Making computer science accessible worldwide with CS4HS

Senin, 09 Januari 2012 0 komentar
Last summer, K-12 educators in the Boston, Mass. area gathered at MIT for a bit of summer school. They weren’t there to brush up on freshman year biology, but rather to learn a new subject, the programming language Scratch. This is a snapshot of the Google in education group’s Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) program. The teachers gathered at MIT last July had various backgrounds and degrees, but they all attended with one goal—to bring computer science (CS) education back to their schools, and their students.

From now until March 3, 2012, CS4HS is accepting applications from interested colleges and universities for our fourth consecutive year of computer science workshops. If you’re not affiliated with a college or university you can still encourage your local university, community college or technical school to apply for a grant. In the late spring, after applications close, we’ll post workshop websites of participating schools on cs4hs.com for professors looking for ideas and for teachers interested in learning more about what’s being offered.

Over the course of the three-day professional development workshops, funded by Google and held on university campuses around the world, participants learn about programming software directly from developers and full-time CS faculty. There is balance of discussion, engaging project work and presentations. The workshops prepare educators to teach programming and computing in their schools and turn their students into computational thinkers and creators.

The need for more CS professionals is increasing faster than universities are able to graduate CS students, and CS4HS hopes to address this gap with our “train the trainer” approach. We provide the universities with the support they need, so they can provide local teachers with the tools they need, so that those teachers can teach students the skills they will need.

In 2011, we funded more than 70 programs that trained thousands of educators worldwide on various aspects of CS. In 2012, we are expanding our program to include more regions and reach even more teachers. If you are affiliated with a university, community college or technical school in the U.S, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, China, Australia or New Zealand and are interested in creating a three-day CS4HS workshop, we want to partner with you.

Visit www.cs4hs.com for more information and details on the types of programs we are looking to fund. You will also find curriculum modules from past workshops to use or adapt, as well as a list of participating schools from 2010 and 2011. There’s also an example of a successful program and of a stand-out application to get you started on the right track.

Help spread enthusiasm for computer science in your community: When you’re ready to apply, submit your application online by March 3, 2012.



Happy 100th birthday, Charles Samuel Addams

Jumat, 06 Januari 2012 0 komentar
From time to time we invite guests to post about items of interest and are pleased to have H. Kevin Miserocchi, executive director of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, join us today to talk about cartoonist Charles Samuel Addams. Addams is best known as the creator of the Addams Family, and is the subject of a doodle today in honor of his 100th birthday. -Ed.


I spent the summer of 1979 fundraising with Tee Matthews Miller for the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. We spent most of our time in the home she shared with her cartoonist paramour—and too many dogs and cats to name—during his weekends away from Manhattan. I’d met her partner several times before I realized that behind all the stacks of paper and collectibles and layers of dust and pet fur in Tee’s office den, the walls were decorated with familiar art. Not just any art—the original artwork from the pages of The New Yorker magazines that my brother and I had cut up or crayoned across when we were boys. Tee’s boyfriend was the Charles Addams—the one with two d’s. I was home, and our friendship was forever cemented.

They were married in Tee’s pet cemetery in Water Mill, NY in 1980—a surprise for the 60 guests coming for cocktails during the Memorial Day weekend. The wedding party all wore black. It was the union of a wonderful woman of gentle spirit and great generosity and a beguiling man with a subtly wicked sense of humor. Bashful and soft-spoken as he was, he had a devil-child glint in his eyes and a Lugosi-like mouth when he laughed, showing none of his teeth.

Eleven years after his 1988 death, his widow and I formed the not-for-profit Tee and Charles Foundation to protect his legacy as an extraordinary cartoonist with a painterly technique, and to educate people about Charlie’s gift by exhibiting his work worldwide. Following Tee’s passing in 2002, the Foundation dedicated the couple’s Sagaponack homestead, “The Swamp,” as a museum. They had moved there in the mid-1980s, and in true Addams style, they took their cemetery with them—a sweet place where their ashes are interred alongside those of their beloved dogs and cats.

Of the thousands of works Charlie published in his 55 years of cartooning, only 150 were devoted to the group of characters who became known as The Addams Family. But the perfectly off-center humor behind these characters won worldwide adoration even before they became the television and film family we know today. Even for those who never had the thrill of knowing the classy gentleman behind this unique art, Charlie’s family continues to capture the hearts of new generations of cartoon aficionados. We hope today’s doodle inspires you to seek out more of his work.

