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January 2008 - Posts

Thursday, January 31, 2008 9:28

More Kids Programming Environments

I'm always looking out for new tools and environments for teaching young people to program. Recently I found a list created by someone else. The list is here and it has a few I haven't read of before. It also has some short one line to one paragraph reviews
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:02

10 Golden Rules For Teaching Computer Science

It's often amazing what you find while you are looking for something else. Last week while following a bunch of links from my referral logs I can across a PDF of a presentation deck by Andrew Tanenbaum . Now Professor Tanenbaum is one of the great names
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 10:15

Tablet PCs in the K12 Classroom

I found a bunch of new information and case studies about schools using Tablet PCs across the curriculum and thought I would share it. It's not computer science but since it is technology in the classroom and using technology to teach better I thought
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, January 28, 2008 11:23

Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection Site For CS, Technology and Math Education

Microsoft’s new Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection site is where K-12 educators can access resources developed for middle school and high school technology, computer science and math teachers. It's actually been open for a while but only last week did
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 25, 2008 6:48

High School XNA Game Development Class

Back in November I listed some high school computer science teacher blogs that I am following. At the top of my list was Brian Scarbeau about whom I said " does not post a lot but I always find a lot of value in what he does post. " Well lately he's been
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:20

Education Test Drive

Last week I found something that may be of interest to school and district technology coordinators and CIOs. At the Higher Education West Technology blog I found a link to something called the Education Test Drive . This is a site that lets people " see
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 9:20

Is Java the Problem?

Recently an article by Dr. R.B.K Dewar and Dr. E. Schonberg called " Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow ?" really got some discussion going. The authors brought up a lot of what they see as problems in computer science
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Tuesday, January 22, 2008 4:30

A Stopwatch Object in .NET

Did you know that there was a Stopwatch object in .NET? Me either. Apparently it was added in the .NET Framework in version 2.0 and no one told me. Imagine that. Seriously though I have often had to add some code in various projects to understand how
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, January 21, 2008 8:18

Very Silly Games (for XNA Game Studio Express 2.0)

I must confess that I am not a serious gamer. I am not serious about playing games and I am not all that fond of games that are too serious. I'm more interested in creating games than in playing them but honestly I don't want to work all that hard on
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, January 18, 2008 9:05

Why do schools need a computer teacher

I love to look at the logs of this blog to see how people are finding it. It looks like close to half the traffic here comes from search engines. Now I wish there were lots and lots of people who subscribed and read every post that I make of course. At
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Thursday, January 17, 2008 5:38

How Software Is Built - Updated

It's been about five months since I wrote about a then new site called How Software Is Built and a lot has gone on since then. They have added a bunch of new interviews since then with the five in December bringing the total up to 23. And I know that
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 6:30

Adding the Percent Key to a Calculator Project

Like a lot of teachers I have use the four-function calculator project as a way to introduce various programming concepts to my students. Just figuring out how to keep track of 10 number key buttons can be a little challenging of course. But generally
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 6:28

How To Teach Your Child to Program

Randy Guthrie is a member of my team out west who used to be a professor of Information Systems. He's a very knowledgeable guy and a very good teacher. Recently Randy 's son asked him to teach him about programming. Well it's hard to turn down a request
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, January 14, 2008 8:14

OneNote and Students, Networks and the Paperless School

I had two notes from Mike Tholfsen last week. Now Mike is the OneNote Ninja - there is not much about OneNote he doesn't know. But Mike also has a passion for education and where OneNote and education mix (which they do very well) Mike is nothing short
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, January 11, 2008 5:10

Getting Started With Silverlight

The Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter is a one-day event providing developers and designers information on the concept behind Silverlight as a technology, what tools are useful in development and the knowledge in order to start building their own applications.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, January 10, 2008 11:23

Update on DigiGirlz Days at Microsoft

I got this announcement this week and thought it worth sharing and reminding people that sign ups open soon. Technology career options offered for high school girls 4th Annual Microsoft DigiGirlz Day connects high school girls with Microsoft women executives
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Wednesday, January 09, 2008 3:30 PM

A Fine Arts Degree in Computer Programming

The first thing I think we have to get out of the way is that programming and computer science are not the same thing. They are overlapping but clearly computer science is a lot more than just programming. Often times that means that programming doesn't
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 9 Comments
Tuesday, January 08, 2008 2:23 PM

Calling All Games

The XNA Team is looking for cool XNA based games to highlight. From the announcement: We’re looking for a few 2D and 3D games created using XNA Game Studio for an upcoming opportunity to showcase the great work our community has been doing since we released
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, January 08, 2008 8:48

Technology Questions for a Teacher Interview

Jeff Utecht is a really cool teacher with a very interesting blog. Jeff is a K-12 Technology Specialist at Shanghai American School in Shanghai, China. I've actually met him briefly at NECC and he's a great guy. He's also very much on top of educational
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, January 07, 2008 1:03 PM

Bring Your Kids to SIGCSE?

SIGCSE is probably my favorite conference of the year. It brings together faculty from around the country and the world who are really committed to computer science education. But for many people traveling and leaving their children behind is a problem.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, January 04, 2008 11:09

Friday Interesting Links

I found a couple of short things I felt I should link to today. Martin Schray pointed me at an interesting post at the Visual Basic blog that I really should have linked to earlier. Amanda Silver wrote up about some "hidden gems" in Visual Basic 2008
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 04, 2008 10:59

A Protractor Compared to a Non-pro Tractor?

This video from MathMovesU is either funny or scary depending on how you view it. They sent some students on the streets of Boston to ask adults questions about math. Easy stuff like "what is a protractor?" and what is 52 times 2.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Thursday, January 03, 2008 4:35

Some Interesting and Useful Curriculum Links - Visual Basic, XNA, Other Intro CS

Over the holiday I did some browsing around the Internet. I found a couple of new blogs to follow, read some posts by people who hadn't blogged in a while, and just stumbled across some interesting things while looking for something completely different.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 02, 2008 5:42 PM

Top December Posts

Well I must confess that I am struggling to get back into the whole "doing work" thing after taking the last 10 or so days off. It's a good thing I had posted some posts to appear during the break or some of your would wonder if I'd fallen off the face
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
 
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