Last night I had the opportunity to join several local entrepreneurs and non-profit leaders to talk about how AI is impacting non-profit fundraising. I don’t know very much about fundraising myself, but Westmont is developing a pretty robust machine learning infrastructure to help guide the campus fundraising efforts. I had something to say about machine…
iOS Development for Creative Entreprenuers For Mayterm 2018 the Westmont Computer Science Department is running our successful iOS programming class again. This year we will be trying to work with a new version of Xcode 9.4 and iOS 11 and we are going to shift to teaching the Swift 4 programming language. Most of what we are going…
Abstract Models for Concrete Problems Using Java For Mayterm 2018 I am teaching “Abstract Models for Concrete Problems Using Java”. This is the second programming class in our Computer Science sequence at Westmont College. For the first time we are teaching this course in a hybrid format. That means that you can take it by…
I’m very excited to teach an online Master’s course in the UC Irvine MHCID program for a second year in a row. This is an Interactive Technology Studio and will go through the steps required to build a web app. For this course we are going to be creating an Othello-like game that two people…
CS-010: Design and Implementation of Solutions to Computational Problems For Spring semester 2018 we are teaching a new iteration of our introductory course on programming at Westmont College. This is the first time we have offered the course in the Spring (since I’ve been here) and we are doing it to on-ramp more majors and support…
For Spring semester 2018 I am teaching a senior seminar/capstone class that will read topics on Ethics, Control, and Deception at Westmont College. It’s the third time I’ve taught a senior seminar and I hope this year’s students are as engaged as previous classes. The class has three foci: a Senior Project, Professional Preparation and Critical…
Abstract Models for Concrete Problems Using Java For Spring semester 2018 I am teaching “Abstract Models for Concrete Problems Using Java”. This is the second programming class in our Computer Science sequence at Westmont College. This is the third run of this course. We continue to enhance our drone programming simulator. I really like simulation assignments and…
For Fall semester 2017 I am teaching a course on “Big Data and Information Retrieval” at Westmont College. This is the second time teaching this course and this time we are going to use Amazon Web Services version of Map/Reduce. This course follows the technical history of Big Data starting with the advent of search engines…
CS-010: Design and Implementation of Solutions to Computational Problems For Fall semester 2017 I am teaching an introductory course on programming at Westmont College. This is second time that I’ve offered the course. It remains similar to the first run which is described in more depth here. This time I hope to bring in more in class…
iOS Development For Mayterm 2017 the Westmont Computer Science Department is running our successful iOS programming class again. This year we will be trying to work with a new version of Xcode and iOS. We are still using Objective-C, but this might be the final year that we can do that before Swift becomes the lingua…
I’m very excited to teach this online Master’s course in the UC Irvine MHCID program. After so much time getting the program up and running, now it’s time to go! This is an Interactive Technology Studio and will go through the steps required to build a web app. For this course we are going to…
by Sterling by Sterling by Kitchin and Dodge by Brunton and Nissembaum by Toyama by Knuth by Johnson For Spring semester 2017 I am teaching a senior seminar roughly focussed on Identity, Surveillance, and Deception at Westmont College. It’s the second time I’ve taught a senior seminar and I hope this year’s students are as engaged…
Object-Oriented Programming Gets a New Name For Spring semester 2017 I am teaching a course on “Abstract Models for Concrete Problems Using Java” Programming at Westmont College. This is the second run of this course, but the first time it was called “Object-Oriented Programming” (Details here) We decided to change the name to better explain what…
I’m looking forward to teaching a class in Computer Organization and Architecture this Spring. This is the real nuts and bolts of computer systems. We are going to cover a lot of technical material pretty fast. I just hope the students can get up for this class at 8am! Some of the highlights of the…
I’m super proud to be one of the founding faculty for the Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design program at UCI! This was mainly the result of hard work by Prof. Gillian Hayes with support from myself and Prof. Judy Olson. Of course the entire Informatics department at UCI was supporting the initiative as well. We…
CS-130: Creative Software Architectures for Collaborative Projects For Fall semester 2016 I am teaching a course on collaborative software development. This course is focussed on developing software in teams, so we will be working with a client and trying to deliver a software product at the end of the semester. This is a tricky class because…
CS-010: Design and Implementation of Solutions to Computational Problems For Fall semester 2016 I am teaching an introductory course on Python Programming at Westmont College. This is the first programming course that many students have ever encountered so it should be a great teaching opportunity and possibly a challenge for some of the students. We have a large class…
