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Computer Club members attend SIGCSE Symposium

William Penn students attended the SIGCSE Seminar in Portland, Oregon, during the spring semester. Jeremy Holdefer, on the left, speaks with other members of the computer club, from back to front on the right: David Milder, Darin Hite, Roxanne Popelka and Penn Professor Mike Doolan, while the group waits for the next session at the Oregon Convention Center.

      Members of William Penn University’s computer club had the opportunity to visit Portland, Oregon, during the spring semester to attend the SIGCSE (Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education) Symposium.
      Students attending included: Phillip Swift, Casey Popelka, Roxanne Popelka, Bram Vermeulen and Jason Van Wyk, all of Oskaloosa; Nathan Smith of Pella; Darin Hite and Landon Wubbels of New Sharon; Timathy Newendorp of Leighton; David Milder of Columbus Junction; Jeremy Holdefer of Chariton; and Armando Irias of Baytown, Texas.
Penn Professors Jon Stevens, Judy Williams and Mike Doolan accompanied the students on the trip.
      On the first day, students and instructors heard from keynote speakers Dennis Cosgrove, project scientist; and Wanda Dann, the director of the Alice Project.
      Cosgrove and Dann spoke about a computer program called Alice. According to Alice.org, Alice is a “3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation…and is a teaching tool for introduction to computing,” especially at the middle school level. Many of the members of the computer club found Alice to be very interesting.
      “To me the most interesting thing on the trip was learning about the Alice program and how it is suited to teach kids about Java Programming,” Vermeulen said.
Students and instructors attended several other seminars as well.
      “The most fascinating thing for me was the concept of CS (Computer Science) Unplugged, which is teaching computer science to high school and middle school students without the use of computers,” Wubbels said “I learned about cluster computing, how the Google search engine actually works, and about Alice.”
       Swift attended the Google vendor session in which the speaker discussed teaching, using, distributing and computing, using Java programming. Swift said that the most interesting aspects for him were the ones involving cluster computing and its applications.
      “I learned that it could be done cheaply and the results were still very impressive,” Swift said.
       On the first evening, the computer club took the light rail across the river to attend discussion meetings known as “Birds of a Feather” at the Hilton Hotel, where later the members were able to enjoy a formal dinner reception.
      On the second day of the seminar, featured speaker Marissa Mayer, the vice president of search products and use experience at Google, discussed how Google’s design and applications developed over the years.
       The computer club members also attended a luncheon with keynote speaker, Ed Lazowska, the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. After the luncheon, the William Penn group visited Intel in Hillsboro. There, the students were able to ask questions of Rodney Hickman, a William Penn University graduate of 1994 who is currently working for Intel. The computer club also watched two videos about the elaborate process of making the two newest Intel processors.
      Penn Professor Williams was pleased with the trip and felt the experience was very beneficial for the students.
      “This was possibly the best SIGCSE Symposium I have attended, as far as variety of topics and applicability of topics to our courses at Penn,” Williams said. “Thanks to Student Government Association at Penn and all others who have participated in [the computer club’s] fundraising efforts!”

Written By: admin
Date Posted: 5/1/2008
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