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September 2006 - Posts

Thursday, September 28, 2006 1:53 AM

How would you do this without a computer?

I found this web site earlier this week. (Thanks to Jill Walker ) The site has recordings of over 500 people from different language backgrounds reading the same paragraph in English. If you ever wanted to hear what different accents sounded like this
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006 2:02 AM

DigiGirz - a technology experience for girls

Over at the Technical Careers @ Microsoft blog Priya writes about the DigiGirlz camp that Microsoft sponsored last summer and will again this coming summer. Besides the camp at Redmond, where some very high level women executives spoke to the girls, they
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006 12:59 AM

Where do Random numbers come from?

One of the things that gets used and discussed a lot by beginning programmers is random numbers. of course those of us who have been around the block know that computer generated numbers are really pseudo-random numbers. It's a fairly short and reasonable
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Monday, September 25, 2006 2:27 PM

Texas leads the way - down hill

Texas decided the require four years of both math and science. This seems like a good thing and in general I think it is. At the same time it makes it harder for students to find time in their schedules for anything that is does not satisfy requirements
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, September 25, 2006 2:08 AM

PrintForm in Visual Basic? Yes it's back!

I must get asked once a month about the ability to print a form from a Visual Basic .NET program. Back in VB 6 and earlier a program could easily printout a form under program control. I used to write quick little programs that allowed the user to enter
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, September 22, 2006 1:44 PM

Connecting class assignments to the real world

Here is something interesting. Dan Fernandez is asking users to rate and vote for different web site designs for Coding 4 Fun . Brian Scarbeau is having his web design students study and rate them. Students will get a taste of what companies actually
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Friday, September 22, 2006 1:22 AM

Florida Girls Get IT

The latest edition of the CSTA Voice (Yes, I read it cover to cover every time it comes in and so should you if you are a high school computer science teacher - or teach CS to younger grades) included a link to a program called Girls Get Information Technology
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Thursday, September 21, 2006 1:39 AM

Everything you ever wanted to know about pairs programming for the classroom

I'm not a pairs programming expert but it is something that looks very interesting. I found a list of actual research papers done by actual researchers though and I'm starting to dig in. There is also a video about pairs programming at this site . All
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 1:53 AM

Computer Science Unplugged Road Show

Tim Bell who is part of the Computer Science Unplugged program (books and materials) is currently in the US on a speaking tour . I wish I'd found out soon enough that I could have caught up with him in near by Brunswick Maine or Boston Massachusetts.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, September 19, 2006 10:38 PM

Time I Need More Time - Visual Robot Programming - I Need to Try it Out

The Microsoft Robotics group released the new September CTP (Community Technical Preview for those of you not up on the latest over used three letter acronym or TLA). What's in it in this release that has me so excited? Well a couple of big things. One
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, September 19, 2006 2:03 AM

Ten Programming Languages You Should Teach - You may want to learn them first

Seriously I don't expect that high schools should teach ten languages. I'm not sure that its a good idea for universities either. But I am a strong believer that someone who plans a career in software development or other computer science related fields
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, September 18, 2006 2:15 PM

Anyone who says ethics is easy don't know what they are talking about

I read a blog by Jeff Utecht that reminded me of several discussions of ethical behavior I had with students. The key point in his post is this " How do you make them understand, when they have grown up in a culture in which free music has always been
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
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Monday, September 18, 2006 2:33 AM

Workforce Needs and Future Opportunities

Philip DesAutels who works with major universities in the Boston area has long had his finger on the pulse of the local, national and international Information Technology workforce needs. At his blog he writes about what he sees as the needs for the workforce
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Friday, September 15, 2006 1:56 AM

Why Johnny Can't Code

This article by the author David Brin set off a long round of discussion in Slashdot . A one line summary of the article would be " BASIC used to be on every computer a child touched -- but today there's no easy way for kids to get hooked on programming
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Thursday, September 14, 2006 12:28 PM

Visual Basic Express Beginner Videos

The Visual Basic Express team just posted a number of tutorials with accompanying screencasts that show how to do things step by step. These videos show how to create your first Visual Basic program using Visual Studio Express. IF you've ever wanted to
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:06 PM

Some interesting XNA Links

I saw that Brian Scarbeau is looking at using XNA for his high school computer science class this year. Brian is an innovative teacher who is always looking for new ways to teach, new ideas to share and new tools to make computer science interesting.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 2:32 AM

Bring It On!

The women at the computer science department at Indiana University have a wonderful outreach program designed to help attract women and under represented minorities into computer science. I was fortunate enough to see a presentation by this terrific group
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 11:41 AM

Grace Hopper and Women in Computing

My friend and co-worker Diane Curtis is really looking forward to heading west for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in San Diego this October. Diane and Hilary Pike, a new member of our group recently hired from IBM, are going to be
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, September 11, 2006 11:56 AM

High School Computer Science - What's it all about?

Kathleen Weaver relates a couple of frustrating conversations in her blog today. The other people in her building don't have much of an idea about what she does. Isn’t asking a computer science teacher if they program is sort of like asking a math teacher
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 6 Comments
Friday, September 08, 2006 3:24 AM

Judging from my inbox it must be back to school time

Actually I knew it was back to school time because friends have been starting back since early August. How they start that early in Florida and Texas I'll never know. My wife and son both started with their students last Monday. I've been hearing about
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, September 07, 2006 2:15 AM

Kinesthetic Learning - Get the kids up and doing things to learn

Leigh Ann Sudol blogging at the CSTA blog reminded me about a topic I have been meaning to blog about for a while. Kinesthetic Learning . What is Kinesthetic Learning? A good definition (borrowed from this web site ) is: " A Kinesthetic Learning Activity
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Wednesday, September 06, 2006 5:07 PM

Iron Python V1.0 is Released

For those of you interested in using Python, Microsoft has released the 1.0 version of this tool . There is a screencast with the principal developer behind Iron Python at the Screening Room . There are sample apps in IronPython including some with Winforms
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, September 06, 2006 1:59 PM

Is science too hard or are other courses too easy?

I've long been of the opinion that in high schools a lot of student eschew computer science and other hard science courses because they are looking for easier grades. Today I read an article that suggests this is a real problem at the university level
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, September 05, 2006 12:55 PM

Putting group pictures together

Years ago I was part of the photography staff on my college yearbook. One of the very difficult things was to find a good picture of various groups. In one someone might have blinked. In anothey someone's hand might be in the wrong place or doing something
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, September 04, 2006 7:48 PM

What are these system admins thinking about?

It never ceases to amaze me how many high school computer science teachers have trouble running developer software (IDEs, compilers, etc) because of computers and/or networks that are locked down too tightly. Either students can't get access to the command
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 6 Comments
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Monday, September 04, 2006 10:59 AM

Mixing math and Computer Science

I am always on the look out for new and interesting projects to use in programming classes. Well I hope they are interesting at least. Students seem to prefer projects that are interesting, that some how relate to the real world and if they can make something
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
 
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