Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Browse by Tags

All Tags » APCS   (RSS)
Monday, August 11, 2008 11:11 AM

GridWorld RolePlay Online

If you are an AP CS teacher one of the things that is an important part of your curriculum is the GridWorld case study. The case study is one of the key pieces of the APCS exam and understanding how it works and being able to use and modify it is very
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: , , ,
Wednesday, July 02, 2008 11:16 PM

NECC 2008 Trip Report

The first thing you have to realize about NECC is that it is huge. There are somewhere between 12,000 and 13,000 attendees and about 4,000 exhibitor staff. There are 8-9 concurrent session slots a day with about 25 sessions in each slot. Plus there are
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Monday, April 07, 2008 7:57 AM

Top Conversations In March

There were a number of blog posts with above average comment counts in March. The post I wrote about number systems in computer science had 9 comments. Pretty much everyone thought this was/is an important topic for computer science students. Personally
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Sunday, April 06, 2008 12:27 PM

Is There A Future For High School Computer Science?

OK that is a fairly provocative title. But I think it is actually a fair and reasonable question. The decision last week to drop one of the Advanced Placement Computer Science exams ( which I discussed here ) has brought a whole new level of discussion
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Friday, April 04, 2008 3:18 PM

College Board to discontinue the AP CS AB exam

Well the news hit like a thunderclap in the Advanced Placement Computer Science world today - the College Board has decided to discontinue the AP CS AB exam after next school year. That will leave one AP CS exam, the A exam, rather than the two course
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 9 Comments
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 9:20 AM

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
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
Wednesday, December 26, 2007 7:49 AM

Fixing the AP CS Curriculum

So as you read this it is a day or two after Christmas. You may still be full from Christmas dinner and you just want to take it easy. Or it may be that you don't celebrate Christmas and you are struggling to find interesting content to read on the Internet.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Monday, October 08, 2007 3:15 AM

When the Second Programming Language is Harder to Learn

Mark Guzdial had an interesting blog post recently titled " Why is assessing learning about computing so hard? " The post is mostly about the limited amount of research available on computer science education. That is a problem I've worried about more
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 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 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
Thursday, March 22, 2007 3:42 AM

AP CS Conversation Follow Up

My post on the AP CS exam gathered a bunch of comments. Some of them on the post itself and some of them on other blogs. Below I link to the other blog posts that I know about so far. Join the conversation here or there or elsewhere. Brian Scarbeau -
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, March 18, 2007 3:18 PM

Advanced Placement Computer Science - Time for a Big Change?

OK let's start with the disclaimer first. These are my personal opinions and only my personal opinions. I am not speaking for any company or any other individual in full or in part. I have been giving a lot of thought to the Advanced Placement Computer
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 7 Comments
Tuesday, January 23, 2007 1:17 AM

The Computer Teacher is Overworked

For the non-teachers reading let me give you some vocabulary and some background. Those of you who are teachers please correct me if you have different experiences and if you've had the same stick around to give advice in the comments. OK then. Teachers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Friday, January 12, 2007 2:47 AM

Picking Programming Languages for High School - Never Ending Story

I see that Susan Canaga is bringing her school's discussion on programming languages looking for industry opinions. This is a topic I have addressed a number of times before (most recently here ) but one which never seems to be settled. In any case if
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 21 Comments
More Posts Next page »
 
Page view tracker