The ACM/IEEE Symposium on Software Visualization (SOFTVIS’10) is a major venue for AV-related research. It will be held this year in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, October 25-26. Paper submissions are due April 30, 2010. For more details, visit http://www.softvis.org/softvis10.

Members of the AlgoViz community will be out in force at SIGCSE'10 in Milwaukee this year. Project PIs Cliff Shaffer and Steve Edwards will be there along with grad students Monika Akbar, AJ Alon, and Michael Stewart.

We will be running booth 616 in the Exhibit Hall, with the help of Steering Committee members Susan Rodger, Tom Naps, and two of Tom's students. The booth will present slides and video clips of AVs (including the AlgoViz Award nominees), and we will be featuring demonstrations of major AV systems on the following schedule:

Thursday, March 11:

• JFLAP: 10:00-10:30
• Virginia Tech AVs: 10:30-11:00
• Algorithms in Action: 2:00-2:30
• AlgoViz Awards Nominees Showcase: 3:00-3:45

Friday, March 12:

• JHAVE: 10:00-10:30
• TRAKLA: 10:30-11:00
• Animal: 3:00-3:30
• ALVIE: 3:30-4:00

We will also host a Special Session titled "Building an Online Educational Community for Algorithm Visualization", covering issues related to the AlgoViz Project. This session will be held at 8:30-10:10 on Saturday in Room 102C.

Voting for the AlgoViz Awards has closed. The winners will be announced at our Special Session at SIGCSE’10 entitled “Building an Online Educational Community for Algorithm Visualization”.

Thanks for participating!

This week — December 7 to December 12 — is “Computer Science Education Week”. This week recognizes the central role that computing plays in today’s society and the need to introduce and expose students to opportunities available in learning and practicing Computer Science.

From the official ACM press release:

Algorithm Visualizations can be invaluable in teaching fundamental concepts of computing to students at all levels. We encourage you to browse our catalog for visualizations to use in your teachings, or to discuss AVs and all things related to CS education in the forums. You can also find a great collection of curriculum guides and other education resources at the CSEdWeek central hub, http://www.csedweek.org/.

UPDATE: SIGCSE accepted our video! We’ve updated the video with captions.

We recently submitted our video “Issues in Algorithm Visualization” to the SIGCSE 2010 Video Exhibition. It illustrates many of the barriers instructors say they encounter when trying to use an AV in the classroom for the first time. It also presents some of the problems faced by AV developers. A brief introduction to the AlgoViz Portal appears at the end. We hope that the SIGCSE Video Review Committee (and you!) enjoys the video’s camp and kitsch.

UPDATE: Site updates were successful. Thank you for your patience.

We are planning to take the site offline on Monday, 6 July 2009 at 9AM EST, to install a number of security updates on the server. The site should be back online by 11AM EST.

A major complaint of instructors is that they cannot determine which AVs are worth using in their classes. We hope to encourage greater AV through the AlgoViz Awards. The Awards process will showcase a collection of high-quality AVs, as determined by the user community. We are still finalizing the details of the nomination and voting processes, so if you have some ideas, come on over to the forums to join the discussion.