Computing's OERs

Three open educational resources have been released from the Depart of Computing and Immersive Technologies at the University of Northampton. This post shows the number of views and downloads of these resources.

Summary of Evolutionary Computing

Click here for the resource: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19204

Author: Dr Scott Turner 

These slides are intended for undergraduate computing students, providing an overview of Genetic Algorithms, a concept of in artificial intelligence. As well providing an overview the material also include links to applications via web resources. The slides are taken from an undergraduate artificial intelligence module on the BSc Computing Programme at the University of Northampton. Possible uses of these including support material for second year, third year or masters level course on artificial intelligence.

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Click here for the resource: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19204

C Programming

Click here for the resource: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19192

Author: Dr Scott Turner

In this material you will be introduced to some of the principles of programming, and specifically learn to write fairly simple programs using a programming language called C. An idea central to this material is that programming is about problem solving; you write a program to solve a particular problem. It is hoped that at the end of the material you should see that there is nothing magical or mysterious about programming. One of the features some people like about programming is you are making the computer do what you want. During the programming exercises, do not worry about making mistakes. In this material you will be expected to try out programs and eventually write your own. The target audience is anyone who wants to learn a programming language or is looking for some assessment questions around programming. The material was originally aimed at second year engineering students at the University of Northampton.

Click here for the resource: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19192

Problem-Solving

Author: Dr Scott Turner

http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001

These mini lectures are intended for undergraduate computing students, for providing simple steps in problem solving before the students learn a programming language. Problem-Solving and Programming is a common first year undergraduate module on the BSc Computing Programme at the University of Northampton. This material was taken from the problem solving part of the module and provides an introduction to five topics in problem-solving.

The resource can be found at: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001

Raspberry Pi in Northampton

A informal, but heavily over-subscribed (15 places but around 70 people registered interest), Raspberry Pi  event for  teachers and STEM ambassador was held at the University of Northampton on 16th October 2013. A collaboration between the Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton; LEBC (who support STEM activities within Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes through the STEM ambassador); with support from BCS Northampton through the loan on the night of some extra equipment.

The session was meant to be (and I hope was) a chance to exchange ideas for teachers and ambassadors; set-up and try out Raspberry Pis; try a little Scratch or Python programming and to start up a discussion across the area what can be done (and is being done) with Raspberry Pi. Nigel Barrett (Corby Technical School) and Scott Turner (University of Northampton) facilitated the groups, with support from Julie Messenger and other LEBC staff.

Some interesting resources were highlighted

• The MagPi magazine a free to download magazine with some interesting things to do with the RaspberryPi.
• ScoopIts on Physical Computing
• how to find the operating system on-line; download and install the operating system on to a SD Card http://learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/adafruit-raspberry-pi-lesson-1-preparing-and-sd-card-for-your-raspberry-pi.pdf by Simon Monk and the main download site for Raspberry PI OS http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads
• Setting up the Raspberry PI including selecting basic configuration settings:      http://learn.adafruit.com/downloads/pdf/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-2-first-time-configuration.pdf 
• Interesting article on Raspberry and Minecraft (again from MagPi)
• There is even and on-line teacher's resource and the main resource the student's book on combining Python, Raspberry Pi, and Minecraft.

Web Sustainability Project: State of the Project

In an earlier blog (http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.com/2011/04/website-sustainability.html) a JISC funded project was describe which uses google sites to capture and include some aspects of the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) Innovation portal, which itself will no longer exist, due to the abolishment of Regional Development Agencies. 

Where is the project at the moment?

The website under-development is currently completely separate from the www.emkn.org site and is hosted on a Google sites site with connections to a Dropbox site (used as at temporary measure)

Main page: sites.google.com/site/emknorg/home

Three examples of other pages are shown below:

Example 1: Networking and Good Practice : sites.google.com/site/emknorg/services/networking-good-practise

Example 2: Technological Services: sites.google.com/site/emknorg/services/technological-services

Example 3: Enterprise Development: sites.google.com/site/emknorg/services/enterprise-development

The flash based Tube image has been converted into a more search engine friendly image map and HTML links and ALT tag describing the link aiding accessibility.

Click here for the image map

Content is being migrated from the dropbox to Google Sites

Google analytics has been added to the site both Google sites and Dropbox to capture that information. Analytics is also add to this blog.

The site is out for consultation, co-ordinated by EMUA, with stakeholders on the way it looks, features needed. Further separate consultation via an on-line survey is expected before the end of June 2011.

Please feel free to follow the links.

This project has been supported by a grant from JISC. For more details about this project can be found at the project blog.