A K-12 NETWORKING AND COMPUTING NEWSLETTER NETVIEWS VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1, MARCH 1992 COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY FORT COLLINS, CO 80523 INDEX INTRODUCTION 1 EDUCATION 1 ACTIVITIES 2 NETWORK USES 2 CONTRIBUTIONS 3 DISTRIBUTION 3 WORKSHOP 3 APPLICATION 4 CONTACT INFORMATION 4 INTRODUCTION Pat Burns and Dave Zachmann This is the first in a bimonthly series of newsletters dealing with computing and networking in public education. This newsletter is intended to be a forum for the presentation and discussion of gen eral activities in computing and network ing, specifically targeted towards the K- 12 community. This newsletter is an out growth of a project at Colorado State University funded by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The purpose of the project is to assist the K-12 community in incorporating computing and net working in their curricula, as a mecha nism to enhance and extend the educational experience. The project is jointly directed by Drs. Pat Burns and Dave Zachmann. Dr. Burns is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Dr. Zach mann is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics. Dr. Burns is also the Prin cipal Investigator of the Westnet regional network, which provides digital data net working for the states of Arizona, Colo rado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming, and southern Idaho. One particular emphasis, unanimously supported by all in Westnet, continues to be the extension of the network to the K-12 community. Dr. Burns teaches the Freshman Intro duction to Engineering course at Colo rado State University, which heavily involves computing and networking. Dr. Zachmann is the Coordinator of Advanced Technical Computing at Colo rado State University, and is active in the use of visualization in computational systems. Both are fully committed to the concept that computing and networking can significantly impact the quality of K- 12 education. EDUCATION "Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything one ever learned in school." - A. Einstein, Out of My Later Years, On Education, "In science, it is not so much what one knows, but how and why one knows it." - B. Russell, History of Western Philoso phy. Education may be interpreted as teach ing one to think, while training may be interpreted as teaching one to do. It is the theme of this effort that the proper blend of these two approaches is necessary to be maximally effective. Indeed, we per ceive that about 85% education and 15% training is an appropriate division of approaches. "Idols of the Schools is thinking that some blind rule can take the place of judgement." - Francis Bacon. The traditional approach to education is to treat students as recipients of informa tion. Our approach is to treat students as generators of information by requiring them to take the intellectual steps required to gain knowledge. This neces sarily heavily involves hands-on experi ence. We view computational capability as most appropriate to involve students in the process. Computers are largely responsible for the information explo sion. Used properly, computers should serve the educational community in managing this explosion. To this end, we propose the extension of computing infrastructure to the K-12 community. Initially, this will involve primarily high schools. Our goal is the construction of a "seamless web" of computing infrastruc ture from K-Ph.D. These activities are epitomized in the following quote: "The restructuring of the American school is becoming a reality. National, state and local political leaders are sounding the cry for changes which will improve our educational system and glo bal economic clout." Owen Smith, Pro ceedings of the RAM-JET Committee, Colorado State University, 1991. ACTIVITIES In-Service Training Sessions The offering will be phased in over three years. The first year will begin with five in-service training sessions involving from 50 to 80 High and Middle School Teachers from Colorado. The topics to be covered are: In-Service Training Topics: 1. Unix Basics 2.The Internet as a Classroom Resource 3. The Role of High Performance Com puting in Education 4. Symbolic Manipulation in Mathemat ics and Science Classes 5. Visualization as an Educational Tool Summer Workshops, Videotaped Courses We propose to stimulate participation in high performance computing by offering summer workshops to high school teach ers and students. High school teachers may earn credits toward advanced degrees or re-certification credits. Mech anisms for this are already in place through our Division of Continuing Edu cation. Also, some of our regular courses (such as GS-510 Fundamentals of High Performance Computing and Visualiza tion) are offered from 4 to 5 PM, making them available to teachers in the Fort Collins, Boulder and Denver areas. The GS-510 course is also available via vid eotape to teachers at remote sites. Each summer, we shall offer to high school students and teachers in-service courses and workshops in advanced computing and visualization. Separate courses will be offered to teachers and to students. Participants will be encouraged to engage in a state supercomputing competition. A selected set of students will be encouraged to take their results from the state competition, and hone them even further for national supercom puter competitions such as Superquest. Initially, these courses and workshops will utilize the computing facilities at NCAR (National Center for Atmo spheric Research) in Boulder. In future years, the computing facility for high school education at NERSC (National