For courses in Introduction to Computing or Introduction to Programming.
There is a growing interest in computing for non-CS majors, or for students who have not yet determined their majors (sometimes called the “CS0” market). Computer science professors are also confronted with increased attrition and failure rates. Guzdial introduces programming as a way of creating and manipulating media–a context familiar and intriguing to today’s students. Students begin actual programming early on (sometimes over 100 lines of code in the second assignment). Guzdial’s approach has met with substantial success in class testing.
Table of Contents:
I. Introduction
Chapter 1 Introduction to Computer Science and Media Computation
1.1 What Is Computer Science About?
1.2 Programming Languages
1.3 What Computers Understand
1.4 Media Computation: Why Digitize Media?
1.5 Computer Science for Everyone
1.5.1 It’s About Communication
1.5.2 It’s About Process
Chapter 2 Introduction to Programming
2.1 Programming Is About Naming
2.1.1 Files and Their Names
2.2 Programming in Python
2.3 Programming in JES
2.4 Media Computation in JES
2.4.1 Showing a Picture
2.4.2 Playing a Sound
2.4.3 Naming Values
2.5 Making a Program
2.5.1 Variable Recipes: Real Math-like Functions That Take Input
II Pictures
Chapter 3 Modifying Pictures Using Loops
3.1 How Pictures Are Encoded
3.2 Manipulating Pictures
3.2.1 Exploring Pictures
3.3 Changing Color Values
3.3.1 Using Loops in Pictures
3.3.2 Increasing/Decreasing Red (Green, Blue)
3.3.3 Testing the Program: Did That ReallyWork?
3.3.4 Changing one Color at a Time
3.4 Creating a Sunset
3.4.1 Making Sense of Functions
3.5 Lightening and Darkening
3.6 Creating a Negative
3.7 Converting to Grayscale
Chapter 4 Modifying Pixels in a Range
4.1 Copying Pixels
4.1.1 Looping Across the Pixels with range
4.2 Mirroring a Picture
4.3 Copying and Transforming Pictures
4.3.1 Copying
4.3.2 Creating a Collage
4.3.3 General Copying
4.3.4 Rotation
4.3.5 Scaling
Chapter 5 Advanced Picture Techniques
5.1 Replacing Colors: Red-Eye, Sepia Tones, and Posterizing
5.1.1 Reducing Red-Eye
5.1.2 Sepia-Toned and Posterized Pictures: Using Conditionals
to Choose the Color
5.2 Combining Pixels: Blurring
5.3 Comparing Pixels: Edge Detection
5.4 Blending Pictures
5.5 Background Subtraction
5.6 Chromakey
5.7 Drawing on Images
5.7.1 Drawing with Drawing Commands
5.7.2 Vector and Bitmap Representations
5.8 Programs as Specifying Drawing Process
5.8.1 Why DoWe Write Programs?
Chapter 6 Modifying Sounds Using Loops
6.1 How Sound Is Encoded
6.1.1 The Physics of Sound
6.1.2 Exploring How Sounds Look
6.1.3 Encoding the Sound
6.1.4 Binary Numbers and Two’s Complement
6.1.5 Storing Digitized Sounds
6.2 Manipulating Sounds
6.2.1 Open Sounds and Manipulating Samples
6.2.2 Using the JES MediaTools
6.2.3 Looping
6.3 Changing the Volume of Sounds
6.3.1 Increasing Volume
6.3.2 Did That ReallyWork?
6.3.3 Decreasing Volume
6.3.4 Making Sense of Functions, in Sounds
6.4 Normalizing Sounds
6.4.1 Generating Clipping
Chapter 7 Modifying Samples in a Range
7.1 Manipulating Different Sections of the Sound Differently
7.2 Splicing Sounds
7.3 General Clip and Copy
7.4 Backwards Sounds
7.5 Mirroring
Chapter 8 Making Sounds by Combining Pieces
8.1 Composing Sounds Through Addition
8.2 Blending Sounds
8.3 Creating an Echo
8.3.1 Creating Multiple Echoes
8.3.2 Creating Chords
8.4 How Sampling KeyboardsWork
8.4.1 Sampling as an Algorithm
8.5 Additive Synthesis
8.5.1 Making SineWaves
8.5.2 Adding SineWaves Together
8.5.3 Checking Our Result
8.5.4 SquareWaves
8.5.5 TriangleWaves
8.6 Modern Music Synthesis
8.6.1 MP3
8.6.2 MIDI
Chapter 9 Building Bigger Programs
9.1 Designing Programs Top-Down
9.1.1 A Top-Down Design Example
9.1.2 Designing the top-level function
9.1.3 Writing the subfunctions
9.2 Designing Programs Bottom-up
9.2.1 An Example Bottom-Up Process
9.3 TestingYour Program
9.3.1 Testing the Edge Conditions
9.4 Tips on Debugging
9.4.1 Finding Which Statement toWorry About
9.4.2 Seeing the Variables
9.4.3 Debugging the Adventure Game
9.5 Algorithms and Design
9.6 Running Programs Outside of JES
IV Text, Files, Networks, Databases, and Unimedia
Chapter 10 Creating and Modifying Text
10.1 Text as Unimedia
10.2 Strings: Making and Manipulating Strings
10.3 Manipulating parts of strings
10.3.1 String Methods: Introducing Objects and Dot Notation
10.3.2 Lists: Powerful, Structured Text
10.3.3 Strings Have No Font
10.4 Files: Places to PutYour Strings and Other Stuff
10.4.1 Opening and Manipulating Files
10.4.2 Generating Form Letters
10.4.3 Writing Out Programs
