Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

June 2006 - Posts

Friday, June 30, 2006 1:40 AM

Looking for a Classroom Poster to Promote Careers in IT

The CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) has created a poster to promote Information Technology careers. The poster is available as a PDF file from the CSTA Careers web page . Coming up with posters like this is a non trivial task. Chris Stephenson
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, June 29, 2006 1:48 PM

Lectures, Meetings and Real Learning

I’ve spent a bunch of times in meetings this week. To be honest most of these meetings have been survivable only because they were conference calls or Windows Live Meetings (they are run over the network and the computer). That means that I have done
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under:
Wednesday, June 28, 2006 5:02 PM

What about C++ Projects?

I seem to be seeing a lot more interest in C++ is high schools these days. I’m not sure what is bringing it on though. It could be a “back to basics” sort of movement I guess. Or perhaps it is a function of not being able to do “real” pointers in languages
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Filed under: ,
Monday, June 26, 2006 8:28 PM

Upcoming Webcasts on Mobile Game Development

Are you interesting in learning about mobile device game programming? Perhaps as a way to get students interested in doing something a little different? If so than Rob Miles has a series of webcasts coming up that you may be interested in. There is more
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, June 26, 2006 12:15 AM

Where do project ideas come from?

I love coming up with new programming projects for students to do. I just think that coming up with something different is fun, makes things more interesting for the students and helps keep a teacher fresh. But where do new ideas come from. Sometimes
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,
Sunday, June 25, 2006 12:47 AM

Survey Manager Sample Application

If you would like to try out some ASP .NET and database software and create something that is potentially useful at the same time you may want to check out the Survey Manager Sample Application . Overview The Survey Manager provides a rich client interface
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, June 23, 2006 2:43 PM

How will you spend your summer vacation?

Today was the last day of school for teachers in the district that my wife (a librarian) and my son (fifth grade special education case manager) work in. They are both ready to recover from what has been a very busy school year. Other schools in other
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Filed under:
Wednesday, June 21, 2006 2:21 AM

Innovative Teachers Program

Are you familiar with Microsoft’s Innovative Teachers program? This program is for all teachers and not just computer science or other technology teachers. The goals of the program are (borrowed from the website ): Program Goals The Microsoft Innovative
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 4:10 PM

Are you interested in robots?

Microsoft announced a new robotics program including a development environment called the Microsoft Robotics Studio this week. The Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic , hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Filed under:
Monday, June 19, 2006 9:08 PM

The Semicolon Wars

I found this article in the latest edition of American Scientist online. It’s an interesting and reasonably brief look at the history of programming languages. It also goes into the four basic types of programming languages – declarative, functional,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, June 18, 2006 10:04 PM

Creativity and Computer Science

I was reading a blog by a Professor of Computer Science that said that many people don’t see computer science as creative. That took me a bit by surprise as I always thought of computer science and programming as being very creative. But I guess it’s
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, June 16, 2006 7:27 AM

Lack of Computer Curricula Deemed 'Disastrous and Shortsighted'

I see that PC Magazine is covering the recent report from the CSTA on high school computer science curriculum in the US. The CSTA report is available here and I highly recommend reading it. Computer Science teachers know most of the stuff in the report
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Thursday, June 15, 2006 2:41 PM

More hints for using Visual Studio in the Classroom

I watched a pair of teachers teach part of a Visual Basic class this morning. Watching teachers in action really made me want to get in the classroom myself. The teachers I watched were doing a fine job. The students were engaged and learning. But I found
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, June 13, 2006 2:44 AM

Looking for Career Information in STEM including Computer Science?

The Sloan Career Cornerstone Center has downloadable PowerPoint presentations and PDF documents for teachers, counselors, and others who are interested in providing information to students about career paths in science, technology, engineering, mathematics,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, June 12, 2006 5:04 PM

Text Book Writing

About 10 years ago now I was sitting in the teacher’s lounge and the mail came in. There was a package for me and it was tossed on the table in front of me. Seeing the return address I knew exactly what it was and hurried to open it. One of my friends
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Filed under:
Monday, June 12, 2006 2:51 AM

The Selling of the Academy

Apparently a lot of colleges these days are working hard to attract students. Kevin Schofield writes about one such university at the Education Blog at On10 . Penn State is trying to remake the school's image as "chic" according to this article . Recently
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Saturday, June 10, 2006 6:36 AM

Social Networking: Keeping Kids Safe

I’m on a kick lately about education and social computing. Part of it is because I feel strongly about the need for educators to learn about this quickly to catch up with their students and part of it is because there seems to be a lot going on in this
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, June 09, 2006 3:08 AM

Teaching Students to Be Safe on the Internet

The other day I visited an elementary school in Andover MA to watch an assembly run by National Center for Missing & Exploited Children ® (NCMEC). The program was part of the Get Net Safe tour that Microsoft is running in conjunction with NCMEC, AARP,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, June 08, 2006 12:22 PM

So they’ve asked you to teach Visual Basic?

It’s surprising the number of times I get an email or see one posted to the Advanced Placement Teacher mailing list that starts something like this: “I’ve been asked to teach Visual Basic this fall. I’ve never taught VB before and I’m not all that familiar
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Wednesday, June 07, 2006 3:10 AM

The New Educational Imperative: Improving HS CS Ed

The Computer Science Teachers Association ( CSTA ) came out with a new report in the last week or so that is really worth reading. It’s a report of the CSTA Curriculum Improvement Task Force and “provides a comprehensive look at high school computer science
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, June 06, 2006 10:54 AM

When group projects really work

I’ve long been a fan of group projects though I admit I had mixed results with them when I was teaching. With the benefit of some hindsight I have concluded that the projects that worked are the ones that I really thought out first. The few that I just
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, June 05, 2006 12:05 PM

How do you run your classroom?

Brian Scarbeau, a computer science teacher for some 21 years, answers a question from another teacher about how he runs his classroom at his blog. In his post he talks about how his classroom is set up physically -a horseshoe arraignment for the computers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, June 05, 2006 2:11 AM

Does your binary search work?

I just found this article by Joshua Bloch, a developer from Google of all places, that points out that a lot of common examples of a binary search have a bug in them. The short answer is that they break when the sum of the high and low values is greater
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Sunday, June 04, 2006 3:12 AM

Visual Basic Text Books – Are you updating yours?

I last wrote about textbooks for Visual Basic last December. Now that the year is winding down and the VB 2005 books are starting to become available I thought I would ask - what books are you looking at for next year? Are you able to update textbooks
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Friday, June 02, 2006 11:23 PM

Loving What You Teach

Do you write computer programs for fun? Many of the best teachers I have known “do what they teach” for fun and not just because it is part of their job. I knew a math teacher who factored Prime numbers in his head and really got a kick out of the fact
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Thursday, June 01, 2006 11:28 PM

I miss the classroom

The other day the local Microsoft Technology Center played host to a group of students from the John D O'Bryant school from Boston . Our MTCs as we call them are real centers of high technology where Microsoft technical experts work with our customers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
 
Page view tracker