The Computer Information Sciences Department uses a variety of technology to prepare students for their future careers. In addition to mainline operating systems, such as Windows, Mac OS and Linux, students can develop mobile applications on any of our collection of tablet platforms, including Android, iPad, Windows 8 and Kindle. Under a site license agreement, IWU computer students can also install Microsoft and Oracle software on their own computers at no cost.
The Department has several Microsoft Kinect 3D cameras which can be used with a variety of applications. Ben Bagley a 2012 CIS graduate, developed a gesture activated informational banner display which won the “best poster” award at the annual IWU Celebration of Scholarship poster session. We also have a set of Lego Mindstorm NXT robots, which can be programmed in a variety of languages. Linking the robots with Kinect cameras permits the development of robot controllers that can avoid obstacles, locate objects and interact with humans.
(Students Ben Bagley and Micah Hibdon also displayed a poster at Celebration of Scholarship titled “RoboRumble: Human-Robot Interaction through Use of the Microsoft Kinect System”.)
A recent addition is a set of Raspberry Pi computers. These credit-card sized computers give our students an opportunity to explore the latest, cutting-edge technology in miniaturized form factors.
