Communications of the ACM articles from August 1996

Communications of the ACM archives from August 1996

Communications Decency Act is defeated: landmark victory for Netizens.
August 1, 1996... On June 12, 1996, less than 10 minutes after three federal judges in Philadelphia struck down the Communications Decency Act, fireworks erupted on nearly 5,000 World-Wide Web sites throughout cyberspace. The display, which also provided a direct...

Organizational badge collecting. (quality standards)
August 1, 1996... The badge of ISO 9000 [1] conformance is worn by 95,000 organizations around the world. To them it's an important accomplishment in a highly competitive marketplace. This badge is just the first of a chest-full of badges serious software...

Smart clothing: the shift to wearable computing.(Viewpoint)(Column)
August 1, 1996... Smart clothing - the combination of mobile multimedia, wireless communication, and wearable computing - offers the potential to make personal computers even more personal. In the early 1980s, when I first experimented with wearable computing...

Views on intellectual property and software.(ACM Forum)
August 1, 1996... As a programmer and a registered patent attorney, I read with great interest the article by Randall Davis et al., "A New View of Intellectual Property and Software," in the March 1996 issue (p. 21). I agree that present law does not always...

New paradigms for computing.(Cover Story)
August 1, 1996... As researchers and product designers, we are colleagues as well as competitors, creating systems that will support people in their work. But striking new paradigms, styles of working that could shape the whole field, are usually "in the air" long...

Relationships between fun and the computer business: playing games can have serious consequences.
August 1, 1996... Whimsy and fun are often the precursors to powerful tools that are used later for more serious applications. A project at inception might not be useful because of lack of infrastructure or incomplete refinements. The automobile and airplane were...

Intelligent graphics: what's a new paradigm?(Cover Story)
August 1, 1996... A new paradigm is not just something that's a good idea. There are plenty of merely good ideas, but a new paradigm must go beyond simple innovation. A new paradigm is often introduced to solve a particular problem, but it must do more than that....

Drawings on napkins, video-game animation, and other ways to program computers.
August 1, 1996... Programmers usually type characters on a keyboard to enter, test, and debug computer programs. More than 30 years ago researchers began augmenting those characters with diagrams [20] but pure ASCII text is still the ubiquitous standard. We will...

New paradigms for using computers: creating new computer-use scenarios.
August 1, 1996... New paradigms are new ways of doing things or are entirely new things that people can do or understand. For example, the use of a keyboard rather than switches to control a computer was a new interaction paradigm. Such new paradigms rarely come...

Marvin's house. (computer engineer Marvin Minsky)
August 1, 1996... Marvin Minsky has been at the center of many computer science movements that have made a difference. I've always wondered how a mind like Marvin's works. How does it take ideas from different, unusual sources to solve a problem? Marvin is...

The anti-Mac interface.
August 1, 1996... By exploring alternative interfaces that transcend the principles behind conventional graphical interfaces, a human-computer interface emerges that is based on language, a richer representation of objects, expert users, and shared control. At...

Using computational media to facilitate learning.
August 1, 1996... A function is a mapping; it takes values in the domain and maps them to values in the range. Genes carry the genetic code. Calculus allows us to study change over time. For students, these statements are inert, isolated facts, sitting in their...

Cartwheeling through CamMotion. (video-based laboratory for teaching mathematics)(Modeling the Real World)
August 1, 1996... To many students, mathematics has only tenuous connections to their everyday lives and personal concerns. Therefore, current educational reform emphasizes teachers adopting curriculum activities that connect mathematics to students' lives. But...

Function Probe. (student-centered software for mathematics learning)(Modeling the Real World)
August 1, 1996... Inviting students to use mathematics in investigations of phenomena is a goal of student-centered software. Software designed to do this must be intuitively accessible for entry and then build toward increasing competence in its users. This is in...

Function Machines. (visual environment for learning of mathematics)(Modeling the Real World)
August 1, 1996... Function Machines is a visual environment expressly designed to support the learning and teaching of mathematical modeling. The Function Machines language employs 2D visual representations - graphic icons - in contrast with the symbolic textual...

Measurement in Motion. (learning software)(Modeling the Real World)
August 1, 1996... Research shows that for problem solving to be valuable, it must teach students how to integrate their knowledge across contexts. To develop scientific and mathematical knowledge, students must learn to apply their understanding of single events...

Motion toys for eye and mind. (Newtonian Sandbox software for study of motion)(Modeling the Real World)
August 1, 1996... The Newtonian Sandbox is an "intellectual mirror" software environment likely to be of interest and use to physics students 12 to 18 years of age and to their teachers as well as in university classes. It provides users with an opportunity to...

SimCalc MathWorlds for the mathematics of change. (educational software)(Modeling the Real World)
August 1, 1996... SimCalc's mission is to enable all children to learn the mathematics of change, beginning in the early grades. This mathematics is conventionally sequestered in elite calculus courses after many prerequisites, denying many students access to the...

Teaching science at multiple space time scales. (GenScope software for genetics learning)(Understanding from Multiple Views)
August 1, 1996... An important goal of science education is to inspire students to think like scientists. Professional scientists organize experimental data using mental models to link otherwise disjointed facts, suggest causal relations, expose patterns, and...

What if the computer doesn't know the answer? (study on human-computer collaborative learning)(Understanding from Multiple Views)
August 1, 1996... Most educational software assumes the system knows more than the learner. In simple cases, the system knows the correct answers; in more elaborate cases, the system knows how to solve problems. We could wonder why the learner would answer the...

A multimedia literacy series: the cognition and technology group at Vanderbilt. (Little Planet Literacy Series)(Understanding from Multiple Views)
August 1, 1996... The Little Planet Literacy Series is a multimedia language and literacy program for beginning readers. Its no-floor, no-ceiling design is learner-centered, based on five years of research with a range of students, including those at risk of...