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April 2007 - Posts

Monday, April 30, 2007 2:18 AM

24th Annual Connecticut Invention Convention

This past Saturday I attended the 24th Annual Connecticut Invention Convention at the University of Connecticut. It was an amazing event where 500 students from kindergarten through eighth grade showed off and explained their inventions to judges. The
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, April 27, 2007 2:11 PM

Girls and Robots

I came across an article on all-girl teams in the FIRST Robotics competition thanks to an email from ACM today. I've talked about FIRST before and I'm a big fan of the program. A lot of people ask about girls and their interest in robotics as if they
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, April 27, 2007 11:30 AM

Computer Science and Problem Solving

A very interesting post by Mark Guzdial of Georgia Tech today on the relationship between computer science and problem solving. I love the line below. Computer science is about solving practical and impractical problems with the most creative material
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 8:54 AM

XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 Refresh

I see on the XNA blog this morning that a refresh (what does that mean in English?) has been released. The XNA Creators Club forums are all ready for feedback. var bt_counter_type=1; var bt_project_id=1181;
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Friday, April 20, 2007 2:00 PM

More Alice Workshops

I found this in my email the other day. I think I have reported on some of them already but having them all together in one post seemed like a good idea to me. May 30-31 -- Nassau Community College, NY Contact Lore Postnel ( postnel@ncc.edu ) or Darci
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, April 20, 2007 12:13 PM

Bits & Bytes - Getting the Concepts Down

Among the beginning materials at the Beginner Developer Learning Center are the Bits & Bytes series of lessons. These lessons which can be read online or listened to as audio files (you can download both text and audio if you want) introduce some
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Thursday, April 19, 2007 2:27 AM

FIRST Robotics - Helping to Promote Science, Technology and Engineering

I spent last Thursday through Saturday at the FIRST Robotics Championship in Atlanta GA. It was a very exciting time. I am totally convinced that some of the smartest most creative kids in the world are involved in FIRST. I manned a booth for the first
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 3:28 AM

Are High Schools to Blame for the Downturn in College Computer Science

The New York Times had a very interesting article on the down turn in women in Computer Science. At one time women made up 38% of the CS degree graduates while today they are only about 28% of them. The article quotes people blaming various causes but
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 8:00 PM

Vote For Me

Sorry but this is a shameless plug. If you like this blog and it has proven useful to you then please vote for me in the Blogger's Choice Awards . I figure that if Southwest Airlines can ask people to vote for their blog so can I. Vote here I thank you
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
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Tuesday, April 17, 2007 3:16 AM

Edubloggercon 2007 - the place for education bloggers to meet

I received the following announcement in email the other day. Edubloggercon 2007 - This first-ever, international, one-of-a-kind all- day "meetup" of educational bloggers will take place on Saturday, June 23rd, at the Georgia World Conference Center in
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Monday, April 16, 2007 3:09 AM

More Teacher Training Opportunities

I've been hearing from more and more people who are offering summer training opportunities for high school computer science teachers. Here are the latest ones I know about. (Descriptions copied from announcements and web sites.) An AP CS Work Shop AP
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, April 13, 2007 2:17 AM

Programming Proverbs 15: Avoid tricks

Tricks are fun. It is often pretty satisfying to add a bit of code that is tricky, difficult or perhaps something that not everyone is going to understand. Well it's fun when it is done but later when the code has to be changed, modified, or worse - debugged
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, April 12, 2007 2:42 AM

Robotics News

Well I am in Atlanta Georgia this week for the FIRST Robotics Championship. If you're here also look me up. If I'm not in the Supplier Exhibit area very likely I'm hanging out with people from Team 811 which I helped start a few years ago. Looking though
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 3:09 AM

Summer Faculty Workshops in .NET

Joe Hummel is running his summer faculty workshop for university and high school faculty again this summer. The workshops will be held on campus at the University of Evansville They both include extensive hands-on experience. There is an introductory
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 2:55 AM

Impressing College Admissions Departments

The New York Times had a fascinating story on college admissions last week. The top universities are rejecting students in record numbers. Perfect scores on the SAT, a 4.0 and graduating tops in your class is not always enough these days. Now one can
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, April 09, 2007 1:27 AM

2007 U.S. Innovative Teachers Forum

I received the following announcement in email the other day. The Innovative Teachers forum is an attempt to recognize and help support sharing among teaching teams who are preparing students with 21st century skills. The 2007 U.S. Innovative Teachers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, April 06, 2007 2:17 AM

Programming Proverbs 14: Avoid implementation-dependent features

Implementation-dependent features are features or the the hardware or operating system or other part of the platform that is not available on other platforms. For example a specific piece of floating-point hardware or a language feature that is not part
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Thursday, April 05, 2007 1:55 AM

Do We Really Need Computer Applications Classes?

Right now I think we pretty obviously do. In the long run I think we'd be better off without them though. David Warlick asks a similar question in his blog and a companion poll. The way he asks it is “ Are computer applications something that should be
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 12 Comments
Wednesday, April 04, 2007 1:55 AM

Child Labor AKA Summer Jobs for HS Geeks

It's spring and as we all know when spring comes young people get one thing on their minds - where are they going to work for the summer. OK maybe that is not at the forefront of every student's mind. There are some who want to take the summer off and
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, April 03, 2007 1:56 AM

AP Computer Science v AP Latin and other AP Courses

I keep hearing that more students take Advanced Placement Latin than take Advanced Placement Computer Science (most recently in Mark Guzdial's blog ) so I decided to check it out. The College Board recently published their Report to the Nation so that
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, April 02, 2007 2:46 AM

Girls Will Be Girls

Girls Will Be Girls subtitled "good thing" is on a poster in the office of Microsoft Corporate Vice President Debra Chrapaty who was recently interviewed for Channel 9. This is one of the 37 interviews in Channel 9's Women in Technology series . This
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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