Energy Research Supercomputer Center) in Livermore, California at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will be utilized. It is our hope that participation in the efforts described above will allow stu dents to "hit the ground running" when they encounter their first computer course in the university. Also, we wish to encourage the teaching of computer lan guages in high school, particularly FOR TRAN and C. This appears to have lapsed seriously over the past few years, in favor of teaching spread sheets and word processors.We find this trend dis turbing, as computer languages teach the intellectual skills requisite in problem solving. Curriculum Augmentation Modules CSU professors, working with high school teachers, will develop modules on simulation modeling that will be used to introduce high school students to mathe matical simulation modeling. In the first year, we shall devise six modules. Subse quently, we shall devise new modules, and enhance and further develop existing modules. The modules initially will be designed to be mouse-driven for IBM type PC's with EGA and above graphics screens and eventually for Macintosh architectures. User interfaces employing the Socratic method of education (requiring responses to provocative questions) will be developed. In this way, students will devise their own approaches and under standing of science and mathematics, and be able to extend their efforts with original thinking. Great care will be exercised to ensure that all modules are of the very highest quality. We note that these programs are not AI-based. All will be done in a procedural language, and require an instructor to be present locally to guide the student through the exercise. Some will be coupled with physical experimentation - allowing numerical simulation and modelling to be placed in the context of the real world. Simulation We are confident that this material can be made accessible to a high school student whose background includes algebra and some science (e.g. physics, biology or chemistry). We shall use simple alge braic formulas to model the fundamental principles. For example, a biology stu dent could be introduced to culture growth modelling by beginning with a simple algebraic expression such as, No. of Cells at t2 - No. of Cells at t1 = (Growth Rate)*(t2 - t1) Students will begin by performing calcu lations on a hand-held calculator and graphing their results. The students could then move their calculations to a supercomputer and their tabulation to a graphics screen. Many extensions of such a simple model are then available. For example, exponential growth could be replaced by logistic growth, or a sim ple predator-prey model could be intro duced. This can (and should) all be done without students or teachers even know ing there is a field called Differential Equations. In fact a differential equation never rears its head in our high school level simulation modeling material. We are very excited about this effort, and hope to infuse many of you with our enthusiasm. We anticipate that much of our effort will occur in the late spring, as we are just now getting started on this phase. NETWORK USES Here, we briefly provide some of the uses which have been found for network ing in the classroom - specifically in high schools. Among the most common uses is electronic mail, which is used to com municate with others who have access to remote computers. For example, Dave Swartz at Rocky Mountain High School teaches a class in Environmental Studies. His students have access only to our western ecosystem. However, to over come this limitation, Dave's students correspond via electronic mail with stu dents in Australia and Newfoundland - both with radically different ecologies than Colorado. Students at all sites col lect data particular to their area of the country, and all share the data for analy sis. Thus, it is possible to broaden our parochial viewpoint, which is geograph ically constrained. Foreign language teachers use the Inter net (the "network of networks" spanning the globe) to communicate with foreign students. For example, a German teacher in the USA might have his or her stu dents writing electronic mail letters in German to students in Germany, who respond in English. Each set of students critiques the others contributions, pro viding an interactive education experi ence in both their native language (explaining elements of grammar to for eigners) and the language under study. Also, some unique cultural exchanges can be established in this fashion. Some journalism classes at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins have been exchanging newspaper arti cles in an Academy One project via the Cleveland FREENet. In this activity, articles are posted, and thereby made available to all participants. The articles tend to have a distinctly regional flavor, promoting cross-cultural awareness and an expansion of our societal mores. Also, this is an excellent way to obtain many articles for the school newspaper for every one that is written locally. An emerging area is that of visualization across the Internet. Currently, the focus is on X-windows applications, requiring an X-windows terminal. There are many free software packages and images avail able via the Internet. Particularly, there are many beautiful images captured by NASA from the Hubble telescope, the Magellan and Viking missions, etc. When studying astronomy in the class room, instructors have found such images of great value to involve students in the large-scale science of national scope currently being conducted. Finally, there are weather maps of vary ing scale available which are