Things I would like to do at UTM

• 494 projects in
  • Game development (ie network, Gameboy Advance). Also, if you are interested, here is an article describing the background you should have to be a game developer. It makes a good case for the courses you are taking.
  • Opensource projects (ie DVD player for Linux)
  • DVD error correction
• Lunch of Champions (meeting between all UTMCS faculty and excellent students over lunch)
• Whats Up at UTMCS web pages (with Rajni's help). Things we could keep there include 0) Help design our Logo 1) What you need to get into teachers college (by Frank Pirillo) 2) CS Help center (whos involved, what happened last term, what is happening next term) 3) Problem solving/technology session (Arnold) 4) TAing at UTM (Elga Komolo) 5) The CSAE (Omair, Sohaib) 6) Applying to grad school (Ali Juma, Nelson Arruda) 7) Working in the GANITA Lab (Ali, Nelson, Zubair) 8) Working in the real world (Sadia, Sobia, Laurence Chiu, Andrew Ramadeen) 9) 492 Projects at UTM (Jun Sasaki) 10) Intro to technologies/Linux (Sue McGlashan) 11) Obtaining Microsoft Software (Sue McGlashan) 12) What you think (if anything) should be done to improve CS at UTM (ALL)
• Started (students did this without much help!!) UTM Computer Science Students Union
• Started: CS HELP Center Peer tutoring, have a room setup so that you can meet and help eachother learn. A place where first year students can come and talk to upper year students for advice on solving problems.
• A monthly, bimonthly etc. CS contest. We can even challenge other campuses. Here is one I thought of:

  The most obfuscated Hello program. You write a SYSTEM that simply asks the user their name and then prints "Hello "+the given name. The twist is that your system must involve MANY different technologies in creative ways to get the input finally printed.

  For example, I write a java program that first asks the user for their name (Arnold for example), then creates an email with content "Hello Arnold" sends it to student233@credit.erin.toronto.edu. In the mean time the original java program starts trying to read incomming mail for student233@credit.erin.toronto.edu. When it locates the appropriate email, it opens it, reads it and finally prints it out.

  The longest, most creative path wins.

• Peer review for plaigiarism cases. Have upper year students review cases. The idea is to impress upon new students that cheating affects others. The value of your degree is decreased if we graduate students without great abilities.
• Done: Jun Sasaki did a 492 project in parallel computing. He explored heat flow and Hamiltonian Path. General interesting projects (ie): Students put together and program a parallel computer (Linux Beowulf project) using 'spare' parts. Systems here says that parts come in.
• Done: Supervised a contract with Sadia Khwaja on the Palm Pilot for Student Services Organizing contracts etc. for students to gain 'real world' experience. By the way, you can do PEY as a student here!!
• Started: Start a problem solving session for CS at UTM Topics follow:
  • Overall approach to problem solving
  • Understanding the question
  • Understanding the problem
  • Teaching yourself
  • The esthetics of simplicity
  • How do I know if I understand (solution is simple, clear, obvious)
  • The ability to document/explain your solution
  • The psychology of problem solving
  • Many examples: 999!, Cards around a table, Locker room problem, ...
  • Problem solving in programming: Your job as a programmer, programming examples, debugging as a problem solving exercise.
• Started (volunteers contacted): Start a technology workshop. Each week, students explain another technology (they can use one of my systems to setup and play with technology). See if we can get support for doughnuts etc. for this.
  Examples follow: First year setup: JEdit, JDK Web: IIS vs Apache, Style sheets, Flash, VBScript OpenGL (Graphics library) Setting up a Linux box Microsoft .NET IDEs: JBuilder, Visual Studio, Codewarrior Programming languages: Java, VB, VC++, Haskell, ASP, Access, Databases: Oracle, DB2, ... Writing code for Palm Pilots (speak with Sadia) Writing code for Blackberry pagers (speak with Zubair) Direct X 9.0
• Cross list courses so that each course knows all prerequisites AND which courses use this as a prerequisite. This will encourage feedback and feed forward. For example, if I need something to be stressed in a linear algebra course (for my CSC350) I can contact all the instructors for the prerequisite courses. Alternatively, STATS101 instructors can be informed about all departments/programs that require their course.

  An example is in here