Treasure Hunt - Bonus

On the same day that our school was founded, a famous expeditionary died. A famous boxer who has the same surname as this expeditionary’s companion, fought his penultimate fight in a city that has two famous tragic landmarks. What is the connection between these two attractions?

List of Topics / Final Assignment!

The following is the list of topics for the final evaluation:

Validating sources

How Search Engines Work

Search Engine Rankings

Constructing queries

Multimedia search engines

Analog and digital data

Difference between data and information

Operating Systems

Networks

Network Design

Ergonomics / Teleworking / Biometrics

E-commerce

Hacking

Data Security and Encryption

Roboethics

Robotics

Artificial Intelligence / Conversational robots

Expert Systems

Simulations and Modeling

Tutorials and Wizards

Computers in Education

Optional Topics

21^st Century Business

Final Assignment:

Working individually, you will post no less than 6 items on your blogs, each of them referred to one of these topics. Posts must be referencing a news item, current event or link that relate to the topic.
The post must include:
- Link to the item.
- Short comment on the contents of the link.
- Short evaluation of the impact of that particular technology.

Creating an assessment instrument

After designing a plan to learn about the optional topic, our next stage involves creating an assessment instrument that will target on how to effectively demonstrate the acquisition of the knowledge and skills required.

Our assignment for the day consists of:
- Create an assignment that will cover the range of topics and skills needed and that takes into account the nature of the course, incorporating into analysis, critical thinking, and specifically the evaluation of the social and ethical implications of the topic chosen.
- The assignment must involve the use of technology and/or software in some form.
- Create a detailed rubric that will serve as a reference criteria for awarding grades to the project.

Please post your assignment before the end of the lesson today.

Computers in Education

One of the areas of impact that we will be studying within the syllabus is Education.

Today we will introduce the topic and briefly discuss some of the social implications of the technological advances in Education.

The following is the list of topics for the unit as stated by IB:
• Telelearning: isolated and remote areas; use in hospitals, prisons, retirement homes
• Modification of hardware and software for special needs: voice recognition software, text-to-speech, special input and output devices, Internet resources
• Software in the classroom: science experiments, social studies modelling and simulation, instructional tools and media, computer-aided instruction, computer-aided learning
• School library systems: catalogues, security systems, online research • Hardware in the classroom: laptops, notebooks, teleconferencing
• Software in school administration: record keeping, scheduling, Intranets, public information
• Training, tutorials, simulators

Your assignment, working in groups of 3 students, this time will consist in the production of a short video based freely on one of these topics. The video should be entirely based on evidence gathered at the school, interviews and/or other filming done at school and should address the implications of the chosen topic based on research to be performed at school.

Steps:
- Supporting web based research, sequence and overall plan for the video (to be submitted at the end of today’s lesson)
- Script and plan of interviews (to be submitted by the end of Thursday, September 15th) -
- Draft of the video (Thursday, September 29th)
- Finished video (Thursday, October 6th)

Learning about Tutorials and Wizards

Our next step is to research web sites and find resources that cover the topics listed in the previous entry related to Tutorials and Wizards.

Your will work in pairs, and the assignment will entail:

- Creating a blog entry similar to the ones that I have posted in the past for other units, with an introduction and comments relative to the resources found (On Tutorials and Wizards), highlighting why you think they are relevant.
- Design an assignment that will allow students in the class to learn and deepen their understanding on the topics chosen.

You will be assessed on the relevancy and quality of the resources found, the related explanations, and the originality and usefulness of the assignment proposed.

Tutorials and Wizards

Our next topic is tutorials, wizards and how the apply to training.

The objective is to try to understand how the use of technology affects the way people learn, both in the academic environment (schools, universities) as well as in job training.

Throughout this unit we will be covering the following issues:
- Social and ethical issues
- Study and evaluate the social and ethical issues involved in the use of tutorials, training and wizards. These may include:
• the balance in responsibility between an individual and an organization for training
• the need for IT companies to consider global and cultural diversity when preparing training and tutorial software
• the requirement of organizations to provide training when implementing change.

Related technological concepts include:
• key terms—tutorial software, training software, wizards and assistants, help menu and help features,“Read Me” files
• using wizards, assistants and online assistants in the design and creation of a product, for example, desktop-published documents, slideshows, web sites.

Working in pairs, you will start creating your digital log of resources to help you achieve the learning objectives. Please remember that the focus of the subject is to acquire mastery of the topics outlined but, more importantly, to analyze ethical and social implications of these topics on individuals and society.

Specifically, your initial assignment involves:

1) Without exploring any web sites write one paragraph summarizing your current knowledge of the unit, including one sentence explanations of the sub topics listed if you know what they refer to.
2) Write a second paragraph with a preliminary analysis of the general social and ethical implications of the topics included within the unit.
3) Write at least five questions related to what else you expect to learn about the topics listed and their social and ethical implications.

