NYC Odyssey Day 1

I flew into JFK on Monday evening. After remembering how the subway works, what card I needed, and understanding the map I then did a combination of subway (Airtrain, A, G, F, and Q lines) and walking to get to my hotel. By the time I got there it was dark and I had yomped my bag for a good mile or so on foot in evening temperatures that were quite a bit warmer than those I left in Dundee.

So my first full day here was Tuesday. I headed up to Brooklyn College and spent some time seeing the first day of the Bridges to Computer Summer School where the kids get a taste of computer science through fun and interesting topics such as Cryptography, Graphics, Web Design, Robotics, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). I managed to get a good idea of what the scheme is about then managed to grab some time to chat with Simon Parsons about researchy stuff. They are doing some interesting work here involving agents, argumentation, and education which parallels and dovetails quite nicely with some of the topics that I have been looking at recently. I spent a bit of time explaining some of the research and teaching that I have been involved in, such as argumentation teaching, MAgtALO, DGDL, strategic argumentation, argument blogging, online visualisation of argument (OVA). I then talked about the ideas that are beginning to form for how some of these could be recombined and deployed as teaching tools in a learning support context. The main thrust is that agents and argumentation systems, both individually and separately, offer useful teaching and learning support tools that could be used in university level classes, particularly teaching introductory computer science, problem solving, and critical thinking. I also have an idea for an argumentative dialogue based online application that fits into the GoogleWave distributed collaboration mode and that uses a novel interface.

Lunch was two slices of pizza and a can of juice with the kids and instructors — I helped with serving up the food to everyone and getting it shifted to the right place at the right time. Afterwards Simon and Betsy were pretty tired from the running around organising stuff so I headed back to my hotel before heading out to get a T-Bone steak which tasted pretty bloody good. All in all a good day  was had . It was quite productive with the beginnings of a number of ideas for collaborative research.

I wasn’t sure how much I would like Brooklyn but I have warmed to it greatly. My last visit here was confined to Manhattan and I found that the Greenwich area was really quite nice. For evenings out I like the small quiet bars that are dotted around everywhere where the music isn’t too loud, the bartenders are friendly and talkative, and there is rarely any waiting for a fresh drink. I haven’t yet found a decent bar in the Sheepshead bay area that is like that — mostly it seems to be restaurants and tourists, though I am probably wrong. Then again I have a decent shop a minutes walk from my hotel which has a fine selection of bottled beers in the chiller, at least as good a range as Tesco has back home, so I think that I can manage.