Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Explanatory Synthesis Notes (in-class work)

paragraph 1- describes your topic to explain
remaining paragraphs - summarize all sources and how it will help with explanation

1. My initial hope was to write a paper to convince people on the fence about going into computer science to at least give it a shot. I'm not sure that's what I want to go for anymore. Looking into my sources, I try to show that computer science is not just made up of nerds in cubicles but talented social people who work in open environments in a rewarding system. The more I look into it, the more I feel like I should do a paper on what is helpful for a computer scientist when working or why it would be awesome to work in a similar setting. I keep reading on fun, creative programming rooms for employees at Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Valve, and other huge internet programming corporations and all of their facilities are open, fun, and meant for you to have a good time. I'm still not sure how that will work out but I'm liking the idea.

2. The first source is from The Independent in an article called HOW GOOGLE CHANGED THE WAY WE WORK (WHILE WAITING IN LINE). In the article it talks about the design plans and inspiration of the work place that is implemented in huge tech companies. It talks about Google having free food cafeterias (warning employees of the "Google 15"), the Google "20 percent time" which is the practice of employees taking 20% of their office time working on private or non work related projects, and Microsoft's new building 99 with movable walls to allow for changeable layouts. All these are meant to keep employees from burning out and to keep the creative juices flowing.

3. My second source is a video on youtube called What most School's don't Teach made by code.org. The purpose of the video is to encourage schools to teach coding because of the necessity of computers in modern day life. It also counters the stigma that being a computer scientist is about siting at a desk for 8 hours a day in front of a computer typing code with no fun. Instead it shows the fun environment of huge tech companies. There were shots of lobbies with raptor mascots, programmers lounging in common rooms with their bare feet up, and opinions from Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates, Gabe Newell, and Jack Doresy all claiming that programming was a creative field that required you to have fun with it.