Google Award Program stimulates Journalism and CS collaboration

Posted by Krishna Bharat, Distinguished Research Scientist

Last fall, Google invited academic researchers to participate in a Computational Journalism awards program focused on the intersection of Computer Science and Journalism. We solicited proposals for original research projects relevant to today’s fast evolving news industry.

As technology continues to shape and be shaped by the media landscape, applicants were asked to rethink traditional models and roles in the ecosystem, and reimagine the lifecycle of the news story in the online world. We encouraged them to develop innovative tools and open source software that could benefit readers and be game-changers for reporters and publishers. Each award includes funding of $60,000 in cash and $20,000 in computing credits on Google’s Cloud Platform.

We congratulate the recipients of these awards, whose projects are described below, and look forward to the results of their research. Stay tuned for updates on their progress.

Larry Birnbaum, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Journalism, Northwestern University
Project: Thematic Characterization of News Stories
This project aims to develop computational methods for identifying abstract themes or "angles" in news stories, e.g., seeing a story as an instance of "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps," or as a "David vs. Goliath" story. In collaboration with journalism and computer science students, we will develop applications utilizing these methods in the creation, distribution, and consumption of news content.

Irfan Essa, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
Project: Tracing Reuse in Political Language
Our goal in this project is to research, and then develop a data-mining tool that allows an online researcher to find and trace language reuse. By language reuse, we specifically mean: Can we find if in a current text some language was used that can be traced back to some other text or script. The technical innovation in this project is aimed at (1) identifying linguistic reuse in documents as well as other forms of material, which can be converted to text, and therefore includes political speeches and videos. Another innovation will be in (2) how linguistic reuse can be traced through the web and online social networks.

Susan McGregor, Assistant Director, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
Project: InfoScribe
InfoScribe is a collaborative web platform that lets citizens participate in investigative journalism projects by digitizing select data from scanned document sets uploaded by journalists. One of InfoScribes primary research goals is to explore how community participation in journalistic activities can help improve their accuracy, transparency and impact. Additionally, InfoScribe seeks to build and expand upon understandings of how computer vision and statistical inference can be most efficiently combined with human effort in the completion of complex tasks.

Paul Resnick, Professor, University of Michigan School of Information
Project: RumorLens
RumorLens is a tool that will aid journalists in finding posts that spread or correct a particular rumor on Twitter, by exploring the size of the audiences that those posts have reached. In the collection phase, the user provides one or a few exemplar tweets and then manually classifies a few hundred others as spreading the rumor, correcting it, or labeling it as unrelated. This enables automatic retrieval and classification of remaining tweets, which are then presented in an interactive visualization that shows audience sizes.

Ryan Thornburg, Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Project: Public Records Dashboard for Small Newsrooms
Building off our Knight News Challenge effort to bring data-driven journalism to readers of rural newspaper websites, we are developing an internal newsroom tool that will alert reporters and editors to potential story tips found in public data. Our project aims to lower the cost of finding in public data sets stories that shine light in dark places, hold powerful people accountable, and explain our increasingly complex and interconnected world. (Public facing site for the data acquisition element of the project at http://open-nc.org)

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Poker program Cepheus is unbeatable

My research group has been developing computer poker applications for many years so it was with considerable interest to see a headline in the Guardian newspaper that read "Poker program Cepheus is unbeatable, claim scientists." Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada, who have long been the leading research group in computer poker, have used "four thousand computer processors, each handling six billion hands every second. With each game Cepheus [the name of their system] played, the program built up a database of cards dealt, betting decisions and outcomes. At the end of the marathon training session, the database contained 11 terabytes of information on calls, raises and folds for every hand a player could have." It will be interesting to see if Cepheus competes in the annual Computer Poker Competition and if it shows a step change in performance. However, we will have to wait until 2016 for the next competition.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

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Summer Games Learn to Program

Posted by Jennifer Vaden Barth, Executive Assistant

Looking for ways to engage your kids in constructive, meaningful learning? We’ve just launched Blockly Games, our next extension of Blockly, a web­-based graphical programming environment. As part of the generation of new programming environments that provide a more accessible introduction to coding, Blockly Games allows users to create and run programs by arranging blocks with a simple click, drag and drop.

