Computer Science Education Week 2013 was an off-the-scale success, with The Hour Of Code capturing the imaginations of students, teachers, parents, and policymakers nationwide! More than 15,000,000 students participated in The Hour Of Code, writing more than 500,000,000 lines of code!
The tide is turning! Computer science, computational thinking, and computer programming are fundamental capabilities for the 21st century!
Be sure to watch the Hour of Code video here. Read more →
Rep. Suzan DelBene attacks patent trolls on the floor of the US House of Representatives, using as her example Arrival Star’s lawsuit against King County Metro and a number of other transit agencies alleging infringement of an overly-broad and unpracticed patent by public transit apps including UW CSE’s widely-used and widely-emulated OneBusAway.
Watch the video here. Read more →
Congratulations to Alisha Saxena of Bellevue’s Interlake High School, who has been named a Winner in the 2014 National NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing.
Alisha, a hugely accomplished student who is a National Merit Semifinalist, is conducting research in UW CSE’s Security and Privacy Research Laboratory, where she is being mentored by Ph.D. student Franzi Roesner and professor Yoshi Kohno. Read more →
GeekWire reports on the apparent collapse of Gigabit Squared’s efforts to provide high-bandwidth Internet at a reasonable price to Seattle neighborhoods.
“Whether or not Gigabit Squared can pull off the project, the fundamental concept of leveraging the city’s existing fiber network is a good one, Lazowska said. He said ‘the idea of the city making its fiber available to others as an alternative to Comcast and CenturyLink is excellent. There shouldn’t be any debate about that. We have terrible Internet service in Seattle — high price, low bandwidth, limited choices.”
Read more here. Read more →
UW CSE undergraduate Martina Unutzer has received an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award competition, which recognizes undergraduate students in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.
Martina’s research, with UW CSE professor Magda Balazinska and UW Astronomy research scientist Ben Williams, has completely transformed the way our astronomy colleagues handle artifacts (due to cosmic rays) in their databases of stars. Magda writes: “I would meet with her not to advise her on what to do but to get up to speed on what she had already done! This is a degree of autonomy that one dreams about in graduate students!”
Engagement in research is a hallmark of UW CSE’s undergraduate program: as of last year, CRA had recognized more students from UW CSE in the past decade than from any other university.
Congratulations to Martina, and to all of our outstanding undergraduates! Read more →
Participants in the Technology Alliance’s “STEM Challenge” present their apps.
Middle school and high school students from the Battleground School District participate in Computer Science Education Week activities at UW CSE.
Learn more about UW CSE’s K-12 outreach umbrella, DawgBytes (“A Taste of CSE”), here.
Students discover Kruskal’s Algorithm (on its 57th anniversary).
Learn about Computer Science Education Week, and The Hour Of Code, here. Read more →
Oren Etzioni and Paul Allen write:
“When IBM’s Watson system defeated the human champion on ‘Jeopardy!’ in February 2011, it surprised the world with its unprecedented command of a vast array of facts, puns, and clever questions.
“But how will that feat change our lives over the next decade? What does it mean for the future of intelligent machines?
“Watson accumulated its wide-ranging knowledge by ‘reading’ the equivalent of millions of books, foreshadowing a revolution in how computers acquire, analyze, and create knowledge.
“Given the explosive volume of text available to anyone today in the form of web pages, articles, tweets and more, automatic machine reading is a critical part of technology’s future.
“Here are five ways we predict the Machine-Reading Revolution will change your life in the coming decade …”
Read the rest here. Read more →
Julie Kientz – UW CSE affiliate professor (and professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering) – is featured in the “faculty profile” in the December issue of Columns, the UW alumni magazine:
“That sense of discovery spawned a career predicated on using technology to help others and improve their health. Kientz brought that passion to the UW in 2008 and, most recently, was named one of MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 for 2013.”
Read more here. Read more →
According to the amazing Hadi Partovi:
This week, more students studied computer science in US schools than in the last 10 years combined …
… more girls than in the last 30 years …
… more African Americans and Hispanics than in the entire history of computer science …
And we’re only 2 days into the week!
#HourOfCode – here! Read more →
President Barack Obama promotes The Hour Of Code!
Computer Science Education Week has begun – and with it, The Hour Of Code! Every student in America should spend one hour learning computer science principles, using the phenomenal programming environment developed by Hadi Partovi’s Code.org.
What does President Barack Obama have to say about it? “Don’t just buy a new videogame, make one. Don’t just download the latest app, help design it. Don’t just play on your phone, program it.”
Watch the President’s video here.
Watch the Hour of Code video and learn how to participate here.
Learn about UW CSE’s K-12 outreach activities, DawgBytes (“A Taste of CSE”) – including many Computer Science Education Week activities – here. Read more →