Opinion: Curation Software to use or not to use?

Taken from: http://apslandt.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/opinion-curation-software-to-use-or-not.html



What is curation software?
The number of resources on the internet is increasing in most areas and search engines can are helpful but it is not the same as someone telling you this is a good resource. Digital curation takes this further allowing people to produce lists of internet resources that can be dynamically updated but filtered resources - if you like a dynamic reading list of web resources.

Two free example tools are shown below Scoop.it and paper.li

1. Scoopit(http://www.scoop.it)

 


Two examples sites used in my teaching are shown here:

artificial intelligence for students

Robot resource


















The good feature of scoop.its is you have control over what content you present, you are the filter. Content suggestions are also made, but it is up to you if you select them. The aim is to increase the amount of student suggested content. 



2. Paper.li (www.paper.li)

Allows you to set up a newspaper-like resource that takes feeds from blogs, rss feeds and if you want Twitter. Unlike scoop.it you have control over the feeds you choose but less control over the content displayed; so careful selection of the feeds is needed

Paper.li resource

An example of what other universities are doing in this area can be found at Curtin University.

7th China – Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Orientated Education at University of Northampton on 23-24th May 2011.

The 7th China – Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Orientated Education is to be hosted by the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton on 23-24th May 2011. 

This is only the third time the symposium has been held in Europe. Previous locations:

• 1st China-Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Oriented Education was held in HIT, Harbin.
• The 2nd  was again held in HIT, Harbin.
• The 3rd CIES-SIOE was held in DIT, Dublin, in Feb. 2007.
• The 4th CEISIE  was held in Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China in January 2008.
• The 5th CEISIE was held in University of Bordeaux, France in May 2009.
• The 6th CEISIE was held in Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China in May 2010.

The theme is Green Computing but the following topics are appropriate.

• Ethos for industry oriented software education
  
• Model for industry oriented software education
  
• Curriculum for industry oriented software education
  
• Quality assurance and evaluation in industry oriented
  
• Software education
  
• E-Learning and support tools
  
• Internationalization of software education
  
• Cooperation model for industries and software education
  
• Green computing and the role of higher education
  
• Behavioural and technological aspects of green IT
  
• Innovation and evaluation of software education.

To support potential Chinese participants, given that the costs of travel to Europe are not cheap the School of Science and Technology has offered to sponsor China based delegates by paying 50% of their registration fee. 

The deadline for paper submissions is 21st January 2011. Authors are invited to submit research contributions or practical experience reports related to the symposium topics in the form of word document file (doc/docx). Submission of FULL paper, normally within four pages must be sent by email to tricia.goodchild@northampton.ac.ukor guowh@hit.edu.cn (see contact information). 

Submissions should be written in English.

The title paragraph should include: title, each author’s name and affiliation, full communication address (correspondence will be sent to the first-named author unless otherwise indicated). The papers will be evaluated by the international programme committee.

The accepted papers will be presented in a session of the symposium and be published in a volume of proceedings

The symposium website has further details.

Innovative use of Robots and Graphical Programming in Software Education

Two members of the computing division recently presented a paper "Innovative use of Robots and Graphical Programming in Software Education " at  6th China Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Oriented Education (CEISIE2010) Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an China.

Abstract: Problem solving is an important skill for a computer scientist. Mindstorm based robots have been used previously, for teaching programming to computing and engineering students here we look at problem solving. These approaches focus upon the development of problem solving skills and not on learning a new programming language from the outset. Therefore, initially, any programming is kept simple with the minimum of commands, with „objects‟ unknowingly used, as these are later introduced/learnt during the programming stage of the computing module. This work suggests that using LEGO robots within the teaching of problem solving and the resulting java GUI emulation has some benefits for the students when learning to program. 

More details can be found in the following article :

Turner S and Hill G (2010) "Innovative use of Robots and Graphical Programming in Software Education" Computer Education Ser. 117 No. 9 pp 54-57 ISSN: 1672-5913