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What computing and informatics tools will help Haiti?

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A great deal has been written about the how the combination of social media and cell phone technology has become a powerful fundraising mechanism in the wake of the disastrous earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday.  But that one example got me thinking about other kinds of computational tools that could help provide an accurate picture of both the reality near the epicenter of the quake and the ripple effects throughout the region and across the globe.

I posted a question about this via twitter with the hashtag #DistributedExpertise and got some interesting responses via Facebook and email that further fueled my own thinking. Some are examples of applications already providing vital information about the situation on the ground, while others could be created to provide useful ongoing coverage, especially as earthquake survivors emigrate to the US and elsewhere. I’m going to split the responses into a couple of posts. This one will focus on breaking news coverage, the next will look at lessons from the Katrina and the 2004 tsunami, and the final post will focus on tools for local coverage.

Breaking news coverage

They included searchable databases of victims, such as this Haitian Earthquake Registry,  which pulls information from a database maintained by the International Committee of the Red Cross, among other sources.

The New York Times is being widely applauded for its interactive map of the region with embedded audio and video:

Those seeking to track the seismological data on the quake would do well to consult Wolfram Alpha, which mapped and charted the quake and the aftershocks:

The Wolfram Alpha chart neatly summarizes information that is provided in greater depth by the US Geological Survey. In addition to the seismological reports, there is a podcast in which one of their experts answers questions.

Cyberjournalist.net points to another great map by USA Today that includes radio buttons that you can click on to overlay certain kinds of information

Georgia Popplewell, the invaluable managing director of Global Voices Online, has a great Twitter list that aggregates posts from Haiti

The unfortunately-named site Chartporn has a running catalog of interesting and useful data visualizations related to the disaster:

Services for donors and volunteers

Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute points to Charity Navigator as a way to find credible organizations to receive donations.

Have you seen any interesting applications that should be included in this list?

Distributed Expertise in Enhancing Computing Education With Connections to the Arts

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I’ve written quite a bit about my work on the IJIMS project, but it’s not my only major research project. I’m also co-PI on another exciting NSF-funded project (Award #0829616) that involves creating model curricula and resources that connect computer science education with other disciplines. The formal name of the project is Distributed Expertise in Enhancing Computer Science Education With Connections to the Arts, or Distributed Expertise for short.

The PI for the project, Lillian Cassel, has been thinking about these issues for a long time.

Last spring, I team-taught a game production class with my TCNJ colleague Ursula Wolz, in parallel with a game development class at Villanova taught by our colleague Tom Way. We used a PBworks Wiki and Skype to manage the distance collaboration. You can explore the documentation here:

Meanwhile, our colleague at Virginia Tech, Deborah Tatar, team-taught an ethics class with a colleague in Ireland. I’ll post a link to more information about that project soon.

This semester, I’m working with Wolz and Way again, coordinating my interactive storytelling class with Wolz’s game production class and Way’s software engineering class. Wolz will also be working with Way’s computing with images class. We are running separate classes, but will use material generated by each other’s students to form the basis of specific assignments. It’s going to be an interesting and exciting semester.

I also want to start a series of conversations about how to make these kinds of collaborations work, and extend them to to more institutions. Part of our vision is that this could be a way of providing CS expertise to disciplines that are becoming computing dependent, such as journalism, while helping CS students understand the nuances of working with content from different knowledge domains. Also, we hope that this can become a model for augmenting the resources of financially strapped institutions, such as small liberal arts colleges and HBCUs.

I plan to do some blogging in this space about our experience, as well as the general concept of our these kinds of collaborations can work. I really look forward to comments and feedback.

Please read and rate our proposal to the Knight News Challenge

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With my collaborators on the Interactive Journalism Institute for Middle Schoolers I am applying for a grant from the Knight News Challenge to scale up our demonstration program to additional school and community settings throughout Mercer County New Jersey.  The demonstration project, which has been supported by the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing program, (grant #0739173) has yielded evidence that middle school students can become turned on to computer science by learning to do computational journalism in their own communities.  Further, we’ve established that properly trained and empowered, middle school teachers can become catalysts for change and innovation.  We’ve been fortunate to work with some exceptional teachers at Fisher Middle School in Ewing, New Jersey who will form the core of a network of teacher-mentors that we hope to build across the region.

Although the deadline for submitting new applications has past, you can still read our proposal, rate it and make comments:

Thanks in advance. I look forward to reading your thoughts.