10.5 The Python Standard Library
10.5.1 More on Import andYour Own Modules
10.5.2 Another Fun Module: Random
10.5.3 A Sampling of Python Standard Libraries
Chapter 11 Advanced Text Techniques:Web and Information
11.1 Networks: Getting Our Text from theWeb
11.2 Using Text to Shift Between Media
11.2.1 Using Lists as Structured Text for Media Representations
11.3 Hiding Information in a Picture
Chapter 12 Making Text for theWeb
12.1 HTML: The Notation of theWeb
12.2 Writing Programs to Generate HTML
12.3 Databases: A Place to Store Our Text
12.3.1 Relational Databases
12.3.2 An example relational database using hash tables
12.3.3 Working with SQL
12.3.4 Using a Database to BuildWeb Pages
Chapter 13 Creating and Modifying Movies
13.1 Generating Animations
13.2 Working with Video Source
13.2.1 Video Manipulating Examples
13.3 Building a Video Effect Bottom-Up
Chapter 14 Speed
14.1 Focusing on Computer Science
14.2 What Makes Programs Fast?
14.2.1 What Computers Really Understand
14.2.2 Compilers and Interpreters
14.2.3 What Limits Computer Speed?
14.2.4 Making Searching Faster
14.2.5 Algorithms That Never Finish or Can’t Be Written
14.2.6 Why Is Photoshop Faster Than JES?
14.3 What Makes a Computer Fast?
14.3.1 Clock Rates and Actual Computation
14.3.2 Storage: What Makes a Computer Slow?
14.3.3 Display
Chapter 15 Functional Programming
15.1 Using Functions to Make Programming Easier
15.2 Functional Programming with Map and Reduce
15.3 Functional Programming for Media
15.3.1 Media Manipulation without Changing State
15.4 Recursion: A Powerful Idea
15.4.1 Recursive Directory Traversals
15.4.2 Recursive Media Functions
Chapter 16 Object-Oriented Programming
16.1 History
16.2 WorkingWith Turtles
16.2.1 Classes and Objects
16.2.2 Creating Objects
16.2.3 Sending Messages to Objects
16.2.4 Objects Control Their State
16.2.5 Other Turtle Functions
16.3 Teaching Turtles New Tricks
16.4 An Object-Oriented Slide Show
16.4.1 Joe the Box
16.4.2 Object-Oriented Media
16.4.3 Why Objects?
APPENDICES
A Quick Reference to Python
A.1 Variables
A.2 Function Creation
A.3 Loops and Conditionals
A.4 Operators and Representation Functions
A.5 Numeric Functions
A.6 Sequence Operations
A.7 String Escapes
A.8 Useful String Methods
A.9 Files
A.10 Lists
A.11 Dictionaries, Hash Tables, or Associative Arrays
A.12 External Modules
A.13 Classes
A.14 Functional Methods
Bibliography
About the Author :
<>Barbara Ericson is a research scientist and the Director of Computing Outreach for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She has been working on improving introductory computing education for over 5 years. She enjoys the diversity of the types of problems she has worked on over the years in computing including computer graphics, artificial intelligence, medicine, and object-oriented programming.
Mark Guzdial is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. An award-winning teacher and active researcher in computing education, he holds a joint Ph.D. In Education and Computer Science from the University of Michigan. Dr. Guzdial directs Project “Georgia Computes!” which is an NSF funded alliance to improve computing education from pre-teen years to undergraduates. He is a member of the ACM Education Board and is a frequent contributor to the ACM SIGCSE (Computer Science Education) Symposium.
Barbara Ericson and Mark Guzdial, are recipients of the 2010 Karl V. Karlstom Outstanding Educator Award for their contributions to broadening participation in computing. They created the Media Computation (MediaComp) approach, which motivates students to write programs that manipulate and create digital media, such as pictures, sounds, and videos. Now in use in nearly 200 schools around the world, this contextualized approach to introductory Computer Science attracts students not motivated by classical algorithmic problems addressed in traditional computer science education. They also lead “Georgia Computes!” an NSF-funded statewide alliance to increase the number and diversity of students in computing education across all of Georgia. Barbara Ericson directs the Institute for Computing Education at Georgia Tech. Mark Guzdial is director of the Contextualized Support for Learning at Georgia Tech. Together they have written three textbooks using the MediaComp approach to engage and inspire student learning in computing. The Karlstrom Award recognizes educators who advanced new teaching methodologies; effected new curriculum development in Computer Science and Engineering; or contributed to ACM’s educational mission.
