This textbook is intended for a basic course in problem solving and program design needed by scientists and engineers using the TI-92. The TI-92 is an extremely powerful problem solving tool that can help you manage complicated problems quickly. We assume no prior knowledge of computers or programming, and for most of its material, high school algebra is sufficient mathematica background. It is advised that you have basic skills in using the TI-92. After the course you will become familiar with many of the programming commands and functions of the TI-92. The connection between good problem solving skills and an effective program design method, is used and applied consistently to most examples and problems in the text. We also introduce many of the programming commands and functions of the TI-92 needed to solve these problems. Each chapter ends with a number of practica problems that require analysis of programs as well as short programming exercises.
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The last decade has seen an increasing demand from the industrial field of computerized visual inspection. Applications rapidly become more complex and often with more demanding real time constraints. However, from 2004 onwards the clock frequency of CPUs has not increased significantly. Computer Vision applications have an increasing demand for more processing power but are limited by the performance capabilities of sequential processor architectures. The only way to get more performance using commodity hardware, like multi-core processors and graphics cards, is to go for parallel programming. This article focuses on the practical question: How can the processing time for vision algorithms be improved, by parallelization, in an economical way and execute them on multiple platforms?
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A presentation about a skills gap: industry demands versus learning outcomes. The presentation deals with ongoing research about workplace learning in computing curricula.
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Part 3 Programming and Activating Cyberparks deals with the variety of ways in which urban public spaces can be reinvigorated through the use of digital media technologies. As is outlined in the introduction to this volume, digital media technologies profoundly shape the use and perception of urban public spaces. Critical observers have noted that digital media may threaten the public nature of our cities and civic spaces. For instance, elsewhere we have described these threats in terms of three Cs: commercialisation, control, and capsularisation (de Lange and de Waal 2013). First, the combination of digital media technologies and consumer culture overlays everyday urban life with a market logic of pervasive customer tracing, quantification, and a vying for attention. Datafication and personalized recommendation services capitalise on our habitual everyday movements in the city, turning them into an ever-expanding string of (potential) customer ‘touchpoints’. This affects the spatial, social and cultural dimensions of almost every realm of urban life, from work to meeting to leisure to travel to home. Visible illustrations include the rapidly changing appearance of high streets in most cities, or the nature and quality of inner-city neighbourhoods coinciding with the popularity of platforms like Airbnb (for more on platforms, see van Dijck et al. 2018). As a result, our polyvocal and frictional public open spaces are being transformed into silent and seamless marketplaces, where public interactions are reduced to commercial transactions.
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Motivating students to actively engage in their studying efforts is an ongoing challenge, because motivation is a key factor in study success. In the work presented here, we investigate whether the use of a mobile app with a teacher-like avatar (StudyGotchi), based on the successful digital pet Tamagotchi, can be deployed to motivate and engage computer science university students in their blended learning programming course. A randomized controlled study was performed which showed mixed results. Lessons learned include (i) better understanding of how to effectively implement the game-mechanics, and (ii) ways to circumvent technical limitations in usage.
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We use a randomised experiment to study the effect of offering half of 556 freshman students a learning analytics dashboard and a weekly email with a link to their dashboard, on student behaviour in the online environment and final exam performance. The dashboard shows their online progress in the learning management systems, their predicted chance of passing, their predicted grade and their online intermediate performance compared with the total cohort. The email with dashboard access, as well as dashboard use, has positive effects on student behaviour in the online environment, but no effects are found on student performance in the final exam of the programming course. However, we do find differential effects by specialisation and student characteristics.
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Abstraction is considered an essential aspect of computational thinking. Primary schools are starting to include computational thinking into the curriculum. However, in order to guide their support, teachers need to know how to recognize abstraction. In this paper, we present how we can observe abstraction in young children tasked with solving an algorithmic assignment. In order to operationalize abstraction, we have used the layers of abstraction (LOA) model by Perrenet, Groote and Kaasenbrood. This model was originally used in the field of computer science and describes programming behavior at the level of software development, but has since been extended for use in primary education. We have operationalized this model for use with 5 to 6 year old students tasked with programming an educational robot. Their behavior has been related to each of the four layers of abstraction.Students were individually instructed with programming Cubetto, an educational robot, to reach a number of destinations, increasing in the level of algorithmic complexity. We analyzed audio and video recordings of the students interacting with Cubetto and a teacher. Verbal and non- verbal behavior were categorized by two researchers and resulted in an observation schema.We conclude that our operationalization of the LOA model is promising for characterizing young students’ abstraction. Future research is needed to operationalize abstraction for older primary school students.
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