The story of computing is the story of humanity™
Computing: The Human Experience is a transmedia project engaging audiences of all ages in the story of the technology that has changed humanity.
Archive for the 'informatics' Category
Computing: The Human Experience
2012/01/04Students Shift to Computer Science
2011/12/21“The increase follows a national trend: Computer science majors increased 7.6% across the country from 2009 to 2010, the most recent available data, according to the Computing Research Association.
“Computing now penetrates into just about every line of business and academic discipline,” said Zhigang Xiang, chair of Queens College’s Computer Science Department. “It’s hard to find one field where you don’t need it.”
“People certainly realize [computing] is now getting to be a basic skill in the 21st century,” Mr. Xiang said.”
in The Wall Street Journal
Government looks to make ICT education ‘essential’ to curriculum
2011/12/21“The government has said that computer science education should be brought into the new National Curriculum as an essential discipline.
Formulating a response to Nesta’s Next Gen report on reforming the provision of ICT and computer science subjects in schools, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said that it recognises the importance of ICT.
It also agreed with Nesta that the UK’s ICT programme should be reformed to encourage more young people to study the subject and pursue IT careers.”
in Women in Technology
It Started Digital Wheels Turning
2011/11/09“The machine on the drawing boards at the Science Museum in London is the Babbage Analytical Engine, a room-size mechanical behemoth that its inventor envisioned but never built.
The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine composed of roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision. That project was completed in 1991.”
Schoolchildren to be taught how to write software – ComputerworldUK.com
2011/09/20“Pre-GSCE students will be taught how to write software, in a trial aiming to transform IT education in schools, the government has revealed.”
in Schoolchildren to be taught how to write software – ComputerworldUK.com.
Sex, Lies and Data Mining
2011/07/31“Ogas and Gaddam purport to have discovered in this data — with the aid of sex research, evolutionary psychology and comments posted on pornography hubs and other Web sites — “the finite set of sexual cues” (analogous to the five different taste cues our tongues can discern) hard-wired into our neural circuitry that “activate our desire software.”
Their breakdown is simple. Men like pornography. Women like romance novels. (…)”
Tech Executives See Paths for Women, Especially Geeks
2011/06/17“All three say that despite the dearth of women in senior roles, the rise of social-media companies including Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. appear to be attracting more women to the field.”
Computer Studies Made Cool, on Film and Now on Campus
2011/06/12“The number of computer science degrees awarded in the United States began rising in 2010, and will reach 11,000 this year, after plummeting each year since the end of the dot-com bubble in 2004, according to the Computing Research Association, which tracks enrollment and degrees. Enrollment in the major peaked around 2000, with the most degrees — 21,000 — awarded four years later. The number of students who are pursuing the degree but have not yet declared their major increased by 50 percent last year.”
“Still, computer science graduates do not come close to filling the jobs available. Technology is one of the few bright spots in the economy, with jobs growing at double the rate of job growth over all, according to federal statistics. And colleges say they do not have enough resources or professors to teach interested students. Meanwhile, the programs woefully lag in attracting women and many minorities, though the share of computer science degrees granted to women climbed 2.5 percentage points last year to 14 percent.”
