Intel Software Network Blogs » Mary Alessini (Intel) http://softwareblogs.intel.com Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:50:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 en Randy Pausch, teaching parallel programming concepts, and engaging kids for CS future http://softwareblogs.intel.com/2008/04/07/randy-pausch-teaching-parallel-programming-concepts-and-engaging-kids-for-cs-future/ http://softwareblogs.intel.com/2008/04/07/randy-pausch-teaching-parallel-programming-concepts-and-engaging-kids-for-cs-future/#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:41:25 +0000 Mary Alessini (Intel) http://softwareblogs.intel.com/2008/04/07/randy-pausch-teaching-parallel-programming-concepts-and-engaging-kids-for-cs-future/ I was at SIGCSE with Michael Wrinn and others from Intel. In the first keynote there, I was introduced to Randy and his work by Dennis Cosgrove and Wanda Dann. Randy was unable to be there and do the keynote because he was in Washington, testifying to the US Congress about funding for pancreatic cancer research. If you do not know Randy and his work, you must watch The Last Lecture. You do not want to be the only one who hasn't. Here in the US, Diane Sawyer/ABC are doing a TV program this Wednesday, April 9th at 10pm eastern. Ok, then, as I was saying, Dennis and Wanda were covering for Randy, and I got to talk to Wanda later in the day about her work on the Alice Project at Carnegie Mellon and more. We all hear a lot these days about the dropping enrollment rates in the US (is this happening globally?) for computer sciences and math programs. And with the SIGCSE focus on diversity, we touched on what was happening to girls specifically. Why are they disengaging from this or not even interested in the first place? Wanda has seen that it is not apparent to the student how this future course of study will lead to their contribution to society. They chose alternate areas of study where the connection is more clear. So, that is one challenge, how can we address it? Another challenge: we are asking CS faculty to add courseware/lessons on material (parallel programming) that had been taught only at advanced stages in the curricula or as electives – how are they supposed to do it? See Sam Midkiff's discussion on this; what do you think it will take?And finally (for today), the industry is going to keep evolving the technology, as witnessed in Michael's SIGCSE presentation "Confronting Manycore," how can we help faculty better? Should we start working with K-12? Is there more that we can be doing with the undergrad faculty?

I look forward to the discussion.

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