only 20 minutes old (students are able to tell their parents what they will see on the weather forecast beforehand).The scales of the weather maps range from the North American continent to local Colorado maps. These are just examples of the many uses of networking. In fact, by participating in networking, you will be involved in establishing "leading-edge" uses of net working. When widespread networking was begun over five years ago, no one had the remotest notion how widely and diversely networking would be used. The network has been a success beyond our wildest dreams; it is truly changing the way we conduct our lives. Some have said that the network was built on the "field of dreams" philosophy - Build it and they will come. We encourage you to participate in this exciting and stimulat ing endeavor. Networking enhances learning in a vari ety of ways. First, it pro-actively involves students in their work. Sec ondly, it encourages students to compose well written articles (with good gram mar, paragraph structure, spelling and punctuation) for transmission across the Internet to their peers. Thirdly, there is a tremendous volume of material available via the Internet, and some emerging technologies for searching library data bases topically both quickly and easily. All of this is accomplished in seconds, with messages transmitted anywhere in the world, requiring not even a postage stamp! CONTRIBUTIONS We welcome contributions from inter ested parties, and will "encourage" those of you active in this area to submit arti cles from time to time. In particular, we are interested in hearing about activities in computing and networking from the K-12 community. DISTRIBUTION There is no charge for this newsletter, and our intent is to maximize distribu tion. We shall distribute this newsletter every other month via US Postal Service and via electronic mail. We encourage you to distribute copies of this document to your colleagues, via forwarding of the electronic mail file, or distributing copies of the hardcopy document. If you wish to be added to our mailing list for this newsletter, please respond with your U.S. Postal Service address, phone number, and electronic mail address (if you have one) to Dave Zach mann at the address given on page 4. Also, please include your affiliation (e.g., your organization such as Rocky Mountain High School) with your request. WORKSHOP ANNOUNCEMENT "Adventures in Networking and Supercomputing" First Annual Conference Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 Sunday, August 2, 1992 through Friday August 7, 1992 Open to High School Students and Teachers This activity is funded by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. All materials, meals, facilities and accommodations will be provided to participants. There will be no charge for attending. Partici pants will receive free computing and visualization software. Teachers will receive a small stipend for attending. The workshop is intended to introduce students and teachers into the use of net working and computing in the class room. The exposition will heavily involve hands-on exercises. The tenta tive outline of topics follows. WORKSHOP OUTLINE Sunday - Aug. 2 4:00 PM Introduction, Welcome Monday- Aug. 3 8:00 Overview of Networking and Com puting 9:00 Introduction to Networking in the Classroom 10:00 Electronic Mail (hands-on) 12:00 Lunch 1:30 NetNews (hands-on) 3:00 Information Resources on the Inter net 5:00 ftp, telnet (hands-on) 5:30 Dinner 7:00 Hands-on Exercises Tuesday - Aug 4 8:00 Review of Yesterday's Topics 9:00 Introduction to the C Programming Language (hands-on) 12:00 Lunch 1:30 The C Programming Language (cont'd) (hands-on) 5:00 Free Time 5:30 Dinner 7:00 Hands-on Exercises with C Wednesday - Aug. 5 8:00 Advanced Concepts in C (hands- on) 12:00 Lunch 1:30 Visualization Using C (hands-on) 5:00 Free Time 5:30 Dinner 7:00 Hands-on Exercises with C - Graphics Thursday - Aug. 6 8:00Large-Scale Computing with C (hands-on) 12:00 Lunch 1:30 Introduction to Supercomputing 5:00 Free Time 5:30 Dinner 7:00 Hands-on Exercises using NCAR's Cray Y/MP Friday - Aug. 7 8:00 Project on NCAR's Cray Y/MP 12:00 Lunch 1:30 Group Picture 3:00 Wrap-Up 4:00 Adjourn APPLICATIONS Applications are invited to participate in the above workshop. Teams of appli cants are invited to apply. Ideally, we would like teams of two students and one teacher per school, but we will make exceptions for special circumstances. Applicants should provide the following information, typewritten, which should be returned to Dave Zachmann at the address given below: 1. Name. 2. Home Address - if a teacher, this should be the school mailing address. 3. Home Telephone Number - if a teacher, this should be the school tele phone number. 4. School. 5. Grade - e.g., 9th, 10th, etc. If a teacher, describe teaching experience. 6. Areas of Interest - This should include programming experience in applications areas, if any (for example, communica tions programming, creating visualiza tions using BASIC, etc.) If a teacher, describe duties and classes taught. 7. Computing Experience - this should include both languages (e.g., BASIC, Pascal, C, etc.) and computers (e.g., IBM PC, Macintosh, etc.). 8. Other pertinent information, at the dis cretion of the applicant. CONTACT INFORMATION The contact information is as follows: Pat Burns Department of Mechanical Engineering Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 (303) 491-7260 pburns@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU Dave Zachmann Department of Mathematics Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523 (303) 491-1575 dzach@Darcy.vis.ColoState.EDU