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June 2007 - Posts

Friday, June 29, 2007 3:12

Programming Proverbs 22: Get the program correct before trying to provide good output

In some ways I think this is one of those proverbs that was more important back in the days when batch jobs were the way things worked. On the other hand there is an important, if perhaps more general, bit of advice here. That advice is to spend the time
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 4:02 PM

Object Oriented Programming in Visual Basic 2005

I've never been very good at taking notes and here are NECC hasn't been much of an exception. While I have blogged about a number of sessions for the most part I have just listened intently but not blogged or taken notes. I have to say that I regret this
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, June 26, 2007 10:50

Shouldn't Learning Be Fun?

At this morning's NECC keynote discussion Elizabeth Streb noted that students who come to her workshops have time to play before the lessons start but that the line between when play ends and learning begins is very often blurred. Mitchell Resnick at
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
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Monday, June 25, 2007 1:03 PM

Computer Science Unplugged: CS Activities For K–12 Beyond Programming

I'm sitting in 'Computer Science Unplugged: CS Activities For K–12 Beyond Programming' a session at NECC being given by Tom Cortina and Tim Bell. They are talking about the exercises in the Computer Science Unplugged book. They just opened a new version
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, June 25, 2007 11:51

CSTA Wants to Hear Your Story

Chris Stephenson of CSTA told us (those of us at the SIGCT breakfast) about a new effort to collect success stories from teachers of computer science and Computing & Information Technology. All the facts and figures that can be collected about the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, June 25, 2007 10:34

The First Thing Is To Get Them Interested

I am sitting in the SIGCT Breakfast Forum at NECC this morning. The discussion is pretty interesting already and I am going to try to "live blog" a bit. One of the first things that has come up is the need to get students interested in computer science.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, June 24, 2007 2:24 PM

EduBloggerCon

Most of the entries in the Education section of my RSS aggregator today are about EduBloggerCon . Yesterday somewhere between 80 and 100 educational bloggers met in a very special pre-conference at the Georgia World Congress Center. NECC, billed as the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, June 22, 2007 2:22

Programming Proverbs 21: Hand-check the program before running it

Hand checking code seems to be a dying art. At least for students that is. Throw some code into the IDE and hit F5 to compile and run and then see what happens. "Ready, Fire, Aim" At the risk of sounding like the old guy reminiscing about the good old
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, June 21, 2007 3:23

Physics Of Game Development

One of the things that seems to be a bit of an eye opening experience for many students is that there is a lot of math and science (especially physics) involved in creating game programs. Many game programs are really elaborate simulations and a good
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 3:51

Windows SteadyState replaces Shared Computer Toolkit

How does Blake Handler always see these announcements before I do? The man is amazing. Good thing I read his blog or the presentation I am giving next week at the CS & IT Symposium would have stale data. OK what am I rambling about now? Windows SteadyState
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Tuesday, June 19, 2007 2:28

Send In The Robots

Over at the Microsoft Robotics Studio Blog Joseph Fernando has a couple of interesting posts. The first one is about a new robot that lets people take a virtual tour of the palace at Versailles. Robotsoft has created a robot that is allowed into the private
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Monday, June 18, 2007 5:49

Ancient Rome - The Computer Generated Tour

A major project called Rome Reborn is a virtual tour of ancient Rome. According to this article an international team of team of archaeologists, architects and computer specialists from Italy, the United States, Britain and Germany have created the most
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Friday, June 15, 2007 2:36

Programming Proverbs 20: Provide good documentation

Well what in the world is good documentation? Now there is a question for the ages. Lots of programmers hate to document their work. I've heard more than a few programmers over the years say things like "you want documentation? Read the code. The code
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Thursday, June 14, 2007 10:50

Math Moves U - And a Mission to Mars

I recently found out about MathMovesU as web site devoted to mathematics. Specifically someone told me about the Mission to Mars contest they are running in conjunction with the upcoming Mars Day. July 20 is Mars Day at the Smithsonian National Air and
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007 3:21

Computer Science Mythbusters

Over at Millikin University the CS department has collected a set of myths about computer science and responses. Myth # 1: There are no jobs! They've all been outsourced overseas... Myth # 2: Computer Science is just programming ... Myth # 3: Computer
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:23

Two Weeks Until NECC

I'm starting to get jazzed up about NECC this year. As time gets closer I learn about more people I know who are going, more events worth attending, and just more possibilities to learn. A couple of things I am especially looking forward to: EduBloggerCon
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, June 11, 2007 4:32

DigiGirlz High Technology Camps and Other Microsoft Youth Programs

There are a number of DigiGirlz Camps sponsored by Microsoft coming up this summer. The one in Stony Brook NY (July 24-26, 2007) still has openings but applications must be in by June 18th. So act quickly if interested. Part of the overall DigiGirlz program
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Friday, June 08, 2007 2:29

Programming Proverbs 19: Prettyprint

While compilers generally don't care about how code looks as long as it follows the rules on syntax. Those rules generally are there for the convenience of the compiler and not for to make the code easy to read by humans. In fact there is an annual contest
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, June 07, 2007 7:55

Programmer Personality Test

I found this Programmer Personality test the other day. It is based of the Myers-Briggs Personality Test but obviously recrafted for programmers. Now I have mixed feelings about Myers-Briggs (my son the psychology major dismisses it completely) but a
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
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Wednesday, June 06, 2007 2:18

Microsoft Web Experience events in LA & Denver

Looks like there are still open seats for these training events in Los Angeles and Denver. These sessions look like they might be interesting to people in charge of district websites, tech support people, teachers and or course professional web developers.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, June 05, 2007 10:09

We are not here to entertain, but to teach.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion in the world of computer science education about mays to make computer science more interesting, relevant and yes even more fun for students. A lot of discussion on the AP CS mailing list around the article I
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Monday, June 04, 2007 3:02

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Joint Interview

Many of you have probably heard about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs joint interview at the Wall Street Journal D conference. The WSJ D Conference web site gives a summary/transcript and links to the various parts of the interview. I found the whole interview
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Saturday, June 02, 2007 11:13

What do teachers make?

Some people, especially non-teachers, may find this video a bit "rabid" (as one friend of mine expressed) but I think teachers will appreciate it. We live in a society that all too often sets value on people and what they do by how much money they make.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
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Friday, June 01, 2007 3:08

The Prime Number Syndrome

Tucker Balch, a computing professor at Georgia Tech, blames the decline in computer science students in part on what he calls the "prime number" syndrome. According to this AP article the Prime Number Syndrome is: It's the traditional way to teach computer
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 9 Comments
 
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