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November 2007 - Posts

Friday, November 30, 2007 4:28

Math Add-in for Microsoft Word

Here is a little goody for all of you out there (especially you math teachers) who are always struggling to add mathematical things (formulas, graphs, etc) into Word documents. The Microsoft Math Add-in adds computational and graphing capabilities to
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:05

Is Computer Science Dying

Well that is a pretty dramatic title. I didn't think it up myself though. I'm not so pessimistic. It is the title of a post I read recently though. There does seem to be a lot of bad news in the field of Computer Science these days. I also read recently
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 13 Comments
Wednesday, November 28, 2007 4:19

Advertising Free Wiki Space at WetPaint

One of the problems with many "free" Internet services is that they are supported by advertising. Generally that is a pretty minor issue and for most applications where "free" as in no out of pocket costs is a requirement its a non-issue. In schools though
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 4:11

WiiMote (Wii game controller) and Microsoft Robotics Studio

I've written before about the Wii controller with links to software that allows a programmer to use a WiiMote with a Windows computer over at Coding 4 Fun . (Note that the code has been updated since that original post.) The latest cool thing I have seen
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Monday, November 26, 2007 7:05

Update on Summer 2008 Alice & Media Computation Workshops

Barbara Conover, Project Manager, Center for Visualization (Alice Grants) sent me the following information about Alice and Media Computation workshops being run this coming summer. If you are interesting in either Alice or Media Computation as good ways
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, November 23, 2007 3:16

Visual Studio Express 2008 is out

Visual Studio 2008 was released to manufacturing this week and there is a lot of news about it around the Internet. Almost lost in the excitement (well geek excitement anyway) is that the newest versions of Visual Studio Express have also been released.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, November 22, 2007 3:35

Channel 8 at European TechEd

The Dutch Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) have been at the European Teched event interviewing attendees and presenters. These interviews are appearing on Channel 8 and they are pretty good. Yesterday an interview with Rob Miles who is a lecturer in
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 11:59

Mass Technology Leadership Council Above and Beyond Awards

The Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council annually awards teachers in the state who go Above & Beyond "in the teaching of science, technology, engineering and math." "To help raise awareness, the Council has established the Above & Beyond
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 4:10

XNA Express 2.0 Beta Announced

There is a new version of XNA Studio Express available. XNA Game Studio 2.0 (Beta) also comes with a bunch of new resources. There are several new sample projects for this beta. There are a number of new features in this edition. One of the most exciting
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 20, 2007 3:30

Will the Kindle Change the World of Textbooks

There is a lot of talk on the Internet today about Amazon's new electronic book called the Kindle . The talk among bloggers is largely about subscribing to blogs. Others are talking about books for, mostly, pleasure reading. I am wondering though if this
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Monday, November 19, 2007 4:14

Carrot, Stick, Attract, Retain, Boys, Girls

Is the shortage of women in computer science caused by a failure to attract women or are women being chased away? That seems to be at the heart of some recent discussions I've been following on the subject. Recently one educator talked about using games
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 7 Comments
Friday, November 16, 2007 11:46

Your way, Your play, XNA: Modify a 2D Game in 10 minutes

Short attention span? No problem. Hilary Pike has created a short quick moving demo/screen cast on modifying an existing 2-dimensional XNA based video game . In just 10 minutes she walks the viewer through some key gaming concepts and then adds Collision
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, November 15, 2007 8:51

Insert Cute Little Cartoon Mascot Here

A long long time ago in a place far far away I was an operating system developer. OK it wasn't a place far far away in that it was here in New Hampshire where I still live but for many of you that is a far far away place in some ways. This was almost
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 3:50

Creating An Install Project and More

This is sort of a two for one post. The first thing that happened is that Clint Rutkas created a little program to delay the start up of all the applications he had running when his computer booted up. While the program is useful for itself I think it
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 3:40

What in the world is a Developer Evangelist?

The word "evangelist" is showing up in job titles more and more these days. But what is a job like that all about? I tend to describe it as being in the "making friends and influencing people" business. But that is just my perspective. Recently Channel
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, November 12, 2007 10:23

Computer Technology, Agriculture and Africa

My friend and co-worker Philip DesAutels is in Africa this week. Philip has a wide range of experience including some time in the Peace Corps bringing technology to farmers and other agriculture programs. So he was invited to participate in the Zambia
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, November 12, 2007 4:08

Where Does Computer Science Fit in the Curriculum

I've been thinking about this whole "computer science is a liberal art" that I have commented on before . John Mullinax has been hearing it as well so maybe this is an idea with traction. Well perhaps it is gaining traction among techies. Is it gaining
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Friday, November 09, 2007 3:52

The Computer Science Alphabet

Something just for fun today. Recently Lucy Sanders of NCWIT published a blog post called " Computing and the Letter P ." In it she posted 43 different computer/computer science related words that begin with the letter "P." Quite a few words to be sure.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, November 08, 2007 3:38

Office Offline

I just came across a new web comic site/blog called Office Offline . Very simple and very funny. It's geek humor of course. And mostly around Microsoft Office products which is not so surprising since the cartoonist works in Microsoft's Office Online
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Wednesday, November 07, 2007 4:29

XNA Student Projects/Games

It looks like a lot of my co-workers have been running into students who are having fun creating games with XNA . Hilary Pike writes about a student from her alma mater (The Ohio State University) who is interested in a lot more than football. In fact
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, November 06, 2007 5:20

Computer Science Snipits from CSTA

Last week Pat Philips of the CSTA blogged about a new collection of podcasts , audio interviews, that in Pat's words "allows teachers to listen-in on interesting conversations with leaders and practitioners in the computer science (CS) field." Specifically
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, November 05, 2007 4:12

My Ideal First Programming Language

Long before I ran into graphical/drag and drop programming languages for kids like Scratch and Alice I was thinking about some thing similar. What I wanted was a tool that allowed a beginner to write their own programs without syntax and syntax errors
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 7 Comments
Sunday, November 04, 2007 1:07

2007 Edublogger Awards

Nominations for the 2007 Edublog Awards are now open. Anyone can nominate their favorite education blog in one (or more) of 20 categories. So if there is an education blogger out there you think deserves some recognition this would be a way. I've nominated
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Friday, November 02, 2007 5:10

Top Posts From October

Well October was an interesting month. In some cases I was pretty good at predicting which posts would get the most interest and in others I was pretty far off. I did think that the free download book on creating websites that sell would be popular but
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, November 01, 2007 5:00

Technology For Education

I've noticed a lot of talk about using technology to teach. Not just teaching the technology as a goal of its own but actually using technology to teach better. I think the first thing I noticed recently was Pat Phillip's call for stories about using
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
 
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