Computer Science for the Magic School

Join our group to help develop Computer Science content for the Science & Theatre Magic Program. Here is a random collection of topics and some links to get you started.

Interested? Questions? Contact map@villanova.edu

• AI:    The creation of the  "magic school oracle" -- we have begun working on this, but there is still plenty to be done. Tom Way's ACTlab website (http://actlab.csc.villanova.edu/) has some information on this project (under "Entertainment" / "Intelligent chatbot"). The idea is to set things up so that the scholars can develop a chatbot that answers questions about the magic school. that they are creating. This can be taken in several directions: you can concentrate on the language aspects and consider different types of systems  and the principles on which they are based, or to go toward combining it with avatars or robotics.
  • You can see the content of the CS component of the 2006 program at: http://www.csc.villanova.edu/~map/pivots/2006/CS/cs.html
• Social networks and game theory. Some ideas in Mike Kearn's Networked Life course: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/
• Augmented reality simulations: Obviously, there is a lot of potential for creating magical illusions. Here are some links to the education slant on this from MIT
  • http://education.mit.edu/ar/
  • http://education.mit.edu/pda/overview.htm
• Media Labs can be a great source of inspiration. Be sure to check out MIT: http://www.media.mit.edu/
• A related topic is the use of RFID tags or GPS in creative ways. There are some seriously crazy people that are doing fun things on the artistic side. Some info on RFID and many other avant-garde media art at:
  •  the Mediamatic website (Netherlands) and in particular from recent workshops "triggered by RFID" http://www.mediamatic.net/article-200.9959.html     Examples:
  • Combining doves and RFID:   http://www.mediamatic.net/article-200.9652.html
  • How can digital technologies support new ways of telling stories: http://www.mediamatic.net/article-200.9668.html
  • A good source of info for RFID is  the online rfid journal, see for example an article on a RFID-based game: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/1986/1/1/
• Robotics: clearly, there are many possibilities there and we have lots of equipment and local expertise at Villanova that you can draw on. Moreover, one of the partners in the project, the Science Resources non-profit organization http://www.science-resources.org/  has a lot of experience working with kids on robotics.

• Biological computers: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/mit.html

• Brain-machine interfaces: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=535103 Here is another article on combining with machine learning: www.kyb.mpg.de/publications/attachments/ICML_TH_3482%5B1%5D.pdf

• General ideas for fun activities geared toward teaching CS to kids can be found in a lot of websites, check out:
   
  • CS unplugged: http://unplugged.canterbury.ac.nz/
  • CS2GO group at Univ of Illinois http://cs4k12.cs.uiuc.edu/swiki/2

• Your favourite CS topic or example could form the basis of your study. Any topic whatsoever, and I mean that, would be appropriate here. Eg, did you love learning about hamming distance and error-correcting codes? Or maybe about semaphores? Dijkstra's algorithm anybody? Something else that you don't know much about but would be interested in learning? It does not matter if it is a narrow topic, that can be an advantage.

Contact: Mary-Angela Papalaskari map@villanova.edu