Blockly Games requires little or no typing, which facilitates young or novice programmers to learn core coding principles in an intuitive way. By minimizing the use of syntax, users are able to focus on the logic and concepts used by computer scientists, progressing at their own pace as they venture through mazes and more advanced arenas.

Blockly was featured during the 2013 Computer Science Education week where people of all ages tried programming for the first time. Blockly is universally accessible with translations for a number of languages, including German, Vietnamese, Russian and even Klingon.

We encourage you and your child to explore Blockly Games, where novice programmers of any age begin to learn together. With Blockly Games, the whole family can learn and master basic computer science concepts.

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20 Resources for Teaching Kids How to Program Code

Educators now admit that the past decades of ITC teaching were flawed. Teaching kids to use MS Word or PowerPoint is not empowering them to join the IT revolution. Current thinking is that everyone should know how to code (at least the fundamentals). This will help everyone understand that computer programs arent something magical, that only a select few can create, but a tool anyone can use. To this end more and more ways of teaching kids to code are being created. This article lists "20 Resources for Teaching Kids How to Program & Code".



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Program for calculator in JAVA

This is the source code for a calculater in java

import java.io.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.applet.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.event.*;

public class Calculator extends JApplet implements ActionListener
{
int choice;
double a,b, result = 0;
String str;
JTextField jt;
JButton btn0, btn1, btn2, btn3, btn4, btn5, btn6, btn7, btn8, btn9;
JButton btnAdd, btnSub, btnMul, btnDiv, btnEqual, btnDot, btnCl;
JPanel pn1, pn2;
Container cp;
public void init() // Initializing Applet & its Components
{
cp = getContentPane();
cp.setLayout ( new BorderLayout() );
jt = new JTextField(10);
jt.setHorizontalAlignment(4);
pn1 = new JPanel();
pn2 = new JPanel();
pn1.setLayout ( new FlowLayout() );
pn2.setLayout ( new GridLayout(4, 4) );
btnCl = new JButton ("Clear");
btn0 = new JButton ("0");
btn1 = new JButton ("1");
btn2 = new JButton ("2");
btn3 = new JButton ("3");
btn4 = new JButton ("4");
btn5 = new JButton ("5");
btn6 = new JButton ("6");
btn7 = new JButton ("7");
btn8 = new JButton ("8");
btn9 = new JButton ("9");
btnAdd = new JButton ("+");
btnSub = new JButton ("-");
btnMul = new JButton ("*");
btnDiv = new JButton ("/");
btnEqual = new JButton ("=");
btnDot = new JButton (".");
addButtons();
addListeners();
pn1.add (jt);
pn1.add (btnCl);
cp.add (pn1, BorderLayout.NORTH);
cp.add (pn2, BorderLayout.CENTER);
jt.setText("");
}

public void addListeners() // Adding Listeners to all Components
{
btn0.addActionListener ( this );
btn1.addActionListener ( this );
btn2.addActionListener ( this );
btn3.addActionListener ( this );
btn4.addActionListener ( this );
btn5.addActionListener ( this );
btn6.addActionListener ( this );
btn7.addActionListener ( this );
btn8.addActionListener ( this );
btn9.addActionListener ( this );
btnDot.addActionListener ( this );
btnCl.addActionListener ( this );
btnAdd.addActionListener ( this );
btnSub.addActionListener ( this );
btnMul.addActionListener ( this );
btnDiv.addActionListener ( this );
btnEqual.addActionListener ( this );
}

