11/20/2014
Apply for a FREE LittleFe mini-cluster for your educational institution to use for teaching parallel programming, cluster computing, and Computational/Data Enabled Science and Engineering (CDESE) to your students and colleagues!
LittleFe is a portable mini-cluster which is small enough to fit in a suitcase, is light enough to easily move between classrooms, and travels as standard checked baggage to conferences and workshops (a waterproof, wheeled shipping case is included, and all together the package weighs less than 50 pounds).
The LittleFe is provided as part of a hands-on buildout event during the SIGCSE 2015 symposium (http://sigcse2015.sigcse.org/). During this event, teams will be guided through the process of building the LittleFe cluster from a kit of parts, installing the BCCD operating system, and using existing curriculum modules. Participants commit to using the unit in classes and outreach activities, developing new curriculum modules, providing activity reports, and participating in surveys.
The buildout event will take place on Wednesday, March 4, 2015, in Kansas City, MO, as a pre-symposium event for the SIGCSE 2015 symposium (March 4-8). Applications for the buildout are due January 7, 2015. Applicants should be teams of two people, either two collaborating faculty members, not necessarily at the same institution, or one faculty member and one student (undergraduate or graduate) at the same institution. Three-person teams can also be accommodated, provided one of the participants is a faculty member.
Applicants will be selected based on criteria of likelihood of success, reach (in terms of classes/students that will be taught, especially to minority and underserved populations), thoughtfulness (how well the applicants thought through their ideas and how carefully they presented them), opportunities for outreach, need for cycles (whether an award of LittleFe will be redundant considering resources already available to the institution), and overall quality of application. Preference will be given to applicants who can commit to attending the SIGCSE 2015 symposium (registration information is available here: http://sigcse2015.sigcse.org/attendees/index.html -for-sigcse-2015). Limited matching funds for travel to the event are available as part of the XSEDE education program. Both LittleFe and XSEDE are NSF-supported activities.
For full details about this opportunity, please see http://littlefe.net/buildout. If you have any questions, please send them to [email protected].
The LittleFe/BCCD project is pleased to announce that it has secured funding to support a significant 2015 Buildout program. This year's buildout will be held as a pre-symposium event at SIGCSE 2015.
