From Teaching Open Source
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[edit] Teaching and Research
I spent 08-09 as a visiting faculty member at Olin College, and am now starting my third year on the tenure-track at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania. My teaching and research passions tend to congregate around novice programming, embedded/embodied systems, and programming languages. At the moment, my research collaborations explore how novice programmers deal with errors when learning to program, and parallel-safe languages for robotic (embedded) control.
[edit] Open Source
My participation in open-source software has largely been through (what I assume are considered) small projects. I am a developer on the Transterpreter project, which is a small, portable runtime for studying occam-pi and other (inherently) message-passing-based parallel programming languages.
[edit] For Hackers, Makers, and Students Everywhere
As part of our presentation at OSCON 2010, we announced the release of tools for exploring parallel programming on the Arduino platform. You can download a lightweight IDE for exploring the Plumbing library and occam-pi for Linux, Mac, and Windows from concurrency.cc.
[edit] In the Classroom
I have been working hard to find ways to bring my POSSE experience into the classroom.
- During the Spring 2009 semester, we introduced 40 first-year students to the Fedora project.
- During that time, I released the Cardboarduino, and students learned the basics of electronics assembly through the creation of art.
- During the Fall 2010 semester, first-year students will be learning to interact with FLOSS communities as part of FS101: Creativity and Leadership, and upper-division students will be working with FLOSS projects as part of CMPSCI303: Human Centered Design.
To this end, I am seeking funding support for the project Participating Through Video, which will enable the students involved in these and other projects to easily and effectively engage in communicating with FLOSS communities about their work through video.
[edit] Why did I take part in POSSE @ Red Hat?
I was particularly keen to begin developing a network and road map to support the involvement of students productively at the intersection of undergraduate research and open-source software. To this end, I had a conundrum: on one hand, I could see how to involve students in the projects I have direct contact with. That said, how do I manage and grow community around these kinds of projects as they span multiple institutions, each with overlapping (but sometimes different) goals? Taken into "the wild," how can my students productively/successfully engage other open-source communities in the classroom and in their research?
As it happened, POSSE answered some of these questions, left me with more than I came in with, and helped me see ways to begin engaging.
[edit] POSSE 2011 Application
Since POSSE 2009, I've been continuing to explore and engage with FOSS projects through my teaching and research. Re-engaging with new and existing members of the community at POSSE 2011 would be an excellent opportunity.
[edit] Linklove
Home: jadud.com
Teaching and Research: rockalypse.org
Weblog: sububi.org
Parallel programming for the Arduino: concurrency.cc