Instructions for the semester are archived below.

  • Instructions for final presentations to be held on Thursday, May 10, from 1:30 pm to 4:15 pm.

    Dear CocoNuTs people,

    Final presentations will be held on Thursday, May 10
    starting at 1:30 pm in our normal class room.

    Here's what you need to know and do. Grading will take into account all of these aspects and more.

    0. Talks should absolutely be G rated and respectful of others. See the CocoNuTs syllabus, UVM's student conduct standards, and UVM's Our Common Ground.

    1. Time: Please aim for 4 to 5 minutes per person (hard cap at 5).

    2. Your mission is to
    (a) quickly review the problem/area you've been investigating;
    (b) what you've been able to achieve so far (or what went horribly wrong).

    Please re-introduce yourself in a sentence (name + your field),
    and to acknowledge who you're working with.

    3. We will move between talks as fast as possible.

    4. Slides: Suggest 3 to 10. More may work but 100 is right out. Quality of slides forms part of the grade.

    5. Please email me your slides ahead of our final session,
    no later than 11 am on the morning of the talks.

    Naming convention:
    nnCSYS303project-finaltalk-$firstname-$lastname-YYYY-MM-DD.pdf
    where the leading
    nn = your talk number (delivered on a separate channel), including a padded 0 if needed

    Examples:
    07CSYS303project-finaltalk-michael-palin-2018-05-10.pdf
    07CSYS303project-finaltalk-michael-palin-2018-05-10.pptx

    6. As per usual: My machine will handle Powerpoint (it uses a pair of tongs
    and rubber gloves to do so) but highly fancy Powerpoint presentations made
    on a Windows machine may not transfer perfectly.

    If you are feeling up for Beamer/LaTeX, I highly encourage it. Keynote is fine as well. Anything that ends up as a pdf will work.

    7. Practice! These are short talks so you can run through
    them a number of times to straighten everything out.

    8. Important!: Please submit your final report by Friday, 11:59 pm, May 11.

    Naming convention:

    CSYS303project-$firstname-$lastname-final-report.pdf
    e.g.,
    CSYS303project-michael-palin-final-report.pdf

  • Madness update:

    All slide sets will now have "last updated" timestamps on them.

    These will be viewable on the guide and for each slide set, both on the webpage and on the pdfs.

    Note that only updated pdfs will show a "last updated" timestamp. Reprocessing is underway.

  • Focus for the second half of the semester:

    1. Projects

    2. Online material for thought expansion

    3. Classes will entail detailed looks into special topics

    4. Assignments will be listed through 11 but are optional

  • Instructions for first talks:

    CocoNuTters,

    Short pitch presentations will be held on Thursday, March 28, and the following Tuesday if necessary. The format will be a mini-conference session with each person presenting for five (5) minutes.

    Here's what you need to know and do:

    First: If you have not already done so, please email me your topic choices, and if you are working in a group or not. Feel free to talk in Slack about possible projects. Pitch your idea and recruit people to your team.

    Teams of 2 to 3 are strongly encouraged (4 is too many, 1 is okay).

    Send your information as the start of the draft of your project report with the usual naming convention with one twist:

    CSYS303project-firstname-lastname-YYYY-MM-DD.pdf

    where the date is the current date, e.g.,'

    CSYS303project-michael-palin-2019-03-28pdf

    At this point, you just need a title but you are welcome to add more.

    If a topic is already taken and I catch this, I'll let you know.

    Below are instructions for the talks and how to name your slides. A randomized order will be delivered by email as well. Please use the lowest number of all group members in the naming convention.

    These talks always prove to be interesting, diverse, and fun; the feedback I've received in the past has been that students greatly enjoy hearing about each others' topics.

    We will not be recording these talks.

    Okay, here's the plan for these first talks—please read!:

    1.0 Talks will be 5 minutes long per person.

    1.1 Your mission is to:
    (a) Clearly state the problem/area you're going to investigate;
    (b) Why it's interesting;
    and
    (c) What you plan to do for the remainder of the semester.

    Please also introduce yourself in a sentence or two (name + your field).

    1.1b Talks should absolutely be PG and respectful of others.

    1.2 If you are part of a group, you will need to speak for 3 minutes each. Please coordinate your talk with your fellow group members.

    2. We will have to move quickly between talks (< 30 seconds) so please know when you're up and be prepared to swap over.

    3. Slides: Mandatory. The number should be 1 to 3 per speaker. More can work but certainly not, say, 20, unless you have a sequence of stunningly beautiful pictures that will somehow help your story. Your assessment will in part be based on your slides.

    4. Please email me your slides before 9 am on the day of the talks.

    Naming convention:
    nnCSYS303project-firsttalk-firstname-lastname-2018-04-12.pdf
    or
    nnCSYS303project-firsttalk-firstname-lastname-2018-04-17.pdf
    where the leading
    nn = your talk number, including a padded 0 if needed (talk number = lowest number of group members per email).

    Examples:
    07CSYS303project-firsttalk-michael-palin-2019-03-28.pdf

    My machine will handle Powerpoint (it uses a pair of tongs and rubber gloves to do so) but highly fancy Powerpoint presentations made on a Windows machine may not transfer perfectly. If you are feeling up for Beamer/LaTeX, I highly encourage it. Anything that ends up as a pdf should be fine.

    5. Practice! These are short talks so you can run through them a number of times to straighten everything out.


  • One CocoNuT each, first door on the left.

    [Movie Voice]

    In a world … where it's back to school time for year 2019 CocoNuTs gets underway for its ninth season on Tuesday, January 15.

    [Normal Voice]

    This is … not a good movie.

    Anyway.

    Instructions will appear here throughout the semester so please check back regularly. Please also follow CocoNuTs on Twitter at @networksvox. The large button on the course's homepage should help you find your way.

    We are flipping the course this semester so meeting times will be office hours. We will go over the plan in our first session.

The tweetses: