Born to (De)Frag!
Friday, January 27th was a busy but fun day for Sandbox. Professor Englander was with us for the Linux lab event that continued through all afternoon. We are happy that…
Tutoring vs. helping students with an assignment
Students often enter The Sandbox looking for help on a particular assignment. It wasn’t until Finals Week that I noticed students coming in for general questions and study help; and even then, the number of students was sparse. This presents a particular puzzlement for our talented staff of tutors: there is a thin line between helping a student finish an assignment and allowing the student to understand the concept that is required to finish the assignment.
My personal experience tutoring Java comes to mind. All of our Java tutors have completed CS 180 or an equivalent in some reasonable fashion and have programmed with Java in the past. Therefore, their knowledge of Java is quite respectable. When a student comes in and asks why their program is not working, they are essentially asking us to debug it for them, or, occasionally, to figure out the entire logic of the assignment. Of course, it is not as cut and dry as, “Hey, can you finish my assignment for me?” Yet, this should not be considered an attempt to belittle the amount of effort that students exert on their work. In fact, I don’t believe that students who are astute enough to visit The Sandbox would be the ones who are conniving enough to trick a tutor into doing their homework for them. Therefore, it is the job of the tutors themselves to find the balance between tutoring and helping the student with an assignment.
A Day of the Life Time of the CIS Sandbox
On November 30, 2011 we set the camera in the sandbox to capture an image every minute. I then was able to take all the images and compile them into…
Can we really Program in Excel??
Did you know that you can code and run complex programs in Excel? VBA-Visual Basic for Applications enables you to do this through macros. It would give you an easy…
Sandbox Usage
The CIS Sandbox tutors have helped over 70 Students in various CS classes since we opened on Sept. 26. Above is the breakdown of the students recorded for these classes. …
Sandbox Transformation
I have created a video that shows the transformation of the old lab into the new Sandbox. If you have not seen the new Sandbox come on down to Smith…
Gadgets powered by Google? Enhance your Desktop, Website!!!
Yesterday I was attempting to set up RSS feeds from the CIS-lab Google Calendar to display the Staff Schedule on Google TV’s. Amidst searching various articles for RSS feeds I came…
QR Codes
QR code - Quick Response code is a type of matrix that consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. QR codes are commonly aimed…
Hey, did you see that huge TV while walking through smith?
Did you see that monstrous LCD on the 2nd floor of Smith? We had a lot of fun the other day playing around the various GTV's in Smith and tons…