Today Mr. Barnes came to WICS! He taught us all about cryptography, and we even encrypted and decrypted our own messages using different cypher methods such asthe Caesar Cipher and the Vigenère Cypher. Big thanks to Mr. Barnes for spending his lunch teaching us about the intricacy of such an interesting and complex topic!
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Today we prepped all of our presentations and materials for the Austin Computer Science Fair on Saturday! We made infographic handouts using InDesign and our Ezine knowledge for "How to Get Started in CS" and "Career Paths in CS". We also made presentations highlighting the work that we did over the year. We also made posters highlighting similar information the handouts.
Today we had a great meeting! We had a lot of people come, and we had fun solving logic puzzles together as a club. The logic puzzles are attached below, and some were much harder to solve than the other. Mr. Mueller told me about a volunteer opportunity on April 9th from 10 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. for the WICS Club to have our own table/ booth at the Austin Computer Science (CS) Fair! As quoted directly from the information document:
"The Austin CS Exploration Fair is being presented by TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) and TACSE (Texas Alliance for Computer Science Education) in collaboration with local Austin companies to showcase opportunities for students in the field of computer science. The goal of the event is to educate students, grow excitement for computer science, and increase student interest in taking computer science courses. TEALS has hosted similar events across the country, engaging with hundreds of companies and thousands of students and educators. This is our first year in Austin and we're looking to engage with hundreds of Austin students! We need your help to demonstrate what real-life opportunities in the field look like, so that they can envision what their future can hold through studying computer science." I've attached a google sign-up form here if you're interested in signing up. Mr. Loewenstern said the hours (10-2:30) will count as NHS hours! Here's the form: http://goo.gl/forms/hbZuWIhPXa Ideally, we only need 2-3 people per shift and I was thinking we could divide it into three shifts as you'll see in the doc, so first come first serve! :) Today we discussed summer opportunities and volunteer opportunities currently happening. Check your emails for a recap of the meeting, and links to how to get started volunteering in CS for NHS hours and for fun!
Professor Peter Stone (Jasmine's dad) came to LASA through the LASA ATAC Lecture Series gave a talk at lunch in Ms. Harrelson's room at the end of the white hallway. He talked about some mixture of robots that play soccer, autonomous vehicles and deep learning, and his specialization in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Everyone who attended the talk had a really great time learning about Professor Stone's research! You can learn more about his research here: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pstone/
Today we talked about NACLO (North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad), a competition happening at LASA on Thursday, January 28th! More information here: http://nacloweb.org/
Today we did a basic Java program in lieu of the holiday season called "The Twelve Days of Christmas". The user input the line number of the Twelve Days of Christmas they want to know, and the program outputs all the lines up until the line. Everyone had a lot of fun, and it was very beginner-friendly so there was a big turn-out of members today! Link to the presentation/tutorial here: http://tinyurl.com/wics12days
Today we had a guest speaker! We had a good turnout along with Mr. Mueller. PhD student, Sarah Abraham talked about her video game company and the research her PhD is devoted to. It was really interesting to hear about how fluid of a field computer science is, and there are so many different ways of integrating computer science with other areas. Everyone got to ask multiple questions, and we all had a good time and learned a lot!
Today we decided to spend some time getting to know each other better and further analyze the goals and outcomes of this club! We had a fun time, and I think everyone got to know each other a lot better after the club. We discussed the positives and negatives of the club so far, so that we could use this input to further the club towards everyone's interests. We also talked about how the NCWIT deadline has been pushed back to November 4th, and the guest speaker coming to talk next Thursday!
Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders Why Do Ambitious Women Have Flat Heads? Growing up in STEM After this, we allowed everyone time to work on the NCWIT with the little bit of time remaining. |