Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

August 2006 - Posts

Thursday, August 31, 2006 3:25 AM

Where to learn about using XNA

Krishna Kumar in my group has just opened up a blog with a focus on XNA. In his "welcome to my blog" post Krishna lays out his proposed "program of studies." If you are interested in XNA you will want to either subscribe to his blog or at least set it
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Wednesday, August 30, 2006 11:51 AM

It's here! XNA Studio Express Beta

The XNA Studio Express beta for creating games on both Windows and Xbox 360 is now available for download here . Related Resources XNA Developer Forums XNA Game Studio Express Beta FAQ XNA Developer Center Microsoft Visual C# Express 2005 I'm downloading
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Monday, August 28, 2006 2:13 AM

Starter Kits for Windows Mobile Device Programming

A lot of people are interested in including some programming for mobile devices (Pocket PCs, SmartPhones and the like) in their programming classes but are not sure where to start. There are some differences in the .NET Foundation classes for the Windows
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Saturday, August 26, 2006 11:23 PM

Make Movies with Windows Movie Maker

With the advent of digital video equipment, digital auto equipment and computers software, often free software, a lot more people are interested in doing interesting things with video. It has probably never been more easy for regular people to create
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Filed under:
Friday, August 25, 2006 2:42 AM

Internet Safety Videos

The netsmartz.org web site is a joint effort of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. They have a number of excellent videos on cyberbullying and the risks of strangers children can meet online.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:36 AM

Big O Notation - just how bad is that algorithm?

Someone sent me an email the other day looking for information to help him understand Big O notation. Big O notation is used to compare the efficiency of algorithms. If you teach Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) then this is something you have
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, August 23, 2006 2:48 AM

Fundamental CS Principles Animations

The University of Tennessee- Knoxville has a website that contains a series of animated presentations that describe some fundamental principles of computer science. There are modules there that describe: Computer Architecture Data Representation of numbers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Monday, August 21, 2006 12:46 PM

UK Academic Team (higher ed) is blogging with XNA information

For those of you in higher education and/or if you at based in the United Kingdom (and maybe some of the rest of you) I'd like to let you know that the Academic team in the United Kingdom is now blogging. This blog looks to be off to a good start. Of
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, August 21, 2006 2:48 AM

Service Pack Available for Visual Studio .NET 2003

The new service pack for Visual Studio .NET 2003 is available for download here . If you are not upgrading to Visual Studio 2005 (why not?) you may want to have your IT people (or you if you are the IT people as many teachers are) look at installing the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Filed under:
Saturday, August 19, 2006 7:18 PM

Looking for Teachers who are using Code Rules

It's the time of year again. It appears that people are starting back to school in parts of the US (I've been hearing from Florida and Texas a lot lately) and the rest of the country starts soon. My wife (middle school librarian) and my son (elementary
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, August 18, 2006 3:20 AM

Where do you send people to ask about game programming?

I took a look at the newly updated MSDN Game Programming forum today and it looks like a great resource. Very often questions come up from students (and their teachers) looking for help with a game program. Often these questions go way beyond the scope
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, August 16, 2006 1:57 AM

Parallax Scribbler Robot Review

Deepak Kumar over at the Institute for Personal Robots in Education Blog has a review of a new robot from Parallax . The Scribbler holds a Sharpie (felt tip pen) and so the name. If this makes you think of the old Logo you are not alone. I like the idea
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under:
Tuesday, August 15, 2006 9:43 PM

Using A Web Site to Manage Classes

Chris Higgins is a first year teacher of math and computer science. In his blog he layes out his plan to use a website to help manage his classes and interact with his students. He plans to use blogging and online forums to list homework and other assignements
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under:
Monday, August 14, 2006 9:46 AM

Gaming programming for the Xbox 360 - for everyone

Well the big announcement is out . XNA Express is a great new development environment that lets ordinary programmers write games for the Xbox 360. For as long as there have been dedicated boxes for game programming it has required a lot in the way to
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, August 14, 2006 2:35 AM

