'03 Kickoff Materials
The Computational Science Process
This class is one hour long. No hands-on work. Get the students to talk with you as much as possible during the class.
The content for these documents was taken mostly from Dick Allen's STI PowerPoint presentation on the subject.
Feel free to use whatever materials you like.
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The Abstract Sessions
This year we are going to handle the abstracts a bit differently. We are
going to ask the facilitators/instructors/scientists to meet the students
in Rooms 24 and 25 as a large group. The students will have copies of
their abstracts with them.
The purpose of the session is to make sure the teams have chosen a problem
that is suitable for science, has measurable components so that a mathematical
model can be developed, and from that a computing solution can be written.
The session is secondarily about mentoring teams who have good abstracts
and are ready to get started on their project.
We are planning to have an Express Line with tables set up and several
facilitators arranged so that three or four teams can check in at one time
to get their abstracts reviewed and approved.
There will be other tables to help teams get their abstracts completed.
Some of these teams will have come from the Express Line and need to refine
their abstracts or even rethink their projects so that they reflect the
computational science focus of the Challenge. When these teams have a
good/reasonable abstract, it will be approved either by returning to the
Express Line or by any of the facilitators working with teams. They can
upload their improved abstracts at one of the computers in the room.
Some students will come to these tables and need help from scratch.
When the abstracts are ready, they, too, can upload their files.
Students whose abstracts are complete can move to computers to begin research
or work at tables to plan their timeline, assign tasks to different members
of the team, etc. If there are facilitators who are not working with teams
to get their abstracts completed it would be great if they could do some
mentoring of teams who are ready.
It may be helpful to look at the abstract guidelines and the abstracts that
are already up on the Challenge web page - http://challenge.nm.org/abstracts.
There is also a link on the web page for questions to ask to direct the
students:
http://www.challenge.nm.org/Glorieta/tpd.html. Additionally,
http://www.challenge.nm.org/About/areas.shtml links to areas of science
and may be helpful for teams still looking for an idea. This guidelines
link can be useful, too. http://www.challenge.nm.org/About/guidelines.shtml.
We urge the students to step through the flow chart at
http://challenge.nm.org/ctg/overview/project.shtml.
We will have a scheme for keeping track of which teams' abstracts have been
given a green light.
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Advanced Class
This class is three hours long. No hands-on work.
The goal of this class is to provide an overview of GUIs and to avoid
tying the material to any particular language or operating system.
The topics to be covered are:
- Foundations of User Interfaces (from a Human-Computer Interaction
point of view)
- GUI Design
- GUI Components and Development
- GUI Examples (both good and bad; which are which and why)
Each school will be provided a CD of resources they can use
for their GUI work. The CDs will include the presentation materials and
a set of references.
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Mode: Unix, Programming, Web Pages, and Email
This class is one hour long. Mostly hands-on, with a bit of discussion at the beginning.
Five minutes or so should be spent discussing the one-page handout with the students. Then, they will do the online tutorial (hardcopy handouts of the tutorial will also be available).
NOTE: students will be encouraged to do this online tutorial BEFORE coming to the kickoff conference.
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Questions? Contact Eric Ovaska
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