Working in Tech - Husky Nation Tech, and Coding

So many times in life, we look for answers and excitement far from home... when what we need is right in front of us! Rather than let the impending storm hold us back, we dove into an on-campus tour of New Hampton's technology infrastructure. Our group took a tour of the school's data centers in Meservey and Pilalas, visited the tech office to hear about Mr. Routhier's career path that led to New Hampton, and saw the room that was the data center prior to the 2014 renovation of Meservey. We also saw the boiler plant in Pilalas that currently supplies heat to Pilalas and Meservey, and in the future will heat all of Academic Row. Afterward, Mr. LaCroix drew a rough campus map and gave a history of how the school's network has grown over the last 22 years.

Mr. LaCroix explains the purpose and function of each item in the main network rack in New Hampton's data center.

The former data center was far from an ideal location, and now all that remains is the disorganized cable spaghetti necessary for that building. "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." Right?

Two giant highly-efficient boilers in Pilalas generate heat for half of Academic Row. Boilers and control systems are technology too!

This messy map gives a rough overview of how campus buildings are connected with fiberoptic cabling.

In the afternoon, we talked about very basic coding principles and process. First, we saw a brain teaser - a diagram that the students needed to try to draw by putting their pencil to paper and -- completing in one continuous line without lifting the pencil or crossing any lines... and they couldn't use an internet search to find the solution! A few different solutions were presented, basically by altering the starting point but ending with mostly the same path. This taught the students that there is more than one way to solve a problem, even a problem that may appear to have just a single solution. Next, we talked briefly about a simple drawing language called Logo, which is a fantastic tool to teach novice programmers about sequence and logic. Students were given graph paper and pencils, and a rudimentary command set, and asked to replicate the drawings Mr. LaCroix made on the whiteboard by writing down the commands required. Then, the students switched "programs" and had a chance to simulate the Quality Assurance process by "running" their classmates' programs to see if they worked. Finally, a more complex challenge was given to each student (as shown below) and again, the students wrote the "code" and were asked to check (and correct) each other's work. Though the assignment didn't have a built-in competitive element, we had touched on the concept of code efficiency, so many of the students were motivated to recreate the assignment image in as few code steps as possible. After our afternoon "code sprint," it was vitally important to replenish sugar levels by visiting the Route 104 Diner in Meredith for root beer floats and ice cream shakes. Though our trip to Boston had been canceled due to the northeaster, spirits were high and everyone had a great time!

The single-line drawing challenge, pictured on the left; with one possible solution, shown to the right.

Starting from the thick dot on the left, students were asked to write a "program" to recreate the image. Results varied by nearly 20 steps between the shortest and longest code. One student even incorporated loops! On their first try, this savvy group of students did an excellent and accurate job!

We're looking forward to another fun day tomorrow!!