public void addButtons() // Adding all Components to JPanel
{
pn2.add ( btn7 );
pn2.add ( btn8 );
pn2.add ( btn9 );
pn2.add ( btnDiv );
pn2.add ( btn4 );
pn2.add ( btn5 );
pn2.add ( btn6 );
pn2.add ( btnMul );
pn2.add ( btn1 );
pn2.add ( btn2 );
pn2.add ( btn3 );
pn2.add ( btnSub );
pn2.add ( btn0 );
pn2.add ( btnDot );
pn2.add ( btnAdd );
pn2.add ( btnEqual );
}
public void operation(double a, double b, int op)
{
switch ( choice )
{
case 1 :
{ result = a + b; break; }
case 2 :
{ result = a - b; break; }
case 3 :
{ result = a * b; break; }
case 4 :
{ result = a / b; break; }
default :
{ jt.setText("0"); break; }
}
}

public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) // Actions to be performed
{ // whenever event is triggered
try
{
str = (String)e.getActionCommand();
if ( str = = "+" )
{
a=Double.parseDouble (jt.getText());
jt.setText("");
choice = 1;
}
else if ( str = = "-" )
{
a=Double.parseDouble (jt.getText());
jt.setText("");
choice = 2;
}
else if ( str = = "*" )
{
a=Double.parseDouble (jt.getText());
jt.setText("");
choice = 3;
}
else if ( str = = "/" )
{
a=Double.parseDouble (jt.getText());
jt.setText("");
choice = 4;
}
else if ( str = = "=" )
{
b = Double.parseDouble (jt.getText());
operation(a, b, choice);
jt.setText("");
System.out.println(result);
}
else if ( str = = "Clear" )
{
jt.setText("");
choice = 0;
a = b = result = 0;
}
else
{
jt.setText( jt.getText() +str );
}
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
jt.setText("Invalid Operation");
System.out.println("Invalid Operation");
}
}
}

//<applet code="Calculator.class" width=200 height=200></applet>

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Announcing the Google CS Engagement Small Awards Program

Posted by Leslie Yeh Johnson, University Relations

(cross-posted on the Google for Education blog)

College students are more interested than ever in studying computer science. There has been an unprecedented increase in enrollment in Computer Science undergraduate programs over the past six years. Harvard University’s popular introductory CS course CS50 has recently claimed the spot as the most enrolled course on campus. An astounding 50% of Harvey Mudd’s graduates received engineering degrees this year. However, while the overall number of students in introductory computer science courses continue to climb, the number of students who go on to complete undergraduate degrees in this field, particularly among women and under-represented minorities, does not match this increase in individual course enrollment (2013 Taulbee Survey).

Recent findings show that while students may begin a CS degree program, retaining students after their first year remains an issue. Research indicates that one of the strongest factors in the retention of students in undergraduate CS degrees is early exposure to engaging courses and course material, such as high quality assignments that are meaningful and relevant to the student’s life or classroom activities that encourage student-to-student interaction. When an instructor or department imbeds these practices into the introductory CS classroom, students remain excited about CS and are more likely to complete their undergraduate CS degree.

At Google we believe in the importance of preparing the next generation of computer scientists. To this end, we’ve created the CS Engagement Small Grants Program to support educators teaching introductory computer science courses in reaching their engagement and retention goals. We’ll give unrestricted gifts of $5,000 to the selected applicants’ universities, towards the execution of engaging CS1 or CS2 courses in the 2014-2015 school year. We encourage educators who are teaching CS1 and CS2 courses at the post-secondary level to apply to the Google CS Engagement Small Grants Program. Applications will be accepted through November 15, 2014 and will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. If you’re interested in applying, please check out the Call for Proposals.

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Meet Hopscotch the iOS app teaching kids how to program

Ive blogged before about the growing movement to teach young children how to program. Hopscotch is a new iPad app that lets kids drag and drop blocks of code to create their own programs. Kids can make games, stories, animations, interactive art, apps...if they can imagine it, they can build it with Hopscotch. But the important thing about teaching kids to code is not just that theyll have fun but theyll learn problem solving, critical thinking, and the fundamentals of computer programming. Check Hopscotch out its free and you dont have to be a kid to use it.

from The Universal Machine http://universal-machine.blogspot.com/

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