Current Events Discussion Boards

Research and development efforts are constantly producing new computer-related technologies and applications. These new developments are continuing to change the way we work, play and interact with other people. Many of the social, legal and ethical issues involving computers are changing rapidly and may have changed significantly since our textbook was published; some issues may even be completely new since that time. The purpose of these assignments are to become familiar with current developments related to the material of our course.

You may earn up to 2 points by submitting an article or website published within the last six months that explains an issue or topic discussed since the due date of the last current events assignment. You should first provide a brief description (approximately 300 words) of what the article is about and how it relates to our course (including the chapter and issue/topic it pertains to). For maximum credit, your submission should also include your own thoughts about the article. That is, it should include relevant observations, implications or questions about the article, rather than just passing along information from the article. Your submission should also contain a full citation to the article/website, and a copy or link. Submissions will be graded as follows:

Articles or websites must be from a reliable source (see examples below), and unique. Do not submit articles already linked to from the course webpages, or already used in class for prior discussions or current events. Many electronic sources are acceptable, as long as they have a specific publication date -- for example, articles from sources like CNN (http://www.cnn.com ) or ACM TechNews (http://www.acm.org/technews ). On the other hand, an article from a web source that is not published according to a regular schedule is probably not suitable. Note that some websites release dated announcements even though they do not publish on a regular schedule. In general, dated announcements are suitable. Here are some additional resources (this is not a complete list, so feel free to find your own resources):