Posted on February 15, 2013 by orbital

Why Orbital?

Well-rounded SoC-ians need exposure to the real-world computing’s opportunities and landscape before graduation. This module is to encourage that important aspect of exploration and self-learning that is sometimes called “hacking”, so that students can be inspired right from the get-go in the first year, even before formal exposure to team projects and proper Software Engineering best practices in Level 2xxx courses.

It takes its local inspiration from two popular SoC modules: CS 3216 – Software Development on Evolving Platforms and CS 3217 – Software Engineering on Modern Application Platforms, which also encourage the same objectives. But these courses give such opportunities to a select few, and typically only in their senior years. Orbital hopes to bring this opportunity to all interested students and as early as possible.

Globally, it takes its defining structural constraints from the wave of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which are large online courses, characterized by recorded events and minimal teaching support. Not graded, these courses have openly accessible materials, which students can watch, Cheap Portable Swamp Coolers watch and watch again, until they have mastered quadcopters for aerial photography the material.

For hacking skills, we are encouraged by Codecademy as methods for the layman to learn programming skills, and by HackerSchool to fine-tune these through intensive training.