Free Cloud Storage (24 GB)

It has been so easy now to store your data in cloud using many different services. See below:

• www.box.com provides 5 GB free and 25 GB for $9.99/month
• www.dropbox.com provides 2 GB free and 100 GB for $10/month
• www.sugarsync.com provides 5 GB free and 60 GB for $9.99/month
• drive.google.com provides 5 GB free and 200 GB for $9.99/month
• windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/home provides 7 GB free and 20 GB for $10/year 

It is a challenge to take advantage of all of them at the same time. A new service at http://otixo.com/ allows you to manage multiple cloud services with a single login. As per the website, you  can 

• Search and find your files across many cloud-based services in one simple step.
• Copy and Move files from one service to another without downloading to your computer. It's as easy as drag-and-drop!
• Share files with your friends and colleagues.

In addition, http://www.yousendit.com/ can be used to send large files.

Free Webinar on MIMO in 4G Wireless

My friend's company Uspurtek LLC is organizing a free Webinar on MIMO in 4G Wireless.

Date and Time:
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Central Time

For registration:
http://www.uspurtek.com/

Learn from industry experienced and Licensed Professional Engineers, how MIMO is revolutionizing the world of 4G Wireless Broadband Communications. MIMO stands for Multiple Input Multiple Output and this new Antenna Technology allows the wireless communication standards to push up the data rates and reliability of current wireless communication networks.
This 1 hour live and interactive webinar aims to provide an exciting learning experience in the comfort of your desk. Participants will earn 1 Professional Deveopment Hour (PDH) for meeting their learning objectives.

Participants Will:
• Understand the basics of MIMO
• Learn how the benefits from MIMO are realized
• Learn the basics of Antenna Diversity, Beamforming and SDM
• Recognize the applications of MIMO in WiFi, WiMax and LTE
• Appreciate the not so far future of massive MIMO
• Earn 1 Professional Development Hour (PDH)
 
Who Should Attend:
• Telecom Professionals expecting to expand their understanding of MIMO
• Young Engineers, Recent Graduates and Students with interest in MIMO
• Licensed & Professional Engineers with interest in MIMO
• Technology Sales and Marketing Professionals with interest in MIMO
__________________________________________________________________
Presenter:
• Iqbal Singh Josan
• Licensed Professional Engineer
• Senior Member IEEE
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/iqbalsinghjosan
• Twitter: @uspurtek

Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato

Natural Science Center, Greensboro has an exhibition of mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico. I went to see them on the very first day. It is very interesting that how these mummies were formed. Only 1 in 100 bodies buried in Guanajuato ever experience the mysterious process of natural mummification. Unlike bodies that are "artificially" mummified through an embalming and wrapping process, accidental mummies form only in certain climates and conditions.
The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato features 30 mummies on loan from the Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato (Museum of The Mummies).
Here is the press release of this exhibition:
http://www.natsci.org/about/newsroom/documents/Accidental%20Mummies%20Press%20Release.pdf

The exhibition will stay open until Dec. 30, 2012.
For more information, please visit Natural Science Center website:
www.natsci.org/

IBM ICA CON - April 20, 2012

Keynote Speaker: Bala Rajaraman- IBM Distinguished Engineer

Smart Cloud:
Business needs are driving Information technologies.
Cloud builds on and leverages the standards which preceded this market cycle.
Cloud enables innovation while managing change and complexity.
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC): Open Architecture, Dynamic Interaction, Federated Data, Common Services.
IBM SmartCloud Foundation

IBM Cloud Academy (IBM ICACON) 2012- April 19-20

I am at IBM Cloud Academy in Raleigh to attend 1st International IBM Cloud Academy conference.

Keynote Speaker: Mike King: VP, IBM Global Education
Usage of Cloud:
- Operational Efficiencies and Effectiveness from Shared Services: Enterprise Risk Management across the University of California system
- Campus Buildings are ripe for improving operational efficiencies with cloud: Many universities are saving money using IBM's building management tools.
- World of R&D 2010: Governments around the world are increasing investment in R&D.
- University of California has 25% of system revenue from funded research.
- Over $60B in research annual funding to US academic institutions, and growing globally.
- North Carolina State University, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, University of Bari, Italy, University of Warwick, UK.

IBM Watson System:
- Understands natural language and human speech.
- Generates and evaluates hypothesis for better outcomes.
- Adapts and learns from user selections and responses.

Q: Can the future of education become a more outcome-focused continuum supporting lifelong learning?
-Technology Immersions- Any device learning
- Personal Learning Paths- Student-centered processes
- Knowledge Skills- Learning communities
- Global Integration- Service specialization
- Economic Alignment- Systemic view of education

IBM Smarter Education Framework integrates analytics with partners, such as Desire2LEarn, to improve student outcomes.
- In Hamilton County, Tennessee's department of Education uses predictive analytics to improve student achievement: County achieved 8% increase in the graduation rate.
- Mobile County Public Schools implemented system for early intervention.
- Alabama State Dept of Education improves strategy decision making and student achievement with integrated data analytics.