SEC Charges Life Settlements Firm and Three Executives with Disclosure and Accounting Fraud

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A Texas-based financial services firm, Life Partners Holdings Inc., and three of its senior executives have been charged by the SEC for their involvement in a fraudulent disclosure and accounting scheme involving life settlements. The firm failed to disclose risks, therefore misleading investors. Unknown to investors, the company was systematically and materially underestimating the life expectancy estimates, used to price transactions. These estimates have a large impact on the company’s revenues and profit margins as well as the company’s ability to generate profits for its shareholders. It is also alleged that they also utilized improper accounting to increase the companies value.

SEC Charges Life Settlements Firm and Three Executives with Disclosure and Accounting Fraud

SEC Charges Magyar Telekom and Former Executives with Bribing Officials in Macedonia and Montenegro

Kamis, 05 Januari 2012 0 komentar
The SEC charged the largest telecommunications provider in Hungary and three of its former top executives with bribing government and political party officials in Macedonia and Montenegro to win business and shut out competition in the telecommunications industry. The SEC alleges that three senior executives at Magyar Telekom Plc. orchestrated, approved, and executed a plan to bribe Macedonian officials in 2005 and 2006 to prevent the introduction of a new competitor and gain other regulatory benefits. Magyar Telekom's subsidiaries in Macedonia made illegal payments of approximately $6 million under the guise of bogus consulting and marketing contracts. The same executives orchestrated a second scheme in 2005 in Montenegro related to Magyar Telekom's acquisition of the state-owned telecommunications company there. Magyar Telekom paid approximately $9 million through four sham contracts to funnel money to government officials in Montenegro.

SEC Charges Magyar Telekom and Former Executives with Bribing Officials in Macedonia and Montenegro

FINRA Fines Credit Suisse Securities $1.75 Million for Regulation SHO Violations and Supervisory Failures

Rabu, 04 Januari 2012 0 komentar
FINRA has fined Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC $1.75 million for violating Regulation SHO and failing to properly supervise short sales of securities and marking of sale orders. As a result of these violations, Credit Suisse entered millions of short sale orders without reasonable grounds to believe that the securities could be borrowed and delivered and mismarked thousands of sales orders. Reg SHO requires a broker or dealer to have reasonable grounds to believe that the security could be borrowed and available for delivery before accepting or effecting a short sale order. Requiring firms to obtain and document this "locate" information before the short sale is entered reduces the number of potential failures to deliver in equity securities. In addition, Reg SHO requires a broker or dealer to mark sales of equity securities as long or short.
Brad Bennett, FINRA Executive Vice President and Chief of Enforcement, said, "Credit Suisse's Reg SHO supervisory and compliance monitoring system was seriously flawed. Millions of short sale orders were being entered in its systems without locates for over four years because the firm did not have adequate Reg SHO technology and procedures in place."
FINRA Fines Credit Suisse Securities $1.75 Million for Regulation SHO Violations and Supervisory Failures

Agencies Extend Comment Period on Volcker Rule Proposal

Selasa, 03 Januari 2012 0 komentar
Four federal agencies today extended the comment period on a proposal to implement the so-called Volcker Rule of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act until February 13, 2012.

The Dodd-Frank Act requires regulators to implement certain prohibitions and restrictions on the ability of a banking entity and nonbank financial company to engage in proprietary trading and have certain interests in, or relationships with, a hedge fund or private equity fund. The comment period was extended as part of a coordinated interagency effort to allow interested persons more time to analyze the issues and prepare their comments.

Agencies Extend Comment Period on Volcker Rule Proposal

SEC Charges Securities Trader with Cross-Border Fraudulent Interpositioning Scheme

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The SEC alleges that a former securities trader acted in concert with a Mexican investment adviser, InvesTrust, and unnecessarily inserted a separate broker-dealer as a middleman into securities transactions in order to generate millions of dollars in additional fees. The former trader, who resided in Coronado, Calif., at the time and currently lives in Mexico, agreed to pay $1 million to settle the SEC’s charges. The SEC also charged his former firm Investment Placement Group (IPG) and its CEO with failing to properly supervise. IPG agreed to pay more than $4 million to settle the charges.

In an interpositioning scheme, an extra broker-dealer is illegally added as a principal on trades even though no real services are being provided. The SEC alleges that the former trader colluded with InvesTrust and needlessly inserted a broker-dealer based in Mexico into securities transactions between IPG and InvesTrust’s pension fund clients, causing the pension funds to pay approximately $65 million more than they would have without the middleman.

SEC Charges Securities Trader with Cross-Border Fraudulent Interpositioning Scheme