Mono – Open Source .NET

I get a lot of questions about Open Source both as a concept and on specific Open Source projects. The Mono project which is an Open Source project that is creating a C# compiler and Common Language Reference environment. Recently Miguel de Icaza, VP
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,
Sunday, August 13, 2006 9:18 PM

Testing Windows Live Writer

I've been using Word to write most of my blog posts for a while. It supports the API for this blog and for the API for Windows Live Spaces but not for some other sites that I have blog. Today Microsoft released Windows Live Writer ( blog here - download
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, August 11, 2006 1:14 PM

Feedback for Coding4Fun

Dan Fernandez is the person in charge of the Coding 4 Fun web site and he is looking for suggestions on how they can improve that site. Since a lot of the people who read this blog are the sort of people who also fit into the target audience for Coding
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,
Thursday, August 10, 2006 3:21 AM

Static Typing, Dynamic Typing or maybe both?

Erik Meijer has a new interview up on Channel 9 . Erik is one of the people at Microsoft who I have a ton of respect for. Erik is a brilliant computer scientist (he used to be a university computer science professor) who is currently working in a product
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,
Wednesday, August 09, 2006 3:01 AM

Online Teacher Communities

Where do teachers go online to find and share resources, ask questions and generally get in touch with their peers? I’ve been most familiar with MainFunction , an online community for computer science teachers, that I have been active in for years. But
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 08, 2006 5:33 PM

Where are the Blue Angels of Software Development?

From Josh Ledgard’s blog comes the question of the day. Is this a question we need to find the answer to in order to rebuild the CS pipeline? I think perhaps it is one of them. Where are the Blue Angels of Software Development? "Well, that one is pretty
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, August 08, 2006 1:03 PM

An Olympics for Software Development

The Imagine Cup is an international competition for college students. The international finals are going on now and I thought that some of you might be interested in reading about it. It’s nice to know that there are events that reward technical/educational
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,
Tuesday, August 08, 2006 2:34 AM

Evaluating Web Pages, Blogs, Podcasts and Other Online Resources

If you are like a lot of teachers who have students evaluate web pages you probably struggle a bit to keep evaluation forms up to date and current for the latest technology. Or perhaps you find yourself teaching a new grade level or a new web course and
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, August 07, 2006 2:46 AM

New Release of Microsoft Robotics Studio

I read an announcement that the August CTP (Community Technical Preview) of the Microsoft Robotics Studio software was released for (free) download. You can get the bits here . There are a bunch of new features which you can read about in detail here
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under:
Saturday, August 05, 2006 3:18 AM

Large Collection of Robotics Articles

The RoboBusiness Conference and Expo was held back in June in Pittsburg. I found out that the papers that were given there are now available online here . There is a large number of conference papers there including papers on the Microsoft Robotics Studio,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under:
Friday, August 04, 2006 3:05 AM

A Programming Aptitude Test

Back in the day (in other words 30 years ago when I was looking for my first programming job) I took a number of programming aptitude tests. I must not have done well on them because despite a degree that included a good number of computer science courses
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Thursday, August 03, 2006 1:19 AM

Learn to Phrogram

Brian Keller had a post on his blog where I found out that the people behind KPL or Kid’s Programming Language are changing the name to Phrogram. Jon Schwartz talks about version 2.0, the new logo and some details about the future of Phrogram at his blog.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Wednesday, August 02, 2006 3:46 AM

CSTA Asking Questions About Resources Too

I see that Chris Stephenson the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association is asking teachers for recommendations on resources at the CSTA Blog . Last week Leigh Ann Sudol the CSTA Publications Committee Chair was using that platform
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under:
Tuesday, August 01, 2006 12:08 PM

Should Teachers Blog?

I've you have been reading my blog for any length of time you probably know that I think teachers should blog. Kevin Schofield over at the Education at On10 blog asks the question over there. If you have opinions on the subject that would be a great place
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under:
Tuesday, August 01, 2006 1:34 AM

Take a Look at the Next Generation Lego MindStorms

The people from Lego visited the Microsoft campus to show off the latest version of the Lego robotics hardware – MindStorms NXT. There is a video of the visit at On10 . It looks really cool and it is scheduled to hit retail stores this week just in time
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,
 
Page view tracker