You are expected to complete this assignment before the end of the lesson, and to submit it to itgs.sass@gmail.com

Robotics / AI Test

1- How can a program simulate feelings? Explain in detail. (10 points)

2- The owner of car dealership wants to build an expert system that gives counsel to users who want to buy cars. This system would answer consumers’ question and provide them with advice as to what cars best suit their needs. Once consumers buy these cars, they will have to submit a review so as to improve the software’s ability to advise other customers. Explain how this expert system would be created, the roles of developers involved in the process, and how it would progressively increase its knowledge. (15 points)

3- Give at least three specific examples of situations in which robots would be used over humans. (10 points)

4- Explain in detail how a robot process outside information and responds accordingly, utilizing technical terms? (10 points)

5- Discuss, based on technical information, both of the following statements:
a. Robots will surpass human intelligence and they will eventually dominate the world.
b. Humans can become emotionally attached to robots.
(15 points)

6- What instrument is used to determine the effectiveness of a conversational robot and rate the AI engine behind them? How would you yourself know if you are talking to a human or a robot? (10 points)

Send the test to itgs.sass@gmail.com and please do not leave the room until you have checked that the test has arrived.

AI /Expert Systems Recap

Today, we will recap what we have learned on Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Working in pairs, the goal is to develop an open book assessment instrument (test) by using the Test Designer site.

The test must include a total of no less than eight multiple choice, short answer and essay questions, and cover the following keywords and topics:
- AI, Turing test, machine learning, natural language, pattern recognition, expert system, knowledge base, inference engine, heuristics, fuzzy logic, knowledge engineer.
- Roboethics, implications of the evolution of robots and their relations with humans.
- Development of AI engines, construction of a knowledge base.

The assignment consists of the questions themselves and the writing of model correct answers for all of the questions. You will be graded based on
- Coverage of all topics included.
- How well the questions lend themselves to an open book environment and stimulate analysis and learning of the above topics.

The tests, together with their answers, must be submitted to itgs.sass@gmail.com before the end of the lesson today.

E-commerce

Our next topic in the sequence is E-Commerce. We are all somewhat familiar and have some first-hand experience on E-Commerce, however, we need to analyze some of the technical and theoretical background related to its development and evolution.

We will start by watching three short video segments from VTC.com, a siet dedicated to offer Computer Software Training.

You can learn more about E-Commerce from the online MBA program at Mystamford:




Two web sites that provide general information on e-commerce are:

• Basic Guide to E-Commerce


• Business Link Guide to E-Commerce
  
  Another article from Business Link is interesting to alert users about the Risks of E-Commerce.
  

ASSIGNMENT
Our assignment for the day, to be covered in class, consists in answering the following multiple-choice questionnaire:

• Introduction to E-Commerce Multiple Choice Quiz

In pairs, research the answers to each question until you score all right answers. When you have done so, check your answers with me since I will be asking you a few oral questions on the topic. DO NOT LEAVE THE CLASS WITHOUT ME TICKING YOU OFF THE LIST FOR HAVING COMPLETED THE ASSIGNMENT

Presentation

We have covered several technical topics lately, and this assignment will focus on discussing some of the implications on individuals and societies of the their technological applications.
Working in groups of 3 students, you will develop a PowerPoint presentation that addresses one of the following topics/statements:

- Users are forced into buying expensive computers in order to sustain operating systems that do not give extended functionality. Open source operating systems would not require a constant upgrading.
- Most organizations or firms do not adequately address the issue of ergonomics and as such millions of dollars are lost every year as a consequence of repetitive stress injuries.
- In the future, most people will work from home and many important social interactions will be lost, as well as the ability to function as a team.
- Passwords are an unsafe and inadequate method to gain data access. Biometric recognition will be the standard in the near future, since affordable and accurate biometric recognition methods are now available.

Each presentation must address the above issues including external links, at least two multimedia elements (videos) linked from the presentation, and arrive at a conclusion with respect to the statement presented. You must email your finished presentation to itgs.sass@gmail.com by the end of teh lesson on Wednesday, April 21st.
During the first lesson, the plan for the presentation must be drawn up and approved. You will not actually start working on the presentation but rather identify how you will tackle it as well as finding the links and resources that you plan to include.

In order to learn about effective and ineffective PowerPoint presentations, we will browse the Death by PowerPoint presentation.

Search Engines Test

Answer all questions, save them to a Word file, name it with your surname and submit it to itgs.sass@gmail.com DO NOT LEAVE THE LAB UNTIL YOU HAVE CHECKED THAT I RECEIVED THE FILE. The questions have been written so that you are able to analyze and respond by demonstrating your mastery of the topics. PLEASE DO NOT COPY FROM WEB SITES. 1- A student at our computer lab is typing in the address www.yahoo.com. Explain in detail the internal process that takes place from that moment until the student gets the page loaded on the screen. 2- What criteria would you use to validate a web site? 3- A friend of yours wants to create a new search engine. Explain to him what he would need to do, including advice on how to make his search engine efficient in retrieving results. 4- What criteria are used to rate a search engine? 5- Can search engines be manipulated to individual or an organization’s advantage? How is that done? 6- What are search engine designers trying to achieve in terms of future capabilities of search engines?

Search engines blog post

Your assignment consists of two parts:

- During the first part of the lesson, individually, you will research and find one article related to:

• Inner workings of search engines.
• SEO. Google bombing.
• Gaming search engines.
• Future of search engines.
• Controversies, any news issues related to search engines.

- You will then post the video, article or link on your blog, with a shot personal comment on what the article is about and why it is relevant to our topics.

- During the second part of the lesson, you will read other people’s posts and post comments on at least 3 of these posts.

You will be assessed on the quality of your own posts and the comments that you post on other people’s blogs.