Keynote Address: From Computational Thinking to Computational Values

Hal Abelson, MIT received award for outstanding contribution for computer science education. He delivered the keynote on Mar 3, 2012. He has written a book Structure an Interpretation of Computer Programs. Google has Ngram Viewer, it is like a time machine for word play.

Links:
http://books.google.com/ngrams
An article about it appeared on cnet:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20025979-93.html
A research paper Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books by Jean-Baptise Michel appeared in Science magazine.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644

MIT has made very large number of courses ( 2745 as on date) available free under its OCW program.

MITx is a new online tutoring initiative, it will be launched on Mar 5, 2012.

DSpave@MIT is MIT's institutional repository built to save, share, and search MIT's digital research materials including an increasing number of conference papers, images, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, preprints, technical reports, theses, working papers, and more.

There is a book discussing the issues of copyright of academic work, Who Owns Academic Work ?

BOF session: Teaching with App Inventor for Android

Presenter: Jeff Gray, Univ. of Alabama

App Inventor for Android is a visual blocks language for building mobile apps. Like Scratch, the language’s drag-and-drop blocks interface significantly lowers the barrier to entry. Beginners can immediately build apps that interface with mobile technology (e.g., GPS, Text-to-speech, SMS Texting) and build apps that have a real-world impact. App Inventor has moved to MIT Center for Mobile Learning from Google.

I have used it myself, it took me 30 minutes to create an example app. I did it when it was still hosted at Google App Inventor website.

New link of App Inventor
http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/  This has a lot of useful resources to teach from middle school students to Master level students.

There is a book App Inventor: Create Your Own Android Apps available for sale at amazon.com .

BOF session: Teaching Open Source

Presenters: Heidi Ellis, Sebastian Dziallas, Mel Chua, Karl Wurst

The session is on how to involve students from a wide range of backgrounds in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects. The notes of discussion can be found at

http://openetherpad.org/tos-bof-sigcse-2012


Teaching open source link (POSSE):
http://teachingopensource.org

Open source projects can be found at the following links:
http://xcitegroup.org/
http://hfoss.org/
www.ohloh.net
www.sourceforge.net

50 ways to be a FOSSer
http://xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=f:50ways

Online Collaboration: Classroom Salon

I found this paper very  interesting. The presentation was done by John Barr, Ithaca College and Ananda Gunawardena, Carnegie Mellon. Classroom Salon is an on-line social collaboration tool that allows instructors to create, manage, and analyze social networks (called Salons) to enhance student learning. Students in a Salon can cooperatively create, comment on, and modify documents. Classroom Salon provides tools that allow the instructor to monitor the social networks and gauge both student participation and individual effectiveness.
It is very similar to Facebook, but it has analytic components to allow instructor to see how many comments has been posted by each student.
Link to create your own salon.

http://www.classroomsalon.org/

SIGCSE 2012: Lunch at The Pit Barbecue

I joined Maureen Biggers (Indiana University), Monika Witoslawski (Michigan State), Chunbo Chu (Franklin University) on lunch at The Pit Authentic Barbecue , close to convention center. Surprisingly, I could find many vegetarian entrees. I ordered their barbecue tofu with fried okra and sweet potato fried, enjoyed eating them. It was a lot of food, I could not have finished this whole plate myself. Interestingly, when the plate arrived, tofu looked like chicken, but I was told that it was made out of raw soya, hence texture looked like chicken.
Website of the restaurant:

http://www.thepit-raleigh.com/

SIGCSE Supporter session by Microsoft

I am at SIGCSE in Raleigh for next 3 days. Right now, I am sitting is a session on Empowering Students: Teaching Software Development with Windows Phone, being presented by Rob Miles from University of Hull, UK. This is a very interesting session. His website is www.robmiles.com . He has published books on Java, C# and Windows Phone programming. They are available for download from
http://www.csharpcourse.com/
Microsoft has presentations setup at their booth on the following:
TouchDevelop
Pex4fun
Project Hawaii
Kinect for Windows
Try F#
.NET Gadgeteer
XNA Game Studio 4.0
Kodu
Windows Phone
Windows 8
Imagine Cup
Academic Search
Windows Azure
DreamSpark

I will try to find about all these products and how I can use them in my courses. As educator, you can join Microsoft portal for educators at
www.microsoft.com/faculty

Microsoft has another session Creative Uses for Kinect in Teaching.
- Kinect has 4 microphones.
- You can write Kinect applications from C++ or .NET code.
- Kinect can be used from WPF, XNA also.