Computer Science 312                                                                        Syllabus for Spring 2011

Dr. Carol E. Wolf                                                                               Office 163 William St. 215

Website: http://csis.pace.edu/~wolf/                                                   E-mail: cwolf@pace.edu

Office Hours: Mondays 11:00 to 12:00 and Wednesdays 2:30 to 3:30

Text:    Annual Editions: Computers in Society, 2010-11, Paul De Palma, editor, 16th edition.

            McGraw Hill Contemporary Learning Series, 2010

            ISBN:978-0-07-352858-7

 

 Date

Group 

Chapter 

Topic

Jan 24

 

1

Overview of course, creation of groups
Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change

Jan 31

A

2

Moore’s Law and Technological Determinism

 

B

3

Click Fraud

Feb 2

C

4

Online Salvation

 

D

5

Great Wall of Facebook

Feb 7

E

6

Beyond Blogs

 

F

7

Personally Controlled Online Health Data

Feb 9

G

8

National ID

 

A

9

Dilberts of the World, Unite!

Feb 14

B

10

Computer Software Engineers, Occupational Outlook Handbook

 

C

11

How Deep Can You Probe?

Feb 16

D

12

Privacy, Legislation, and Surveillance Software

 

E, F

13

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Feb 23

G

14

The End of Solitude

 

A

15

Girl Power

Feb 28

B

16

Bloggers Against Torture

 

C

17

It’s Not Easy to Stand up to Cyberbullies

Mar 2

D

18

The Nike Experiment

 

E

19

Center Stage

Mar 7

F

20

E-Mail Is for Old People

 

G

21

The Coming Robot Army

Mar 9

 

 

Midterm Exam

 

 

 

Library Research Document Due 

Mar 14

Mar 18

 

Spring Break

Mar 21

A

22

Google & the Future of Books

 

B

23

 Archiving Writers’ Work in the Age of E-Mail

Mar 23

C

24

 Wikipedia in the Newsroom

 

D

25

E-Mail in Academia: Expectations, Use, and Instructional Impact

 

 

 

Survey Document Due

Mar 28

E

26

A Growing Watch List

Mar 30

F, G

27

The Evolution of Cyber Warfare

Apr 4

A

28

Geeks and Hackers

 

B

29

Privacy Requires Security, Not Abstinence

Apr 6

C

30

The Software Wars

 

D

31

False Reporting on the Internet and the Spread of Rumors

Apr 11

E

32

China’s Tech Generation Finds a New Chairman to Venerate

 

F

33

New Tech, Old Habits

Apr 13

G

34

Iran’s Twitter Revolution? Maybe Not Yet

Apr 18

A

35

The List: Look Who’s Censoring the Internet Now

 

B

36

Dissent Made Safer

Apr 20

C

37

A Nascent Robotics Culture

Apr 25

D

38

Toward Nature-Inspired Computing

 

E

39

Google and the Wisdom of Clouds

Apr 27

F

40

Cloud Computing

May 2

G

41

The Coming Superbrain

May 4

 

 

Presentation of Group Projects

 

When a group has been assigned a chapter to report on, one member of the group should write a summary of the chapter and prepare PowerPoint slides describing it. The other members of the group should find related material either in print or on the Internet pertaining to the topic in the chapter.  Each one should also prepare a 1 or 2 page written summary. The group will then make a presentation during the class time and hand in the written summaries.  If we run out of time for the entire presentation, the remainder will be presented during the next class session.  If you have any problems printing, email the summary to me, and I will print it out for you. You may also send me the PowerPoint slides and I will make sure that they can be shown on the classroom equipment.

Summaries should be double-spaced and brief. One or two pages are all right, but three pages will not be accepted. The slides should also be brief with no more than 4 or 5 bulleted items per slide. The summaries will be graded for both grammar and content.  After they have been returned with corrections, the corrected versions should returned.

The group project will consist of a library research paper, a survey, a statistical analysis of the survey results and a conclusion. The entire project is due at the end of the semester. It will be presented in class on the last day.  At the end of the semester, send me the entire project.

Grades will be determined by two written exams, a midterm and a final, all the presentations during the semester and the final project. Each one of these categories will count for 25% of the grade. All written materials, including exams, should be double-spaced.  If your handwriting is hard to read, please print on your exams. Grammar will count on all documents, but spelling will only be graded on papers prepared ahead of time.

Additional Resources:

Herman T. Tavani, Ethics and Technology, Chapter 2, Wiley, 2004.

MLA Citation Style, 6th ed. (2003), http://www.pace.edu/library/pages/instruct/guides/mla6.htm

I. Lee. A Research Guide for Students. http://www.aresearchguide.com/ Feb. 4, 2004.

ACM Code of Ethics, http://www.acm.org/constitution/code.html

John L. Sullivan and Richard G. Niemi, editors, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, Sage Publications Inc., 1983.

http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html

 

CS 312 Suggestions for Group Projects

 

1.      Why do so few women and minorities choose to work in IT?

 

2.      How private is data on the Internet?  Are people buying more on-line than before?

 

3.      What do people do to protect their computers from viruses and worms?

 

4.      What are employers now looking for?  What is the effect of ‘off-shoring’?

 

5.      Does using a computer cause isolation or greater interaction with others?

 

6.      Is Internet dating effective, and who is doing it?

 

7.      How successful are robots?  Who uses them?

 

8.      What effect are social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook having on relationships?  How safe is it to use them?

 

9.      Where do people get news and political information? 

 

10.  How safe is electronic voting, and has it affected recent elections?

 

11.  How have IM, PDAs, IPods, etc. changed people’s lives?

 

12.  What part did computer technology play in causing the great recession?  What are CDO’s and CDS’s, and could they be created without computer programs?

 

13.  Now that the Kindle has been hacked, what can publishers do to protect their books from piracy?

 

14.  What is cyber-bullying, and what is being done about it?

 

15.  Wikileaks has exposed a lot of secret information.  They say that ‘information wants to be free’.  Is what they are doing helpful or irresponsible.

 

16.  How has the Stuxnet worm changed cyber warfare?  How serious is the threat?

 

17.  Are PCs dead?  Will tablet computers and smart phones replace them?