Interrelativity

Category: Academia

  • The Scientific Method: Cultivating Thoroughly Conscious Ignorance

    Stuart Firestein brilliantly captures the positive influence of ignorance as an often unacknowledged guiding principle in the fits and starts that typically characterize the progression of real science. His book, Ignorance: How It Drives Science, grew out of a course on Ignorance he teaches at Columbia University, where he chairs the department of Biological Sciences…

  • Valuable Advice on Preparing for Technical Interviews … and Careers

    The cover of Gayle Laakmann McDowell’s book, Cracking the Coding Interview, and links to her Career Cup web site and Technology Woman blog are included in the slides I use on the first day of every senior (400-level) computer science course I have taught over the last two years. These are some of the most…

  • def main() in Python considered harmful

    I recently graded the first Python programming assignments in the course I'm teaching on Social and Computational Intelligence in the Computing and Software Systems program at University of Washington Bothell. Most of the students are learning Python as a second (or third) language, approaching it from the perspective of C++ and Java programming, the languages…

  • The Independent Project: An Inspiring Experiment in Student-Designed Learning

    The Independent Project is an experimental school within a school, designed and implemented by a group of students at Monument Mountain Regional High School in Great Barrington, MA. I recently wrote about Carl Rogers' ideas regarding student-centered learning, in which a professor (who in this case was also a therapist) plays the role of facilitator,…

  • Hadoop, Apache and the Benefits of Contributing to Open Source Projects

    Jake Homan, a Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn and UW Bothell CSS graduate, gave a recent guest lecture at UWB on Apache Hadoop: Petabytes and Terawatts, offering an overview and applications of Hadoop as well as related distributed computing tools developed within the Apache Software Foundation. The presentation offered a great balance of breadth and…

  • Continuing Education: Senior Lecturer at the University of Washington, Bothell

    I recently embarked on the next stage of my re-engagement with academia, as a Senior Lecturer in the Computer & Software Systems program at the University of Washington, Bothell. Like the Tacoma campus, where I taught last winter and spring, the Bothell campus cultivates a small college culture within a large university system: classes are…

  • Health, science, knowledge, access and elitism: Lawrence Lessig and science as remix culture

    I have been an admirer and supporter of Lawrence Lessig's crusade for copyright reform and promotion of remix culture for many years. In a recent talk at CERN, Lessig applied his arguments for a fairer interpretation of fair use in the arts world to opening up the architectures for knowledge access in the world of…

  • Innovation, Research & Reviewing: Revise & Resubmit vs. Rebut for CSCW 2012

    Research is about innovation, and yet many aspects of the research process often seem steeped in tradition. Many conference program committees and journal editorial boards – the traditional gatekeepers in research communities – are composed primarily of people with a long history of contributions and/or other well-established credentials, who typically share a collective understanding of…

  • Academia Redux: Joining the Institute of Technology at the University of Washington, Tacoma

    This past Monday, I returned to the classroom after a hiatus of over two decades. While I have given occasional guest lectures and other presentations in academic settings in the intervening period, for the next six months, I will be engaging with students in classrooms at least twice a week in my new role as…