Archive for category CpS 479
BJU CpS 479: Stop Dating the Church
To all my senior CS and IT majors:
As we get together this final year of your undergraduate career, the purpose of this seminar is to discuss “life after graduation”. What will it look like? What else can you do to prepare for it? Where will you live? What will you do? More schooling? Get a job? Start a business? All of these (and more) are legitimate questions to consider this final year of college. But in my mind, the question that will determine the direction of your life from here is “Where will I go to church?”.
I find this such an important issue that I am giving all my seniors the book “Stop Dating the Church“. The purpose of this blog is to give you a place to report on what you read in this book. Share 3 things you found in this book which you believe are the most important for you to seek to apply after graduation. Then share 1 thing that you disagreed with. Be sure to give your biblical basis for both – the things you agree with and the thing you disagree with.
BJU CpS 479 Final Exam: Stop Dating the Church
Send me an email (subject: 479 sdtc) telling how much of this book you have read.
Discuss 3 concepts presented in this book which you believe are the most important for you to apply to “life after graduation”.
Discuss 1 concept presented which you don’t agree with.
BJU CpS 479 Final Exam: The World is Flat
Send me an email (subject: 479 twif) to tell me how much of the book you have read.
Using 5 ideas presented in the book, discuss the impact the ideas are having and/or will have on our present economy.
Be sure to include specific points from the book.
How do the concepts presented in the book apply to a bibical worldview?
BJU CpS 479 Assignment: What’s in the Cloud?
As computer science and information technology students, the world you will be working in keeps changing before your eyes. One of the latest changes is the movement of bits from desktops and local servers to “the cloud”. Cloud-based computing is the talk of almost every computer conference these days. What is the cloud? How will it affect you and those you will support with your computer skills?
This Monday evening you have a first hand look at one of the major elements of the cloud infrastructure – an enterprise level data center. I look forward to taking you on a tour of The Worthwhile Company’s primary data center provider, Immedion.
In preparation I’d like you to do 4 things
- visit Immedion’s website and familiarize yourself a little with this company
- make sure you are familiar with cloud-based computing
- contemplate what you think life is like working in a place that provides the infrastructure for cloud-based computing
- consider 3 major challenges you think would face a data center as it seeks to keep up with providing the best in cloud-based computing infrastructure
Once you have visited the data center, please come back here and post your thoughts.
BJU CpS 479 Assignment: Interviewing Workshop
- Attend Interviewing Workshop (see calendar of events for date/time and location)
- create a blog comment which includes
- links with summaries to at least 5 sites dealing with this topic
- tips you picked up from Workshop
BJU CpS 479 Assignment: Planning for a job in a downturned economy
There were 2 articles which captured my attention this week as I think about and pray for my graduating seniors – employment trends @ bls.gov and an article on fox news about a major medical breakthrough in cancer research. I would love to see a few of you seniors take a look at these 2 areas and focus your class presentation on this or a related topic.
October employment figures were released this week! If I were in your shoes and wanting to find a job in the next several months, I think I would be interested in knowing where I could combine my computer skills to maximize the probability I could find a job. 
Check out the current employment trends and see how medical and mining jobs are increasing while everything else appears to be decreasing!
Here is a fascinating article from fox news yesterday. Consider how computer technology is being used to help medical researchers search DNA to find patterns which can lead to cures for diseases like cancer and diabetes!
One of the exciting prospects for those trained in computer and information technology, is that with a little background learning, you can apply your skills to almost any area that is experiencing positive employment growth! For your class presentation I would like you each to consider an area which it might be worthwhile for you to combine computer science in order to increase your employ-ability.
Post a comment here on what your presentation topic will be. Include at least 3 web references to your topic which you plan to include in your study.
BJU CpS 479 Assignment: IT & Missions
For my CpS 479 students: Missions, as defined in Scripture, should be a passion for all believers in Christ. It is the very heartbeat of the Church and is something that every one of us can play a vital role in.
Your assignment for this week – visit several mission board displays in the Student Center and find out what their information technology needs are. Then post a blog comment here on what you learned. Visit & comment on 2-3 organizations for a C, organizations 4-5 for a B, organizations 6-7 for an A.
Include related comments from your reading of The World is Flat AND Stop Dating the Church
All comments are due by 5PM this Friday.
BJU CpS 479 Assignment: Web Entrepreneurship
CpS 479 students, last week you had an excellent opportunity to hear from one of my students, Steven Lee, who is the creator and maintainer of SermonAudio.com, the leading source of online Bible-based sermons. At the end of the presentation we discussed several “take aways”. Using that as a base, I’d like to start a blog topic on “Starting your own web-based business or ministry”. Share you thought, ideas, ambitions, goals, the good, the bad, the ugly about becoming a 21st century web entrepreneur. What does it take, both personally, technically, business-wise, etc.
If you can, site some examples of both other successes and failures. What can you learn and apply from them?
Here are just a few questions to “prime the pump” of getting your brain in gear on this topic.
* what is an entrepreneur?
* how does he/she differ from “the rest of the crowd”?
* what does the Bible teach about this topic (study Duet 8:10-20)?
* what steps can you take to prepare yourself to be an entrepreneur?
* do you know any entrepreneurs? if so, what do you think made them successful (or not)?
* would you like to be an entrepreneur? if so why, if not, why not?
* discuss some entrepreneurial ideas that you have for a web-based business
* is it best to try and start a web-based business on your own or would you team up? if so, what would you look for in putting together a team?
Wikipedia is an excellent place to start.
Here’s something to consider: you want to build a website in your spare time and then sell it for $25M. How would you go about deciding what to build?
BJU CpS 479 Assignment: Computer Science Current Topics – what interests you?
Part of a liberal arts education is learning how to think critically about the world around you and be able to formulate opinions and present your ideas. For my computer science and information technology seniors, I’d like to know what topic(s) within our discipline are of most interest to you.
Please do so by submitting a comment to this blog. If you have no ideas, I would encourage you to look at some of my blog posts for ideas. Especially the ones from Web 2.0 Conference I attended last April.
Here’s something to get your creative juices flowing. Comes from the present presidential campaign and is a HUGE topic in our industry. It is know as “cloud computing”. Check out this blog.
The best place to find current topics in computer science is ACM TechNews.