UK Academic Team Blog : Academic

News from the Faculty Summit

ukacademia — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:03:08 GMT

Lee Dirks, the Director for Education and Scholarly Research, announced five new ‘lifecycle’ tools for academics and researchers. The tools are as follows:

Research Information Centre
Creative Commons (an add-in to Microsoft Office)
Article Authoring (an add-in to Microsoft Word)
E-Journal Hosting Service
Research Output Repository Platform

To hear more about these tools from Lee, please visit Channel 8.

If you have any questions, do contact me and I’ll see if I can get them answered for you.

Best,

Allison

Free ASP.NET hosting for UK Students from WebFusion

ukacademia — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:51:00 GMT

Many of you will have met or be about to meet Ed Dunhill as he tours the country with Ben Coley delivering the Inspiration Tour. When not on the road, Ed has been working on a great deal for students - Free ASP.NET hosting for all UK Students provided by WebFusion. To get this the students need a unique code and an academic email address (one that ends in .ac.uk). I have a pile of codes on my desk and am happy to send them out but the more effective distribution method is to point your students to Ed's blog post. Here they can:

read all about the deal,
request their code
and activate their code.

Please let all students know about this; it really is free, there really are no strings attached.

Claire

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET, Students

How software is built

ukacademia — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:04:10 GMT

www.howsoftwareisbuilt.com is a blog that was launched last year to gather perspectives on both the Open Source and Closed Source Development Models and to encourage wide audience feedback and inputs. It contains numerous detailed interviews with various industry experts. If you and/or your students are interested in dialogue about open source and proprietary software development models then this is the blog for you.

The following interviews were added in December

· Interview with Britten Martin - Group Manager - Customer Service and Support - Microsoft

· Interview with David Campbell - Technical Fellow - Microsoft

· Interview with Shawn Burke - Director - Microsoft - .NET Developer Platform Group

· Interview with Blaine Wastell and Glen Block - Patterns and Practices - Microsoft

· Interview with Steve Morris - Director - Open Technology Center

Claire

The simplest New Year's Resolution to achieve

ukacademia — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:26:50 GMT

Happy New Year to all!

While many a student is still sleeping off the effects of their festivities we are aware that a dedicated few are polishing up their ideas for their entry into the Software Design Challenge of the Imagine Cup. A minority are sleeping smugly because they have already submitted theirs. The extended deadline is January 9th - one week away - so we want to encourage all who have an idea to submit it.

Unlike previous years, we do not require working code at this stage so the idea is all that is required. A sample entry shows you what is involved and the rules and other info on the Imagine Cup Website but if there is anything else that you need to know then please get in touch. WIth competitions, I know from personal experience that taking part can bring huge rewards; past competitors in this competition who now have top jobs, memories and career-building experiences will agree.

Make it your New Year's resolution to encourage a team (or ten) to enter and by next week you can relax and know that you have started the year with success.

Claire

Only 4 days left to claim your early bird 10% discount off the Games Development in Computer Science 08 conference

ukacademia — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:06:14 GMT

The UK has a well deserved reputation in the field of Games Development and yet so far is not well represented at this world-class conference aboard the luxury Celebrity Century cruise ship, . It promises to be a very informative and fun event and will provide an excellent opportunity for networking too. If you have any questions then please let me know.

Claire

General session and tech talk speakers include:

Henry Kelly, President, Federation of American Scientists

John Cash, Technical Director, Blizzard Entertainment

Sam Glassenberg, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft

Steve Seabolt, VP, Global Brand Development, Electronic Arts

Colleen McCreary, Director of Corporate HR & Diversity, Electronic Arts

Matt Brown, Design Director, Sims Label, Electronic Arts

Andrew Brownsword, Electronic Arts, Senior Software Engineer – could be a tech talk.

August De los Reyes, Sr. User Experience Designer, Microsoft

Dennis Wixon, User Research Manager - Halo, Microsoft

Randy Pausch, CMU, Alice Project

Wanda Dann, CMU, Alice Project

Cory Ondrejka, Linden Lab - 2nd Life

Ben Sawyer, Serious Games

Raph Koster --Designer of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies

Steve Theodore, Bungie, Technical Director

Chris Hoffman, Purdue

Mark Overmars, Utrecht University

Academic papers accepted through a peer review process include:

Game2Learn: Improving the motivation of CS1 students

Game Design and Development Students: Who are They?

Bringing a pioneer games project to the next level.

Adding Handheld Game Programming to a Computer Science Curriculum.

Gaming for Middle School Students: Building Virtual Worlds.

Group Interactions in a Game Engine Class.

Impact of Game Design on Students' Interest in CS.

A Hybrid Approach to Projects in Gaming Courses.

A Game Framework to Enhance Stem Pipeline.

The ETH Game Programming Laboratory: A Capstone for Computer Science and Visual Computing.

Assessing Game-Themed Programming Assignments for CS1/2 Courses

Integrating Games and Machine Learning in the Undergraduate Computer Science Classroom

Introduction to Game Design in the Large Classroom

Games, Robots, and Robot Games: Complementary Contexts for Introductory Computing Education

Operating A Computer Science Game Degree Program

Life as an intern on the Microsoft Student Placement Programme

ukacademia — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 16:18:00 GMT

Based in Reading and London, our placements last 48 weeks, beginning with a week-long induction designed to introduce the student to all the different areas of the business and identify objectives for their professional development.

Subsequent learning will take the form of on-the-job training within thier team, bespoke skills training and one-to-one performance reviews. Most importantly, they'll do real work and have real opportunities to make a genuine impact on our business and their future.

The benefits of a Microsoft Student Placement don’t merely apply to their future career, however. There’s also some pretty hefty advantages to getting involved with Microsoft from day one, including a £14,500 a year salary, £500 sign on bonus, 25 days holiday per year and – should you wish to return to Microsoft on the MACH programme – a fast-track to the last stage of the assessment process.

Please encourage your students to apply by returning a completed application form available here to sturec@microsoft.com quoting placement08. They might even end up working in our team and take over from Ben Coley from De Montfort and Muhammad Walji from Brunel

MSDN AA has grown to include more products and to appeal to more departments

ukacademia — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:10:10 GMT

The MSDN Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) Program was first introduced to address the needs of the academic community focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The MSDN AA Program has now grown to include a family of membership offerings aimed at a broader set of Academic Departments:

Developer Academic Alliance – Developer AA membership, formerly referred to as MSDN AA, is designed to address the needs of academic departments teaching Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
Designer Academic Alliance – Designer AA is a membership designed around the Microsoft Expression suite intended to meet the needs of academic departments teaching Visualization, Illustration, Design, and Art (VIDA) disciplines.

Don't forget to tell your 'designer' colleagues!

XNA v2 Beta - ready to download.

ukacademia — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:00:00 GMT

Ed Dunhill is on the case again and today blogged about the XNA v2 beta which is now ready to download. His post gives all the detail you need to get started and you will be pleased to read that it is free and no uninstalling of v1 is required.

Let us know what you think!

Claire

Technorati Tags: XNA, Beta, Teaching. Academic, Games