Computer Science | Grinnell College

The Glimmer Labs pages are currently under development.

Mediascripting is a project of Grinnell College's Glimmer Labs. In this project, we are building resources to support interactive scripting of media applications.

The student researchers currently working on CSG-CS2 include Alexandra Greenberg, Mark Lewis, Evan Manuella, Jennelle Nystrom, Kimberly Spasaro, and Christine Tran.

Further information is forthcoming.

[ Glimmer | People | github | CSG-CS2@github ]

The Glimmer Labs pages are currently under development.

The Grinnell Laboratory for Interactive Multimedia Experimentation and Research, aka "Glimmer" aka "Glimmer Labs" is a research laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at Grinnell College. Samuel A. Rebelsky serves as the director of Glimmer Labs, which has a host of student researchers.

Current Research Projects

Glimmer Labs currently supports two primary research projects. In the Mediascripting project, we are building tools and resources to explore interactive scripting of media applications. While our emphasis is on using functional approaches to scripting, we support a variety of languages and paradigms. In the CSG-CS2 project, we are building a curriculum for data structures and algorithms that emphasizes computing for social good.

Historical Information

From 1997 to 2006, the research focus of Glimmer Labs was interactive hypermedia, particularly targeting the World Wide Web. The three main projects of Glimmer Labs at the time were Project Clio, a suite of resources to gather and analyze information about student Web usage, SiteWeaver, a tool suite for building Web sites, and TrailBlazer, a tool set for annotating and linking arbitrary Web pages. All of those projects have been discontinued.

[ Glimmer | People | github | CSG-CS2@github ]

On Thursday, February 28, Professors Sam Rebelsky, Janet Davis, and Jerod Weinman will discuss the rationale for using media scripting in our introductory computer science course:

Grinnell's CSC 151 draws upon concepts of media computation to motivate students and to provide more visual feedback that helps students better understand the algorithms they write. At the same time, CSC 151 encourages students to think about computing (and image making) in multiple ways. In this talk, a preview of a talk we will give at the SIGCSE Symposium on Computer Science Education, we discuss the inception of the course, what we see as key design points of the course, and the ways in which we have assessed the efficacy of the course. Since the introduction of this new version of 151, we have seen significant increases in enrollment and diversity. Assessments suggest that the course helps students develop deep knowledge that is atypical of an introductory course and also builds confidence.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, “Building knowledge and confidence with mediascripting: a successful interdisciplinary approach to CS1,” will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, January 24, Hart Russell 2014 and Prashanna Tiwaree 2014 will present the results of their summer 2012 research project:

This project sought to replace the MediaScheme console used in CSC 151 with a more versatile system that consists of DrRacket, a Scheme development environment, communicating with the GIMP through D-Bus, an inter-process communication tool that is found in modern Linux systems.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Re-architecturing MediaScheme, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, April 26, Pelle Hall 2014, Andrew Hirakawa 2012, and Jennelle Nystrom 2014 will present the result of their work in summer 2011 on software that generates programs to duplicate the effects of operations that users perform in a graphical user interface.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, Self-disclosing code, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!

On Thursday, April 12, Chike Abuah 2014, Rogelio Calderon 2014, and Sydney Ryan 2014 will discuss their work in summer 2011 on media computation using Python:

The Media Computation approach to learning, interactive scripting and design, since being pioneered at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has become increasingly popular in the introductory computer science courses at Grinnell College. To support this approach, we designed the MediaPython architecture, with the help of Professor Sam Rebelsky. MediaPython is the collection of GIMP functions that allow users to issue commands in different Python environments that affect images and make context changes in the GIMP.

In our talk we shall discuss the MediaPython architecture, the universal gimpbus plug-in, and the use of Python as a functional scripting language, accompanied by several exciting demonstrations.

Refreshments will be served at 4:15 p.m. in the Computer Science Commons (Noyce 3817). The talk, The MediaPython project, will follow at 4:30 p.m. in Noyce 3821. Everyone is welcome to attend!