Basics
The basic rules of the game are these.
You have an initial Assignment 1 just to test the dropbox system.
Assignment 2 is for you to produce a paper version and an online version of a resume.
You are then to produce three additional "documents" during the semester.
Each of these four assignments (numbers 2 through 5) will count 1/5 of your grade.
Attendance will be taken.
For every three (3) unexcused absences, your grade will be lowered
by one full letter.
The judgement as to accepting the excuse is mine.
Illness, family emergencies, and such are excusable.
Returning home late from spring break to avoid the traffic jam north from Daytona Beach
is not an excusable absence.
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Assignment One must be turned in by 5:00pm, Eastern time, 18 January 2008.
This does not count for credit; its purpose is to allow you to complain later
if you have dropbox problems.
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Assignment Two must be turned in by 5:00pm, Eastern time, 1 February 2008.
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Assignment Three must be turned in by 5:00pm, Eastern time, 18 February 2008.
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Assignment Four must be turned in by 5:00pm, Eastern time, 24 March 2008.
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Assignment Five must be turned in by 5:00pm, Eastern time, 28 April 2008.
The penalty for a late assignment will be loss of 10% of the total value
for every 24 hours or fraction thereof that the assignment is late.
In general, there is very little that should prevent you from being able to get an
A grade in this class.
We don't ask much of you, but we do ask that you fulfill these minimal expectations.
Follow the rules, turn in the assignments, and you should be ok.
For Assignments Three through Five:
By "document" is meant a written paper of at least five pages in length,
double spaced, 10 or 12 point font, with standard margins,
OR a PowerPoint presentation of equivalent content (or OpenOffice or other equivalent to
PowerPoint), OR a YouTube or equivalent video, OR a web page, etc.
What we want from you is "something" that presents the appropriate content.
In keeping with the fact that this is a course in computing, however, that "something"
need not be the written format that has been commonplace for the last 500 years or so;
it may be done in a more modern format, provided it is reasonably professional and
that it carries the message.
Please be advised that without exception the two reasons for a student's getting a
grade lower than an A in this class last semester were a) not turning in an assignment;
b) turning in an assignment of length shorter than required.
If you turn in a brilliant essay that is three pages long, and I have asked for
an essay five pages long, you will get exactly 3/5 of a perfect grade for that assignment.
Use of the standard Microsoft tools is always acceptable.
Other tools are acceptable, BUT students wishing to use something other than
Microsoft or OpenOffice are highly advised to send me a sample first to make sure that we
won't have a format compatibility problem when the final assignment is handed in.
It is your responsibility to make sure that I can read/display your document, not
my responsibility to be able to read whatever you send me.
NOTE: Most of these topics require you to have a personal answer to a philosophical
or a personal question.
Obviously, there are relatively few truly incorrect answers to such a question.
(An exception might be made if in response to "why are studying computing?" your
answer is that you hate technology and you want to become a forest ranger, but I suspect
you get the point.)
Your grade will come, therefore, not from the actual answer you give but from the
way in which you present the answer.
You are allowed to think out of the box.
You are allowed to be different, even fanciful about what you think computing might
look like during your career.
That's ok.
What is not ok is to have no interest in what computing might look like during your career.
If that's the case, you're probably in the wrong major.
Assignment 1
Assignment One
Due 5pm Friday 18 January 2008
Students have sometimes come to me with complaints that they were unable to
get the dropbox system in the department to work.
This assignment is to allow you to have grounds for that complaint.
By 5pm Friday 18 January 2008
you are to submit something to the dropbox for this class.
You may submit ANYTHING.
I suggest a simple text document with your name on it and the date.
I will check the dropboxes and will let you know if your submission has been
successful.
Assignment 2
Assignment Two
Due 5pm Friday 1 February 2008
PART 1:
You are required to register with the Career Center.
This is so you can start thinking about life beyond the classroom.
Go to the Career Center webpage, click on the JobMate link, and register through that process.
PART 2:
You are required to produce and turn in to the CSE dropbox a resume suitable for hard
copy printing on good paper.
You should consult the Career Center for guidance on format, etc.
PART 3:
In addition to Part 2,
you are required to produce and turn in to the CSE dropbox a web page as HTML.
You can consult any number of sources for this, including the faculty.
You might look at
this page,
which is what my resume might have looked like when I was in my first year of college.
You are free to download the page source and edit your information into this.
FERPA PRIVACY NOTIFICATION:
Under FERPA, you have a right to privacy, and we fully support that right.
Two of the relevant USC documents on your rights under FERPA can be found
here
and
here.
Other documents can be found by simply putting "ferpa" into the USC web page search box.
You will note that "we" have the right to disclose your name and email
addresses to your classmates in this course but not much more, should you
choose to keep personal information private.
For this class, you must turn in (electronically through the drop box) a
resume in a reasonable format and a web page as source HTML.
You need not include your "correct" personal information should you wish to
keep that private.
We will not put your web pages up on the web, and we will not distribute your
resumes or pages to others.
Neither parts 2 and 3 of this assignment need to be "correct", but both need to
be "believable".
If you come from Charleston and wish to say you come from Greenville, that's
perfectly ok.
If you had a summer job doing web design for a law firm and wish to say it was
systems administration for a retail store, that's ok and believable.
