CS 110 Introduction to Computer Science CS 110

CS 110: Introduction to Computer Science CS 110: Welcome to Lecture 1 Today’s Topics • Course Syllabus • Blackboard • Technology Usability • Personal Portals • Information Search and Web 2. 0 • Bookmarking and Notebooks • Social Networking Prepared by Fred Annexstein University of Cincinnati CC Some rights reserved. 2007 1

CS 110: Introduction to Computer Science Contact Information Professor Fred Annexstein Email: fred. annexstein@uc. edu Office Hours: MW 9 -11 and by appointment Rhodes 889 Tel: 556 -1807 2

CS 110: Introduction to Computer Science Syllabus Motivation and Objectives: This class is designed as an introduction to the concepts and practice of Computer Science. Students will leave the class with a better understanding of the nature of computers and computer programming, and improved skills in numerical literacy and communication. Students will be better prepared to model and solve real-world problems using these machines. Grading Scheme: Based on two lecture exams and approximately 15 laboratory modules. Your final grade will be a weighted average for these two aspects - Laboratory modules 70% and Lecture Exams 30%. Late labs or makeup exams are not allowed unless pre-arranged with the instructor. 3

CS 110: Introduction to Computer Science Tentative Topic Outline Week 1: Intro to Technologies - Build Personalized Portal Week 2: Apportionment Problems – Using Excel to Compute Fairness Week 3: Numeracy, Scalability and Back-of- Envelope – Napoleon Goes to Egypt Week 4: Simulations – Sea Levels Are Rising Week 5: Ecomonics and Value of Money. Compound Interest 4

CS 110: Introduction to Computer Science Topic Outline Week 5: Scientific Computing in Physics Popcorn simulation Week 6: Probability Paradoxes Week 7: Bio. Computing – Growth of Bacteria and Administration of Medicine Week 8: P 2 P Piracy or Sharing? Privacy, Cryptopgraphy and Spam Filters Week 9: Graphics and Computer Games 3 D rendering, programming Week 10: Systems and Collaborative Filtering 5

Fire up Blackboard -> Communication -> Collaboration -> Join Office Hours Chat -> Introduce Yourself 6

The Next Step - What is Web 2. 0? • Web 2. 0 is a buzzword meant to capture the way the web works today. Web 2. 0 refers to new websites and tools that are more dynamic, user-driven, and interlinked in interesting ways. Associated buzzwords are social networking, tags, mashups, RSS, XML, wikis, podcasts, blogs, trackbacks, pingbacks, and Ajax. • Google IG (personal Google portal) • Netvibes (personalized portal) • Flickr (photo sharing) • Facebook/My. Space (social networking) • Diigo (social bookmarking) • Wikipedia (Online Encyclopedia - anybody edits) 7

How can Web 2. 0 help you be a better student? Those who have spent hours on Facebook may find this hard to believe, but when used in certain ways, Web 2. 0 can actually help you: • be more productive - find higher quality and more relevant information • stay in touch with the most cutting edge research in any field • collaborate more effectively with others • create networks that may help you get a good job or get into graduate school 8

Seven Steps on a Path to a better Web Experience 1. Switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. – Firefox is available here and can be downloaded for free. It offers several advantages that will help you be more productive on the web. 2. Personalize Firefox with useful add-ons. – The advantage of Firefox is in its add-on capabilities. They are usually added by a simple click of the mouse. – There are several search add-ons that are essential for improving your ability to find high quality information: • Citeseer Plugin - search over most of the relevant Computer Science research proceedings! • World. Cat Search Plugin - search the world’s libraries • UC Libraries Search Plugin- search our excellent local resource 9

Start Right Now: Create Your Launching Pad into Cyberspace 3. Set up Netvibes or Google IG. – Netvibes and IG are examples of new personalized portal services. Here is an image of my own IG portal. 10

RSS Feeds 4. Add RSS Information Feeds to your portal – Some boxes in IG are small applications, like a notepad, calendar, and “to do” list. – However, most of the boxes are bringing RSS feeds to my homepage. An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a way for news organizations, academic journals, book publishers, and virtually anybody who distributes information to distribute that information without any markup or formatting, so that your own browser or website can format it and make it look how you like it on your own page. • Now add any RSS feed to your IG or Netvibes page. – Use feeds from your favorite sites, and thus viewable on one single page. • Suggestion: there are several very good Computer Science and Technolgy RSS feeds which you can add to your site. Slashdot: http: //rss. slashdot. org/Slashdot/slashdot IEEE Computer Society: http: //bell. computer. org/rss/index. jsp 11

One Page is Never Enough: Setting up multiple homepages 5. Use Bookmarks in conjunction with Firefox tabs • Google Notebooks is an excellent add-on tool to use while surfing save bookmarks or clip parts of pages as you go • In Firefox you can exploit tabbed browsing to keep several pages open at once. Use bookmarks opened in tabbed browsing allows you to set multiple pages as your starting points. The following sites are good starting points, they help me while I am doing research: • IGoogle Netvibes Univ-Cincinnati Blackboard • UC Libraries Google-Book-Search • ACM Digital Library Citeseer Wikipedia Facebook 6. Social Bookmarking is a new concept that enables you to collaborate and see what other sites are popular: see diigo, del. icio. us, Cite. ULike… The main purpose of these services is: * share your bookmarks with others * see what other people have bookmarked who have similar interests as you 12

Tired of Clicking: Let Information Rain on You 7. Create news alerts on topics that interest you. • Use Google News Alerts service brings news that interests you directly to your inbox as it happens. Just type in a keyword (such as “computer science” and/or “software”) and any news item that contains that word will come to your inbox as soon as it hits the news! One or two last points…. . Don’t use regular Google as your primary search method for research papers. If you want high quality resources you need to find those that have gone through a rigorous review before being published. Anybody can publish a webpage. Realize that this is just the beginning. Check out the class weblog http: //intro 2 cs. blogspot. com to see other sights. Please add your comments and share how these sights can help you do better research and be more productive on the web. "A fool learns from his experience. A wise person learns from the experience of others. " (Otto von Bismarck, German Chancellor, 1815 - 1898) 13