Computer Science and Multimedia is a part of the Art, Design, and Technology Department. It blends aspects of computer programming concepts and languages, visual communication via a visual interface, and auditory information (performing arts).
Course Descriptions, Syllabi, and current status can be found in the navigation links to the left.
Programming II with many
Game Design
Video Production
Digital Animation
Web Design I
The Enduring Understanding of CS Curriculum:
To understand how to get machines and programs to do the work they are asked to do...
to find, learn, effectively utilize - and to re-define, design, plan and create the best new tools...
that allow people to do the things they are best at: creatively solving problems and engaging with/communicating their ideas.
Adapted from quote by Don Slater, Carnegie-Mellon U.
An "Enduring Understanding" is the underlying principle of why we are in this course area and studying this content. This is an everchanging statement of purpose, guiding us toward our goal as stated.
Each course has an individual Enduring Understanding to guide the study. For students, it is the WHY.
We also have Essential Questions associated with our study. They are the WHAT and HOW:
How does a computer work, and how can I get it to help me work the way I wish?
How is information best organized and re-delivered to the user?
What are the appropriate programs to use to accomplish the desired goal?
How and what is available and how/what way is best, efficient to use for me?
How can we create new applications that we have ideas for??
The WHERE is HERE. The WHEN is NOW. And the WHO is US.
amahoney@mvyps.org
Gdocs amahoney@mvrhs.org
"They have computers, and they may have other weapons of mass destruction."
"Any fool can use a computer. Many do."
"We can't put it together... it is together."
"The function of good software is to make the complex appear to be simple."
"I keep tryin' ta think, but nuttin' happens!"
1) Janet Reno | 2) Ted Nelson | 3) The Last Whole Earth Catalog | 4) Grady Booch | 5) Curly Howard
Alan Turing: The Creator of "Computability"
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS (23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalization of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the 'Turing' machine, which played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.
Turing created the concept that any mathematical problem could be broken down and solved in a distinct, simple, series of small steps: an algorithm. Today, computer programming is done exactly this way: taking each task of a problem and breaking it down into small executable steps.
During the Second World War, Turing worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's codebreaking centre. For a time he was head of Hut 8, the section responsible for German naval cryptanalysis. He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe, an electromechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma coding machine. Turing's most important contribution was of part of the design of the bombe, the cryptanalytic machine. He had the idea that you could use, in effect, a theorem in logic which sounds to the untrained ear rather absur: that from a contradiction, you can deduce everything. After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE.
In 1948 Turing joined the Computing Laboratory at Manchester University, where he assisted in the development of the Manchester computers and became interested in mathematical biology. He wrote a paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis, and he predicted oscillating chemical reactions such as the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, which were first observed in the 1960s.
Turing's homosexuality resulted in a criminal prosecution in 1952, when homosexual acts were still illegal in the United Kingdom. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, just over two weeks before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning he ingested via an apple.
On 10 September 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official public apology on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war. Since 1966, the Turing Award has been given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person for technical contributions to the computing community. It is widely considered to be the computing world's highest honour, equivalent to the Nobel Prize. In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century for his role in the creation of the modern computer, and stated: "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine."
The logo of Apple computer is often erroneously referred to as a tribute to Alan Turing, with the bite mark a reference to his method of suicide. Both the designer of the logo and the company deny that there is any homage to Turing in the design of the logo. British television quiz show presenter Stephen Fry recounted a conversation had with Steve Jobs, saying that Job's response was, "It isn't true, but god, we wish it were."
<Replica of a bombe, the machine to help decode the Enigma Machine cipher, Germany's encoded morse warcode.
Computing Food For Thought:
What was the Biggest Technology Changer Ever?
The Internet? NO!
The Computer? NO!
The telephone? NO!
How about Mr. Gutenberg's invention of ...
the first Printing Press?? POSSIBLY!
Some historians call the movable printing press “the most important invention in history.” Before this invention every book had to be copied by hand which was obviously a very tedious and slow process.
After the invention of the printing press, books could be mass produced, and they were more affordable, which changed the world. According to an article at the Library of Congress web page this invention resulted in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. The accumulated knowledge of the human race, previously available to only a privileged few, become the common property of every person who knew how to read and the increasing availability of books wrought by the printing press led to more people learning to read.
And so the article at the Library of Congress web page says that the invention that was used to complete the printing of a book 550+ years ago was “an immense forward step in the emancipation of the human mind.” Back in the year 2000 an international panel of scientists chose the inventor of the printing press as “most outstanding personality of the millennium.”
The man who invented that movable printing press was Johannes Gutenberg and the first book that Gutenberg finished printing on his new printing press on August 24, 1456 after one year of work was the famous Gutenberg Bible.
It is ironic that the book that made books cheap and available to the common person is now so rare and expensive that only the richest and most privileged could possibly own one. Gutenberg made only 180 copies of his famous Bible and only 48 of those are known to still exist today.
In 1999, a single page from a Gutenberg Bible sold for $26,000. In 1995 a page from a Gutenberg Bible containing the Ten Commandments sold for $75,000. Estimates on the value of a complete Gutenberg Bible vary greatly between $25 and $100 MILLION.
So if you happen to run across a Gutenberg Bible at a yard sale for $5 you might want to pick it up.
(Thanks to David Stratton's Blog for this copy. Mr. Stratton is Pastor of Brunswick Islands Baptist Church, Supply, NC)
Wow! Really pleased you read this far down!
Here's a weird thing found randomly from the interwebs (No idea what's going on in this painting, but here it is):
