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December 2006 - Posts

Thursday, December 28, 2006 1:15

Telling Time in Binary

My wife got me a binary clock for Christmas. It has a number of settings. It can tell time in 12-hour or 24-hour time and it can tell it in binary coded decimal or true binary. Now I admit that I'm not as up on binary as I should be. The days when I had
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 3:17

The Internet is More Than a Library

I spent some time last week talking to some people from The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. They have an impressive portfolio of 20 K-12 curriculum projects that make the Internet
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, December 26, 2006 5:15

A Little History - Computers From Outside the UK and US

We pretty much teach the modern history of computers as something that happened in the United States and the United Kingdom. We talk about men like Turing and von Neumann working in the 1940's and 1950's on the first real computers. Oh sure we talk about
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, December 22, 2006 10:44

Roomba Review and Scooba Too

Since I mentioned that I own a Roomba and a Scooba from iRobot I have gotten some requests for a review of them. Since I was going to write one up for some email replies I thought it made sense to post a review here as well. The short review is that I
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
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Friday, December 22, 2006 1:18

A Robot in Every Home

Now I admit that I love robots. I love the idea of robots. As a science fiction fan since childhood (a long time) I have been looking forward to the day when robots take over household chores for many years. I one two robots already. A Roomba for vacuuming
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, December 21, 2006 12:49

Is there a programming gene?

My post from last week that asked " Is programming easy to learn?" has generated a bit of discussion both in the comments and offline. I've had some discussions with a number of college computer science faculty recently in face to face meetings where
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Wednesday, December 20, 2006 2:14

Sudoku in Visual Basic .NET

I found an interesting little program that creates Sudoku puzzles in Visual Basic .NET. I have to say that I really love it. But not for the reasons one might expect. I don't love it for the amount of cool features it has. Frankly it doesn't have all
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 8 Comments
Tuesday, December 19, 2006 2:06

Field Trip to a Launch Event

There always seems to be a shortage of interesting and educational field trips for computer science programs. My students used to complain regularly that they wanted to go on a computer related field trip. Conferences are generally in the wrong place,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, December 18, 2006 5:09 PM

Is it the computer or the programmer?

Doug over at EdTEchDev has a great set of quotes about programming and learning. I highly recommend the whole collection and think you could go there and read them all. But one of them stuck out when I read it: That's the thing about people who think
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, December 18, 2006 2:05

Two Mice, Two Cursors, One PC

What would you do if you could write a program that supported two mice and two cursors on the same PC? The new MultiPoint technology announced from Microsoft lets you do just that. This software was developed by Microsoft Research India to allow more
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Friday, December 15, 2006 12:26

Dream Build Play

If you haven't downloaded the v1 release of XNA Game Studio Express yet then this contest may be an incentive. There is just a teaser there now because the contest doesn't open until January. But you or maybe some of your advanced students who are looking
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
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Thursday, December 14, 2006 12:52

What should we do to help the kids who really get it?

This is an open ended sort of question. There are some young people who really "get" computers and software development early. These are the kids who create their own web browser , or set up the school's web site, or create the game program that all the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Wednesday, December 13, 2006 1:19

XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 Now Available

I see in the XNA blog that the version 1.0 version of XNA Game Studio Express has now been released. This means that people can now start buying subscriptions to the XNA Creators Club from the Xbox Live Marketplace on their Xbox 360 console if they have
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, December 12, 2006 1:38

A Wiki for AP Computer Science Teachers

(a very energetic high school computer science and math teacher) has opened up a wiki for Advanced Placement Computer Science discussion, links, materials and other cooperative work. The site just opened and I doubt many AP CS teachers know about it yet
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, December 11, 2006 11:59

How did you celebrate Computer Science Education Day?

Well last Friday was the first annual Computer Science Education Day . I've heard from a few teachers who had celebrations. I visited Milford High School on Friday and talked to a class of students about computer science as a way to change the world and
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, December 11, 2006 1:00

Is programming easy to learn?

The second part of an interview with Bjarne Stroustrup showed up last week. (I talked about part one earlier .) One of the questions he was asked was if we should be " simplifying the process of coding so that more individuals are able to participate
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 8 Comments
Friday, December 08, 2006 5:41

What if what you see is not what you get

I read a resume recently where the job applicant told of his 7 years of professional experience. It read as if he thought that was a long time. I have over four times that much experience and yet I still feel like a newby at times. Things are just changing
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Thursday, December 07, 2006 1:17

North American Imagine Cup Software Design Competition

I see the the first qualifing round of the North American Imagine Cup Software Design competition closes on Sunday. Technically it is only open to college/university students but it appears that a number of high school students have taken the challenges
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, December 06, 2006 1:56 PM

City of Orlando Makes Computer Science Education Day Official

Over at the official site for Computer Science Education Day they are showing the image of the official proclamation of Computer Science Education day for the City of Orlando. Computer Science Education day, timed for as close as possible to the birthday
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, December 06, 2006 1:57

Top 10 Reasons to Major in Computing

The ACM Computing Careers web page (I talked about it Friday) has a list of the Top 10 Reasons to Major in Computing . But I think they left out the most important reason. It's fun! Really it is. For some the fun part is solving interesting problems.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Tuesday, December 05, 2006 2:12 PM

Web Development Teacher Looking to Collaborate

Higgy is looking for another web development teacher to collaborate with. Full details are available at his blog but in brief he'd like to see his class partner with students in another class somewhere else to share and comment on podcasts. He's got some
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, December 05, 2006 1:42

The Problem with Programming

In a recent interview , Bjarne Stroustrup , probably best known for inventing C++ and currently a professor of Computer Science at Texas A&M University, talks about some of the big issues of program development, C++ and his legacy and other related
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
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Monday, December 04, 2006 2:20

So you think you want to be a professional game developer?

My friend Brian Scarbeau who teaches computer science at a high school in Florida gave me this link to a discussion of the path one could/should take towards becoming a professional game developer. A lot of students I talk to want to become professional
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, December 01, 2006 1:32

New Computing Careers Brochure for High School Students

I found out today that the ACM, IEEE Computer Society and AIS have gathered a bunch of career information for high school students. They have a web site ( http://computingcareers.acm.org/ ) and a brochure that can be downloaded in PDF format. From the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
 
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