Tuesday, May 28, 2013


Welcome to the May 2013 ACM Learning Center Bulletin, keeping you current on the many online learning tools ACM offers to help extend our members' skills and knowledge. To suggest addition of books, courses; future Tech Packs or Webinar topic; or just offer feedback, leave a note in the Learning Center Suggestion Box.


IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Learning Center Tech Packs
IN THE SPOTLIGHT

June 13: Adam Lally and Will Tracz, "IBM Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!"
On Thursday, June 17, 2013, at 1 pm ET (12 noon CT/11 am MT/10 am PT/5 pm GMT) ACM presents "IBM Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!", an ACM Learning Webinar presented by Adam Lally, who worked on Watson's system architecture and natural language processing algorithms. Will Tracz, Lockheed Martin Fellow Emeritus and Chair of ACM SIGSOFT, moderates.

You will learn about the architecture of the Watson Question Answering System; using the Apache UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture) framework for building natural language processing systems, and new challenges for Watson in the healthcare domain, and how IBM is addressing them. The talk will be followed by a live question and answer session moderated by Will Tracz.

Click here to register for this free webinar—and feel free to share the link with interested friends and colleagues. (If you'd like to attend but can't make it to the virtual event, you still need to register to receive a recording of the webinar when it becomes available.) You can stream this and all ACM Learning Webinars on your mobile device, including smartphones and tablets. And check out our past events (covering topics like big data, cybersecurity, developing mobile applications in the cloud, the future of the Internet, recommender systems, and software as a service), all available on demand.

On-Demand: David Patterson and Armando Fox, "Engineering Software as a Service"
Now available on-demand, "Engineering Software as a Service: An Agile Software Approach," is a special virtual webcast with David Patterson (a former president of ACM) and Armando Fox. Together they've written a textbook on the subject and co-teach a very popular Massive Open Online Course course (MOOC) on the subject at the University of California, Berkeley.

You will learn about the synergy between SaaS and Agile development methods now being deployed by companies like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Google, modern frameworks like Ruby on Rails, and tools such as Cucumber, RSpec, and Pivotal Track. David also talks about eliciting SaaS requirements from customers through user stories, following behavior-driven and test-driven design design, projecting SaaS app costs and schedule, and organizing SaaS programming teams using Scrum principles. The talk was followed by a live question and answer session moderated by Armando Fox. And check out the extended, post-event answers to questions Dave did not have time to answer during the live event.

Click here to register for this free webinar—and feel free to share the link with interested friends and colleagues. And don't forget to fill out the survey by clicking on the red widget found on the right side of the bottom panel in the webinar console.

Boost Your Skill Set with Courses from Skillsoft
You asked and we listened. The week of June 17, ACM is conducting a "Course Exchange" to update our collection of Skillsoft courseware. With this "refresh," heavily based on member input, we are adding some cutting-edge content, such as a full suite of project management courses aligned with the latest Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition) that will prepare you for brand new PMP and CAPM exams to be offered after July 31 and July 1, 2013, respectively. Other notable courseware to be added in June:
  • Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
  • Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) 2012
  • Cisco Routing, Switching, Troubleshooting, Voice (aligned with CCNA, CCNP, and CCDP certifications)
  • CompTIA Network+ 2012
  • Java Programming (Hibernate framework)
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database Development
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Querying
  • Mobile Programming (Android, iOS)
  • Object-Oriented Programming and Design
  • PHP
  • Project Management (PMBOK® Guide Fifth Edition; aligned with CAPM and PMP certifications)
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Six Sigma and Lean Management
  • Software Testing
Please note that several current course packages are being removed from our library during the course exchange On June 17. In some cases, updated editions are replacing older versions. In others, courses are being removed due to low usage to make room for more in-demand content. New courses will appear by June 20. Click here to see the full list of courses that will be added to and dropped from our collection and get more information on the course exchange. You can also see the fullSkillsoft course catalog and leave your course suggestions in the Learning Center Suggestion Box.


Learning Center

ACM Online Books from Morgan Kaufmann and Syngress
There's more to ACM's e-book library than Books 24x7 and Safari Books Online, such as Computational Intelligence: Concepts to Implementations, from Morgan Kaufmann publishing. With a focus on evolutionary computation, neural networks, and fuzzy logic, authors Russell C. Eberhart and Yuhui Shi set out to provide the conceptual and practical knowledge necessary to develop solutions for use by domain experts without extensive programming experience.

This and another 150 titles from publishers Morgan Kaufmann (MK) and Syngress are available in PDF (and some in ePub) and downloadable to your desktop, laptop, tablet, and any popular e-book reader on your mobile device. All members (Student and Professional) can access them through the ACM Learning Center (click the eBooks link option under the Books & Video tab in the main navigation bar) as well as the ACM Digital Library (the eBooks link under Browse the Special Collections).

Morgan Kaufmann is a well-known and respected publisher of computer science titles spanning Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networking, Computer Architecture, Computer Graphics and Game Development, Data Management and Business Intelligence, Software Engineering, and User Experience and Human Computer Interaction. Syngress specializes in books on Digital Forensics, Hacking and Penetration Testing, Certification, IT Security and Administration, and more. See the ACM eBook Catalog for all available titles, including books from Morgan Kaufman and Syngress.

Register for Fall 2013 Semester at Stevens WebCampus
Did you know that ACM members receive a 10% discount off regular graduate tuition at Stevens Insitute of Technology's WebCampus? Graduate tracks include Cybersecurity, Information Systems, MBA in Technology Management, and many more. Orientation for the Fall Semester begins August 26. For more information, visit http://learning.acm.org/courses/stevens.cfm.

ACM Podcasts: Exclusive Interviews with ACM Infosys Foundation Award Winners
Tune in as the leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs advancing computing as a science and a profession discuss their background, experience, and career highlights, all while providing invaluable insights and lessons learned for future computing professionals in this ongoing series of exclusive interviews conducted by Stephen Ibaraki, Chair of the ACM Professional Development Committee.
Recently, Stephen spoke with Jeff Dean and Sanjay Chemawat of Google's Systems Infrastructure Group, who received the the 2012 ACM Infosys Foundation Awards. Jeff and Sanjay discuss their background and past and present work at Google, which includes MapReduce, Big Table, GFS, and Spanner.


Tech Packs

Tech Packs: Expert-Curated Readings on Hot Computing Topics
Have you looked at a Tech Pack yet? These innovative, integrated learning packages covering today's hottest topics in computing are created by subject matter expert committees who curate essential readings, such as foundational journal papers, conference proceedings, keynotes, and more. TechPacks available to members include: Other Tech Packs are in development on topics including Big Data, Bioinformatics, Computing Ethics and Professionalism, Machine Learning, Software as a Service, and Virtualization. Have a suggestion for another Tech Pack topic? Leave it in the Tech Pack Suggestion Box!


 
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