moment. But then it came back. I think it liked me :)

If you were at the conference and attended Saturday lunch you heard the fascinating talk about data visualization by Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg from Google. They are interested in lay uses of visualization and visualizations as social catalysts. An interesting point they made was that the visualizations are not an end in themselves. Creating a fascinating visualization of wedding invitation data for example, is not just for observational purposes, but leads to action on the part of the wedding planners. I have virtually no formal musical training, but when they showed how their visualization tools could extract structure from musical scores I was able to immediately grasp complex differences between Led Zeppelin, Scott Joplin, Beethoven, John Coltrane and Clementine (yes, that simple little folk song!). And then there was the eye opening visualization of personal ads written by men. You would be amazed how often "I am married...but" "I am married...and" appear!

The conference is over and I am already looking forward to attending next year!

Apple Store iPod & Educational Apps Investigation

A little over a week ago I reported on my hair pulling attempt to learn about Android by a visit to a Verizon store. Shortly thereafter I visited the local Apple store to compare apples to ... err...

It took two visits to be sure that what I experienced the first time was for real. Let's put it this way: Apple wins the prize. Hands down. The first visit had a straightforward plan: go listen to one of their "workshops" on the iPod Touch and play with one to compare it to the Android devices. Look at the educational applications. It was a relatively calm weekday evening at the mall.

Over two hours later (at least) I stumbled brain dead out of the store... it wasn't just the hoards of massively friendly and knowledgeable blue shirted squadrons that politely offered to assist me, left me alone if I wanted to just play, and used technology (!) to summon expertise if they didn't know the answer to one of my questions. But the guy who had the honor of leading the workshop let me quiz him for an hour and a half about the iPod, the apple developer program, the hardware platforms, the applications, the functionality.... he looked a bit worn out by the end, but carried it off well.

It became clear that another trip was in order. So this time I hit the store on a weekend afternoon - busiest time. Clipboard, pen and water bottle in hand. Same customer service experience.  A swarm of knowledgeable blue Apple people, and in spite of having to tactfully elbow lots of kids away from me who wanted "my" iPod to play with, I managed to take 5 pages of detailed notes virtually unmolested. And then I hit the iPads for comparison.

But let's get down to the main point, before you think I've been totally dazzled by glitz and all the friendly faces. (Not that I have anything against friendly faces and fun gadgets)

Compared to the Android online app store, I found the Apple online store easy to use, and I found not only a whole section dedicated to Educational applications, but today they were highlighting Special Education applications. I pored over them. Read reviews. Compared content. Tried to find out how many were in the library, but that is the one question no one could tell me.  A lot obviously. Although the search engine doesn't support boolean operators, it does a credible job if you have some idea what you would like to find. Most of the educational apps were so cheap I found myself thinking: how does anyone make a living off of .99 cent applications? or $1.99. or $2.99.

Then I remembered the educational (and other) app developers I've chatted with in the last week or so. They don't make a living off these apps. Well, none of the ones I spoke to anyway. They create them because they enjoy the challenge, and feel it is a good thing to be helping other people at the same time. Sure, they get PR from their work, which no doubt they put to good use in some other endeavor, but that seems only fair.

Suddenly a Buzz Word hit me: digital literacy. There is lots of talk about the need to get the public more digitally literate. Well. When using an educational application (as opposed to a shoot-em up game) these kids are becoming fluent with modern technology, sophisticated technology. HA!  In the hands of pre-schoolers and elementary school children. This is putting the hardware to good use. And the surface of the possibilities here, to use cutting edge devices with creative applications, is only just being touched (oh.....that is a bad pun.....sorry).

I am reminded that it doesn't take big projects, corporations and scads of people to make a difference. Very small scale (I looked them up) app developers who sell .99 cent applications, are working at the grassroots level. Their efforts add up - all those applications and I don't have space to copy in many of the happy reviews posted by users (words like "love" and "thrilled" and "can't wait for more" abound). People want educational applications. Good ones. So as to the comment in my prior post that one researcher claimed that people don't think highly of educational applications - my anecdotal evidence is telling me that yes, they do, if there are good ones to choose from.  Kids learn some content (alphabet, foreign language, math, motor skills etc), kids start on the road to becoming digitally literate without knowing that is what they are doing. Good stuff.

I've got some school administrators and teachers lined up to talk to soon about their perspective of using iPod and iPad applications in the classroom. Can't wait.

Oh...the same guy who let me frizzle his neurons for so long on my first visit was not only in the store again today, but came up to me to say "hi" and "how are you doing" and could he help me and...well....a lot more brain cells were worn out between the two of us after that.

Android, iOS, Educational Software Investigations

Continuing my background reading about the use of mobile apps in education, today I finished a book on the development and history of children's software ("Engineering Play", author: Mizuo Ito, MIT Press, 2009).

At the same time, yesterday I visited a Verizon Corporate store to get my hands on some Android phones and a personal feel for what an app running on one of those phones might be like. What would a developer be working with from a usability point of view?

The two events (book reading and store visit) intersected in an interesting way. First of all, my visit to the Verizon store was an exercise in patiently experiencing absolutely terrible customer service - I howled about that on Facebook. Nonetheless I discovered a few interesting things. Most notably, in searching through the Android Market, I found no category for Education. Hmmmm. Access to the internet through their store phones was highly restricted, so I went home and tried again. Still nothing. The few educational apps I found were spread around here and there. And there was a note that said to see additional applications I needed to use my mobile device. Well, that wasn't exactly helpful.

Then this morning, in the Ito book, I came across a line (page 156) in which he quoted another publication "people have a low opinion of educational software".

They do?
Do they?

There is some great software out there. Interestingly enough though, I found evidence that the greatest selling "edutainment" software ever created is the Simcity line. Not originally created as educational, many educators have appropriated it for educational use. (Hence the name edutainment)

If you search online, you can find lots of cool software being developed for educational purposes.  Real cross cutting applications - math, science, art ... One of my earlier posts pointed to a company producing software for children with disabilities (DevelopEase).

In a few days I am going to an Apple store to do a similar activity as at the Verizon Store - get my hands on the iX devices and learn about their development program. I want to learn about the iOS from the Apple people. How do their devices support educational apps compared to the Android platform for example. The phones at the Verizon store struck me as not at all well set up for educational applications. Resolution was terrible even on their highest end phone. But since I can't actually use any apps without borrowing or stealing a friend's Android phone, I'm hypothesizing here. I must add though, that Google puts all their developer information online which is very nice.

I'm also going to make a point of finding out if Apple has a app category for "Education" and if not, why; and if so, what is in it. Not owning an "i" device I need to pounce on the store. It should be an interesting comparison of customer service experience too.