CSed week

Computer Science Education Week (CSEd Week) is an annual affair dedicated to make computer science education common among the millions of students across the globe. It was initiated, as we all know, by Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906) and is therefore celebrated each year from 8^th to 14^th December, worldwide.

Following events were organized by ACM SEECS Chapter this year in honor of the CSEd Week:

DAY 1:

HOUR OF CODE:

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. The motivation being that

“Every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science”.

Anyone, anywhere can organize or host an Hour of Code but the grassroots campaign goal is for students to try an Hour of Code and what better time than the CSEd Week!

Keeping in view the significance of this event, ACM-SEECS Chapter organized the “Hour of Code”, and in line with our own aims and objectives we invited female students from a charity school and they were taught basics of coding by the President (ACM SEECS) himself. The purpose of the event, that is reaching out to the less privileged children and making modern technology and computer science education common to them, was achieved, and thus the event was successful.

The only problem was the lack of funds. The targeted student body (charity schools etc.) can’t afford to travel all the way to SEECS, NUST time and again, but neither are we in a position to provide them with conveyance. With this barrier removed we could make a significant difference in the schooling of these students.

DAY 2:

QUAD SOURCE SEMINAR:

A Quad Source Seminar was organized on the 2^nd day of CSEd Week at IAEC Lecture Hall in NUST. One of the alumni of NUST Nida came up with the introduction of a new technology “Augmented Reality” and its applications in Gaming, Advertising, and Amusements etc. The session was a source of realization for a lot of people who made up their mind to work on this technology in the near future.

Augmented reality is basically a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. It has wide range of application and the session was arranged to get familiarized with these applications. A lot of videos and scopes were shown related to this technology and at the end question answer session was conducted.

Again the drive behind the organization of this seminar was to acquaint the students with the latest technologies and its uses so that they can use it in their research, projects and other fields.

LOGIC BUILDING SEMINAR:

On Tuesday, December 09 2014 The Association for Information Systems (AIS-SEECS Chapter) in collaboration with ACM-SEECS Chapter organized an another event for the CSEd Week at Farabi Lab SEECS; a logic building workshop for the students who are weak in logic building for programming.

The team of AIS under Mr. Abdul Hannan conducted this workshop and introduced techniques of logic building to the students. Their primary motto was that of Einstein’s’:

“Everything should be made as simple as possible.”

So the students were taught to make things simpler. They were introduced to the technique of “Divide and Conquer” so that problems could be broken down into smaller ones and tackled in a more efficient way. This workshop consisted of tutorials, lectures and at the end some activities by the students.

Towards the end some prizes were also given to people who completed the activities in time.

DAY 3:

CODE2SUCCESS:

In continuation of the Logic Building Workshop a coding session was also organized for the students, with small prizes for the best codes. This also aimed at inspiring the students’ interest in the field of computer science and related fields.

The session did not focus on a particular programming language but instead on how proficient a participant is at designing an algorithm for a particular problem and how fast, be it in any language. The designing of the algorithm is the essence of coding. Anyone can find the syntax of any programming language from the internet but until you know how to develop an algorithm you can’t be a successful coder.

Separate tasks picked out for the freshmen and the senior students, the level of difficulty depending on their skills and know-how of “Algorithm Designing”. The level of enthusiasm of the participants was almost tangible; it showed in their number and their efforts to design efficient algorithms.

DAY 4:

ANDROID CODEUP:

Google arranged this competition on December 11^th 2014, after a successful Android Development Workshop in November.

The overall objective of the event was to develop an interest of students in Android App Development. The competition was moderated by Rizwan Asif. The participants were given a small task: to develop a Temperature Converter from Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa. The submissions were judged on the basis of aesthetic sense and GUI.  

Students responded quite enthusiastically to this competition, as people from not only the Computers Department but also Electrical Engineering took part. More than 30 people registered and some showed up on the spot. Even a few freshmen took part.

The response from the participants was mostly positive. An SE Sophomore, says “This competition was quite helpful for me. I was finally able to test my skills that I developed after attending the Android Workshop.”

The event was planned by Google Student Ambassador Noor Zehra and other members of the NUST Google Community. The Android CodeUp Competition was held on 11^th December 2014, 1-2pm, in Farabi Lab, SEECS