Week 4

Hard at Work

June 8, 2009

Things are getting very routine in the office. I successfully upload my revised tutorial into the repository. This is quite the process but Liz has done a great job with her detailed instructions. I got some feed back on my inheritance tutorial and spent a good part of the day reworking it to simplify the process. I also read an article about HCI... I have not heard very much about this area of computer science before and I found it very interesting. I would consider looking further into this for myself.

Inheritance Tutorial

June 9, 2009

Another routine kind of day. I read another article, and updated my web page. I also reviewed Deborah's tutorial part 2. The rest of the day was spent revising the create functions tutorial that was done last year. I have posted the tutorial I created for review:
Here is a link to the draft Inheritance Tutorial (ppt)

Wednesday Pizza (Poppa Jons)

June 10, 2009

Today I read another article, worked on the create functions tutorial (almost done), and created an example world. We also had another lunch meeting. The girls in my office were happy it was Poppa Jons pizza and I must agree it was better than the pizza we had last time. The speaker was also good. Pablo Gainza-Cirauqui (from Costa Rica) talked about "Computational protein-ligand binding affinity prediction for drug design and enzyme redesign." The title is a little brain stretching for someone with no biology background, but Pablo did a great job of explaining it. In fact, he was not sure what it was really about when he first started his doctoral work! He talked a little bit about his experience and how he decides what he works on. The picture that I included is not of Pablo but it gives you an idea of what our meetings look like... and I was a little short on pictures for this week.

A little American History and A Memorial

June 11, 2009

I don't think I've mentioned yet that I walk to work from my apartment. This doesn't happen every day, and on those days I take the Duke Bus. This morning was one of those mornings not because it was raining or extra hot, but it was just way to convenient; there was no waiting as the bus arrived just when we were walking by the bus stop. The bus drops us off at the chapel. Today is a special day at the chapel because a memorial was scheduled for 11:00. I knew it was going to be something significant because there were people already lined up to get into the public seating, and it was not even 8:00!

I went to the memorial service not knowing anything about John Hope and Aurelia Whittington Franklin. All I knew was former president Bill Clinton was going to be participating in the event. Another indication of significance. It was enriching to hear the family and friends of the late John Hope speak about his contributions to American History both as a historian and an important person in history. Also the connection that John Hope and Aurelia Whittington had together as a couple. Today is their 69th wedding anniversary. I found the following quote on their memorial website:

Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people. Dr. Franklin will be deeply missed, but his legacy is one that will surely endure. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to his loved ones, as our nation mourns his loss.
Barack Obama
President of the United States

Well even though the service was 2 1/2 hours long, I did get some work done. I went over part 3 of Deborah's new tutorial. Read another article and read through some of the Alice textbook while I played with an Alice world of my own.

Yeah it's Chick-fil-A Friday

June 12, 2009

This morning I created an Alice world that used concepts of recursion, random number, lists and global variables. Basically students enter a classroom in random order and sit in a randomly selected seat. Originally I had set it up so the student would be stuck to the chair... okay it's not really funny but as a future teacher I wouldn't mind having a program that keep students stuck to their chairs. And to all my future students who might read this remember, I ended up taking it out of the code because it was not needed.

Liz and I went out for lunch to Chick-Fil-A . I was told that this is one of the places to eat fast food. As a Canadian I took this opportunity as a cross-cultural experience. It was a good fried chicken on a bun with special sauce that reminded me of White Spot's Triple "O" sauce. I had never seen their commercials before either... hilarious! Check it out on their web site.

Part of the afternoon was spent discussing what would be happening next week and the following weeks. The next few weeks are full of seminars and teachers. I am looking forward to meeting some of the teachers "on the front lines" and finding out from them how they see Alice in their classroom.

Exploring the Gardens

June 13 and 14, 2009

I'll post some of my other photos onto my flickr page.