Vol 4 No 3 May 2009

15 February 2009 Sunday
sponsored by S. Satorre


This Month's Issue
~May Events
~Tech News: Classroom Tools: Teaching Introductory Programming with Jeliot
~Video/PPT Tutorials: C++ Beginner Tutorials
~Download of the Month: Songbird
~On The Lighter Side... Basic Fire Safety



Summer's sun is ending quite prematurely this season, as the rainy months barge in. have you been missing CCSBoost for a few months? Well, sometimes contributors and writers need their vacations too. :)


College Events
May 30: Final Exam for Summer Term


Faculty Events
Monthly meeting TBA



Tech News
Classroom Tools: Teaching Introductory Programming with Jeliot
It is not news to computer programming teachers that a deep understanding
of even simple programming concepts can be difficult to students to acquire.
However, student understanding can be improved by using a program animation
system that dynamically illustrates the execution of a program or segment of
code so that students can "see" what is happening in the computer.

Jeliot is a code animation system that accepts a Java program as input and
automatically creates an animation of its execution including memory allocation,
control flow, and expression evaluation. Jeliot produces instantaneous animation,
allowing teachers to demonstrate how to modify programs in response to questions
and to review concepts with a history of recent animation frames. Teachers
can also add annotations to point out important events, for example, "leaving the while loop".

Jeliot was developed as a collaborative project supervised by Morderchai Ben-Ari at the
Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and Erkki Sutinen at the University of Joensuu in Finland. This classroom tool has proved to be especially suited for improving the learning of average students who are capable of understanding abstract CS concepts, but need some help to deepen their comprehension.

Currently, Jeliot is use in Israel, Finland, Germany, Spain, U.S., and Brazil.

For more information about Jeliot, you may visit this site (http://cs.joensuu.fi/jeliot/index.php).





Video/PPT Tutorials
C++ Beginner Tutorials
Begin programming C++ with these C++ video tutorials.
They will get you started programming C++ from the very beginning--starting with installing a free Microsoft compiler.





Download of the Month
Songbird
Songbird is an open-source customizable music player that's under active development. Click here.




On the Lighter Side...
Basic Fire Safety
Click here.