I have never been much of a hardware geek. I like my computer to do what I want it to do with as little fuss as possible, but beyond that, I probably do not pay as much attention as I should. Sometimes, however, when something especially good happens, even I must acknowledge that hardware is a beautiful thing.
Since the day CSTA was first brought into being by ACM, we have been working on the dream of an online resource that would provide teachers with access to a rich repository of teaching and learning materials for K-12 computer science education.
Toward this end, a small but dedicated committee of volunteers has been collecting resources being developed at JETT (http://jett.acm.org/) and TECS (http://tecs.acm.org/) workshops across the country, developing a classification scheme based upon the Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science, and preparing the existing resources for entry into the repository. This Spring we achieved a major project milestone with the unveiling of our new user interface which was created by students at Villanova University, under the direction of Dr. Lillian Cassel.
The web repository is being built using DSpace, a highy-customizable open source repository facility created at MIT. The CSTA repository utilizes the standard Dublin core metadata so that the material it contains will be harvestable by other major repositories such as the National Science Data Library.
The really big news, however, came just a couple of weeks ago when Sun Microsystems Vice President Greg Papadopoulos (a member of the CSTA Advisory Council) offered to provide the equipment upon which this new repository will reside and all future development will be carried out.
And here is what Sun provided:
Sun Fire V210, 2 x 1.34Ghz UltraSPARC IIIi, 4 x 512MB DIMMS, 2 x 73GB Drive, 4 x 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, ALOM Remote Manager, Single PCI Slot, 1PSU & Java ES & Solaris 10 pre-installed.
Localized Power Cord Kit North American/Asian
X-Option – Internal DVD-ROM Drive Slimline, for Sun Fire V210 and Sun Fire V240.
1GB Memory Expansion Kit (2*512MB) low-profile DDR PC2100 or faster registered ECC DIMMs for use in Sun Fire V210, Sun Fire V240, Sun Fire V440, Netra 240, Netra 440, Sun Blade 1500 and Sun Blade 2500.
Internal 146GB 10K Ultra 3 SCSI HDD, 3.5″ x 1″ drive with barrier plate
Solaris 9 CD-ROM media kit (latest release). SPARC Platform Edition.
Thanks to this most generous donation from Sun, the CSTA web repository is closer to being a reality than we expected. Our plan right now is to have it up and running and available to all CSTA members by the summer!
Thank you, Sun, for helping bring us so much closer to our goal!
Chris