One of the things I try to do for my students is to give them a chance to play with some of the really cool research that is going on in computer science. While algorithms are an important part of what’s happening, many computer scientists are focusing more on the integration of their discoveries into larger applications, as well as those applications themselves.
Today I went to a lecture given by Takeo Igarashi. Igarashi is a recipient of both Carnegie Mellon University’s Katayanagi prize and the ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher award for his contributions to computer graphics. His ideas are based in not making more complex graphics, but the interaction with the human during a “rough sketching” process.
I highly recommend checking out his website and playing with the tools that are available.
I also recommend that you look for things like this for your students to. While it is true that students have to learn the basics first (the need to understand simple things like decision and looping structures and basic principals of object oriented programming and design) it doesn’t hurt to show them some of the problems that “real” computer scientists are working on.
Not how to search for a name in a phone book. Foundations are exceedingly important, and we need to learn how to mix the batter before we can bake and eat the cake, but don’t you prefer the cookbooks that show you a picture of the finished cake?
Carnegie Mellon posts videos of these lectures on line and they can be found through links off the main
Leigh Ann Sudol
Communications Chair