Together with Sam Kaufman, UCI and Coursera, I’ve launched the final class in a six class specialization on Coursera. It’s called “iOS Capstone: Transreality Game” We designed this one to be the culmination of everything that the students have learned in the previous 5 classes. Over 60,000 students have enrolled so far! The students have a ton…
iOS Development For Mayterm 2016 the Westmont Computer Science Department is trying something new. We are running an intensive iOS 9.0 programming class designed to get upper division students experience working with platform-based computing. Another first is that we are going to be teaching it in the library’s computer lab. This 5-week course is scheduled to meet…
This has been the most fun online course that I’ve put together yet. In 40 lectures, 4 projects and 1 exam we cover everything from geofences and device orientation sensors, to playing sound and making particle emitters, to running the physics engine and interfacing with Game Center. This is the fourth course in an online series of 6…
Citizenfour screening I can’t wait until Thursday March 3rd, because Westmont is hosting a screening of Citizenfour and a post-screening discussion of the themes the movie brings up. Several Westmont faculty were asked to be present at the discussion to help provide insight and perspective on what is a very complicated issue. The movie is…
“Best Practices for iOS User Interface Design” Launched! Getting things out the door is the best feeling in the world because the process of creating them can be so painful. So we have just shipped the third course in an online series of 6 courses that Sam Kaufman and I are developing with UCI Distance Learning for Coursera…
Object-Oriented Teaching For Spring semester 2016 I am teaching a course on “Object-Oriented” Programming at Westmont College. It’s been a long time since I’ve taught a lower-division Computer Science course, but I’m really looking forward to introducing students to Java and object-oriented thinking. So far the group are really newbies to programming (except for one). This…
by Sterling by Sterling by Kitchin and Dodge by Brunton and Nissembaum by Toyama by Knuth by Johnson Senior Seminar For Spring semester 2016 I am teaching a senior seminar roughly focussed on Identity, Surveillance, and Deception at Westmont College. It’s the first time I’ve taught a senior seminar and so far it’s feeling a lot…
Refugee Teach-In at Westmont College Today There will be a one hour teach-in on the Syrian Refugee crisis today at noon on the Westmont College Dining Commons lawn (or Founder’s if raining). I was asked to speak to the vetting-process/security-threat angle briefly. Between handling the immigration of my oldest son, a Top Secret clearance in…
Today the second course in an online series of 6 courses that Sam Kaufman and I are developing with UCI Distance Learning for Coursera goes live. In it we cover some of the practical details of working with secure services in iOS such as OAuth 2.0 and the app release process. Like the first one, this was…
For Fall semester 2015 I am teaching a course on “Information Retrieval” at Westmont College. This is my first time teaching over a semester and I’m looking forward to investigating some new big data tools like Apache Spark! The course webpage can be found here: http://djp3.westmont.edu/classes/2015_09_CS150/structure.html
For Fall semester 2015 I am teaching a new course on “Software Engineering” at Westmont College. This is my first time teaching over a semester and I’m looking forward to investigating some new tools like Pivotal Tracker! The course webpage can be found here: http://djp3.westmont.edu/classes/2015_09_CS130/structure.html
Today the first course in an online series of 6 courses that Sam Kaufman and I am developing with UCI Distance Learning for Coursera goes live. This was a *ton* of work. But in the meantime I got to get a green screen studio for my garage and learn a lot about video production and a…
Prof. Bill Maurer and I are teaching a second version of the online class called “From Barter to Bitcoin: Society, Tech and Future Money” during UC Irvine’s Summer Session 2015. We’ve got some great new interviews lined up for this time around and are updating the class with lots of new information on Silk Road and…
In Spring Quarter 2015 I will be teaching a course on “Mobile and Ubiquitous Games”. This isn’t a course about making Angry Birds, it’s a course about games that bleed into the real world and leave the confines of devices. It is about using technology to have fun, while layering game mechanics on top of real…
I just got back from a trip to Haiti that I took with a diverse group of people from my church. While there I was working with Haitian kids, schools and churches and studying intermittent infrastructures. I produced a series of videos that describe the infrastructure hacks that I saw while I was there. I’m…
Prof. Bill Tomlinson, Prof. Bonnie Nardi and I, along with TA support from Marcel Pufal and Aubrey Slaughter are teaching a class on Global Disruption and Information Technology. We are thinking through issues of peak energy and considering how we might use technology to ease us into the long descent. It’s an online course and…
Prof. Bill Maurer and I taught a class called “From Barter to Bitcoin: Society, Tech and Future Money” during UC Irvine’s Summer Session 2014. It was really a blast to do and I enjoyed getting to dig into the bitcoin state of the art. It’s an online course and we have a batch of videos that…