If you wish to change your home phone number from "202.456.1111" to a placeholder
string "XXX.XXX.XXXX", that's perfectly ok.
What's not ok is to invent totally unbelievable fiction, for example to change
your Columbia home phone number from 803.abc.defg to 202.456.1111.
Keep it reasonably realistic, but if you wish to stay private, that's perfectly ok.
We are interested in your ability to produce a reasonable document that can serve
you in the future, not in the information that would be contained in that document.
Your web page will not be graded heavily on "content" or on "eye candy".
Your resume should be done cleanly and look professional.
What is important about your web page is its existence, not its essence.
Since web pages are always changing, our assumption is that once you get one
started, it will gradually improve and change over time.
HTML tutorials on the web can be found by simply googling "html tutorial".
Some of the hits are:
If you want a very basic page to use as a template, you could go to my original
USC class web page for
CSCE 513.
That's about as plain vanilla a page as you can get.
Go to "view", then "page source" and you should get a window that looks like an edit window.
Save the source as a file, and then edit a copy of that file.
(Use a copy so you still have the original that is known to work just in case you really
screw things up.)
For those of you who use Firefox as your browser, the Firebug plugin can help with editing
HTML pages, although it's not perfect by any means.
Resume do's and don't's:
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Probably the most important thing to remember is that you do not want someone to ignore
your accomplishments because you have done something that should be irrelevant but that
makes you look bad.
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Absolutely proofread the thing until you are sure that there are no typos,
missing punctuation, spelling errors, or similar problems.
Read carefully to make sure that you have used parallel constructions in lists.
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Be absolutely certain that you have labelled your degree program correctly.
The three options from this department are
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A computer engineering major will receive the degree
"Bachelor of Science in Engineering" with a major in computer engineering.
In text you could write this as
"I will receive a Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree with a major in
computer engineering".
In bullet form you could write either
"Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree with a major in
computer engineering" or perhaps
"Bachelor of Science in Engineering (major: computer engineering)".
You could shorten "Bachelor of Science" to "BS" or "B.S."
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A computer science major will receive the degree
"Bachelor of Science in Computer Science" and you probably don't need to say anything
more or less than exactly this.
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A computer information systems major will receive the degree
"Bachelor of Science" with a major in computer information systems.
Follow the same construction as for computer engineering, but drop the "in Engineering" as
needed.
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You absolutely do not want to give the illusion of having padded your resume.
Topics for Assignment Three
Due 5pm Monday 18 February 2008.
Choose
one
of the following topics and write about it.
Topic 1
The following questions are among the list of favorite
job interview questions,
according to Computerworld.
Answer them as if you were being interviewed.
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Describe your toughest assignment so far.
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Share with me a conversation you had with your boss or others in your life where some feedback you heard was tough to take.
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What will you do if you don't get this job?
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Why should I hire you?
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Tell me about a problem your company had and how you used techhnology to solve it.
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What are your long term goals?
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What book is currently on your nightstand?
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How close are you to the technology, and how important is that to you?
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Have you ever had to terminate someone?
Topic 2
What attracted you to study computing?
Topic 3
What do you think input and output devices will become in the next, say, 25 years?
What is likely to happen with implants, etc?
How might this be both good and bad?
Topic 4
Computing technology has made any number of things much better in our lives, including
the ability to get an encyclopedia on line, automated bank teller machines that work
around the world, more efficient cars, office equipment vastly
superior to old typewriters and mimeograph machines.
On the other hand, this also means that your credit card information can be obtained
either legally or illegally, and your identity can be stolen.
Discuss some positive and negative effects of modern computing, and suggest some
appropriate directions for mitigating the negative effects.
Some Topics for Assignments Four and Five
Assignment Four due 5pm Monday 24 March 2008
Assignment Five due 5pm Monday 28 April 2008
This part of the page will be changing as I think of new possible topics.
Topic A
There are a number of very good books about computing and about what computing
could (or could not) do as it gets better and better.
You can choose to read one of the references in the list on the main page for
this course and produce a "book report" on the book.
Or you can read some other relevant book and produce a report.
If you want to use some book other than those listed, you must first get permission.
Note that if you choose this option, then your choice of topic as well as your treatment
of the topic is going to factor into your grade, so unless it's an obviously relevant
topic, you might be well advised to check with me first.
Topic B
This is similar to the topic immediately above.
If you are watching the news, it can seem that we are deluged with items
that are relevant to technology, especially computing technology.
This paragraph is being written on 27 August 2007, for example, and from Slashdot
just in the last couple of days there are several news posts about which
one could do a little sleuthing and write a short commentary paper.
For example:
Your assignment is to do some research and then write a short commentary on the topic.
I do not expect you to come to "the only conclusion" that can be made about a controversial
topic, but I do expect you to be able to discuss both sides and make a reasonable
statement about the subject.
Note that if you choose this option, then your choice of topic as well as your treatment
of the topic is going to factor into your grade, so unless it's an obviously relevant
topic, you might be well advised to check with me first.
Topic C
What's the right thing to think about electronic voting machines?
Topic D
Several states, including South Carolina, are on a collision with the federal government
about the RealID requirement for driver licenses.
What is the issue, and what are the underlying technical and/or privacy issues?
Topic E
New U.S. passports contain an RFID chip.
Same question as above:
What is the issue, and what are the underlying technical and/or privacy issues?
