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1) Read the article: “In Defense of Cheating” by Don Norman; accessible via: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/InDefenseOfCheating.html and comment on the following issue: do you agree or disagree with Norman’s position? Why? I agree with Norman's position. The contemporary way of learning may work for some disciplines, but for computer science, it doesn't and Norman's points are extremely accurate. If courses are designed to teach specific languages or technologies (which many of them tend to do), most of these will be outdated by the time we've graduated. The point of college is to prepare us for the future and the best way to do that is to prepare us to adapt to the "real world", where everything is continually evolving. how does his view relate to your own experience in your school, university, and working life (in case you have worked somewhere sometimes)? I've been working as an intern at Qwest Communications' IT department. I learned that "real world" jobs require vast amounts of knowledge, so much that it'd be impossible to prepare for it in a college environment. For instance, we work with DotNet (Microsoft) framework and Weblogic (BEA) framework for servers. Within the next few weeks, we're adding Linux servers to the mix. Though similar in purpose, each server environment is completely different within its inner workings. Neither of which I learned about in my college courses and had to learn on my own. This meant asking co-workers, scanning the Internet, reading documentation, etc. But I don't expect CU to teach me about DotNet or WebLogic. These requirements are unique to Qwest. The point is that each graduate will work for a different company with vastly different job requirements and it'd be impossible for schools to teach us about everything. Colleges should really look into broader, more adaptive curriculums where students are taught how to teach themselves. 2) Visit one of the following websites and explore it as a medium for collaboration http://www.experts-exchange.com/ http://www.mamamedia.com 3) Briefly discuss for your chosen website: what did you find interesting about it? It was a great place to get information. Topics are grouped into themes (storage, OS, DB, security, programming, etc). This is useful for someone looking for help on particular subjects. You can even ask questions where experts or your peers can give you an answer. in which way is it related to “collaboration”? It allows people working in the same field, no matter what their physical location, to help each other. This is useful because everyone is familiar to the same subject and have likely encounter the same problems. In addition, people may propose different solutions, allowing members to consider the alternatives and a potentially better solution. how does it compare with the Swiki used for our class? This is similar to the Swiki because it connects people who are related to the subject (we all have this class and all have the same assignments) and allows us to collaborate (post questions, post answers, etc). 4) which is your favorite website / system in support of collaboration (briefly justify your opinion)! Subversion, a version control system. It's useful for large-scale programming projects where multiple programmers are involved. This system allows programmers to work on the same code tree and organizes/streamlines the changes. We used this system for my Wireless Sensor Networks class and it became useful in our course project (a wireless-node navigation system). Each student worked on a piece of the navigation system and all code was stored in a central Subversion repository. That way, all students had access to all the code for the system, making it much easier to make modifications. 5) have you ever read a book(s) / article(s) (or books) about collaboration? if yes: choose the most important one This is a review for a recent hip-hop album by a group called "The Foreign Exchange", titled "Connected". "Foreign Exchange" is comprised of a respected rapper from North Carolina (Phonte) and an unknown producer from the Netherlands (Nicolay). Phonte found out about Nicolay from Nicolay's posting of his music production on highly-regarded hip-hop site OkayPlayer.com. They've never met in person and recording of the album never occured in the same studio. Instead, they passed instrumentals and vocals back and forth over Instant Messanger. The final product was released to high critical acclaim, both for its quality and innovative origin. http://www.hiphopsite.com/SEARCH/?ITEM=F2AB95AC-B6D8-4396-BF64-F4AFA18D1671#review provide title and one paragraph what you found interesting about it! HipHopSite.com Album Review: The Foreign Exchange - Connected "The best of both worlds has been redefined. When Phonte of Little Brother fame was searching Okayplayer.com, he stumbled across a post that simply said to "check out these beats." Phonte decided to check out the fledgling producer and found something mind-blowing - a producer whose style rivals the likes of his own in-house beatsmith 9th Wonder. A producer who encompasses the styles of funk, soul and hip-hop and takes it to a level that has not been heard recently. The producer's name was Nicolay. The problem was, Nicolay didn't reside in the same city as Phonte, as a matter of fact Nicolay didn't even stay in the same country. So how would the two make it work? Over the past year and a half, the duo managed to hook up via the Internet, and bounced concepts, beats, and vocals off of each other until it concluded with the conception of Connected, under the guise of Foreign Exchange. Jay-Z and R. Kelly, eat your hearts out because this duo has taken on the concept and transported it to another level altogether." - Andreas Hale This article shows how technology can be used for collaboration. In this case, two talented artists who have never met in person can collaborate and create music that would not be possible without modern technology. Listening to this album, its amazing that such a unified, seamless sound can be created by artists who were never in the studio together.
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