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Every Autumn since 2015 the Computer Science department at Queen Mary University of London has hosted a series of Ri Masterclasses, with the Royal Institution (of Christmas Lectures fame).
2018’s Masterclasses
- Week 1 – 15 September: Paul Curzon on Artificial Intelligence, in Room CS 3.01, Bancroft Road Teaching Rooms, we were also joined by Ben from the Ri for First Aid support
- Week 2 – 22 September: Peter McOwan on the Magic of Computer Science, in Room CS 3.01, Bancroft Road Teaching Rooms (+Ben from Ri)
- Week 3 – 29 September: William Marsh and Paulo Oliva looking at social networking (with Python, Sqlite and databases) in the Informatics Teaching Laboratory (ITL) (+Ben from Ri)
- Week 4 – 6 October: Gustavo Lau with help from Jameel Kassam, Martin Davtyan and Rene Montero. We were also joined by Holly as First Aid support.
- Week 5 – 13 October: Becky Stewart and Andrea Guidi (Bela platform and PureData) in the G2 Matlab suite (+Ben from Ri)
- Week 6 – 20 October: Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Julian Hough and Christopher Madge on Natural Language Processing, in the ITL (+Ben from Ri)
Page updated by Jo Brodie (admin, email), Paulo Oliva is QMUL’s Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science academic lead.
WEEK ONE
Every Autumn since 2015 the Computer Science department at Queen Mary University of London has hosted a series of Ri Masterclasses, with the Royal Institution (of Christmas Lectures fame).
Ri Masterclasses in Computer Science 2018
Week One – 15 September 2018 – Paul Curzon on Artificial Intelligence: the mind of the machine, in Room CS 3.01, Bancroft Road Teaching Rooms, we were also joined by Ben Dornan from the Ri (who also provided First Aid cover).
WEEK TWO
22 September 2018 with Peter McOwan on The Magic of Computer Science, in Room CS 3.01, Bancroft Road Teaching Rooms, we were also joined by Ben Dornan from the Ri (who also provided First Aid cover).
WEEK THREE
Week Three – 29 September 2018 with William Marsh and Paulo Oliva on Social Networks in the Informatics Teaching Laboratory (ITL) with Ben Dornan from the Ri (also providing First Aid cover).
The class played with an example of a social networking application (called Robin’s Nest) which could be downloaded onto local, networked computers and used to communicate with others in the class. They used SQLite Manager (a Firefox plugin) to look at the application’s database and to change features ‘under the bonnet’. After familiarising themselves with database concepts such as tables, key, relationships and constraints the class used Python to query the database.
WEEK FOUR
Week Four – 6 October 2018 – Gustavo Lau – Recursion with help from Jameel Kassam, Martin Davtyan and Rene Montero, Patricia Goddard and Ho Huen from the Electronics Lab and from Holly who provided First Aid cover.
Venue
Electronics Lab, Engineering Building, QMUL, Mile End Road
Today the class learned about recursion…
Venue
Electronics Lab, Engineering Building, QMUL, Mile End Road
Directions
- Come to Stepney Green tube station, exit and turn left onto Mile End Road
- If you want to pick up a snack there’s a small Sainsbury’s just behind you to your left, if not carry on walking and cross Globe Road (there’s also a Co-op there)
- Keep walking up Mile End Road, past Bancroft Road (don’t turn into Bancroft Road this week, keep walking)
- You will come to a building set back from the road, with a glass front and five bollards in front of it, it’s also next to a Bus Stop (D) where the 25 and 205 buses stop – that’s the Engineering Building (Google Streetview shows what it looks like).
[What3Words ///author.glaze.custom] - We’ll be in the Electronics Lab upstairs on the second floor
WEEK FIVE
Week Five – 13 October 2018 – Rebecca (Becky) Stewart and Andrea Guidi on Coding with Pure Data and Bela. We were joined by Ben Dornan from the Ri who also provided First Aid support.
Prepping the bits of kit before the workshop starts – plenty of little connectors
The Bela (black, on white ‘breadboard’) is connected to a series of switches that when pressed will play a sample of music.
Headphones used while everyone practices and perfects their created piece of music, from the samples.
Finally we connected a small speaker (not shown) and each team performed their piece.
Venue
Electronics Lab, Engineering Building, QMUL, Mile End Road
It’s the same building as last week (Wk4, Recursion with Gustavo Lau) but a different room, on the ground floor!
Directions
- Come to Stepney Green tube station, exit and turn left onto Mile End Road
- If you want to pick up a snack there’s a small Sainsbury’s just behind you to your left, if not carry on walking and cross Globe Road (there’s also a Co-op there)
- Keep walking up Mile End Road, past Bancroft Road (don’t turn into Bancroft Road this week, keep walking)
- You will come to a building set back from the road, with a glass front and five bollards in front of it, it’s also next to a Bus Stop (D) where the 25 and 205 buses stop – that’s the Engineering Building (Google Streetview shows what it looks like).
[What3Words ///author.glaze.custom] - We’ll be in the G2 Labs on the ground floor
WEEK SIX
Week Six – 20 October 2018 with Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Julian Hough and Christopher Madge on Natural Language Processing, in the Informatics Teaching Laboratory (ITL) with Ben Dornan from the Ri (also providing First Aid cover).
In our final week the class considered language, how we communicate with each other (and how easy it is to miscommunicate) and how computers can be taught to understand language and the sentiment behind it, eg the difference between –
“I love that!”
and
“I love that! </sarcasm>”
Julian has kindly made his presentation and worksheet available which you can download below.
- JH RI_Master_Class – presentation
- JH – NLP_masterclass_worksheet
Teaching London Computing: A RESOURCE HUB from CAS LONDON & CS4FN 