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Thursday, August 07, 2008 4:58 PM

The Language is NOT the Important Thing

Invariably when anyone posts about “the right” programming language to use in a first course a lot of discussion ensues. People are notoriously opinionated about this topic. I am not exempt from this and I admit that I have fallen into this trap in the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:25 AM

Computer Labs As Crutch

I ran into a thought provoking blog post the other day. Mike Sansone is a blog coach – a consultant who makes a living helping people blog better – wrote a post called “ Are Computer Labs a Crutch? ” In it he says that “ the computer lab shouldn't be
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 8 Comments
Friday, June 20, 2008 12:44 AM

A Technology Conference That Bans Technology

[Note: Since this was posted ISTE has made some changes to the good. More details in a comment by Miguel Guhlin below and on his blog .] NECC is the largest educational technology conference in the world. It’s huge. There are thousands of educators who
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 11:49 AM

Schools As Communication Free Zones

digg_url = 'http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/05/20/schools-as-communication-free-zones.aspx'; I have this general policy that when I don’t have anything to say I don’t say anything. OK I admit that I have trouble sticking to that policy sometimes.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, February 04, 2008 7:45 AM

Fun or Serious Learning - Why not both?

The SIGCSE mailing list recently had a long discussion about plagiarism in the context of philosophy of teaching statements being submitted with applications for professorial jobs. While the discussion on plagiarism was interesting what got me thinking
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 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
Monday, November 12, 2007 4:08 AM

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, October 19, 2007 6:04 AM

CS Degree Starting Salaries Are Up

Last week I posted about information that I thought guidance counselors should have about the CS/IT field. Someone said in a comment that I didn't really make the case that students should actually go into the field. On one hand I do believe, as I heard
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Thursday, October 11, 2007 3:33 AM

What Guidance Needs to Know About Computer Science

When ever computer science teachers get together and talk about what makes their life difficult school guidance counselors come into the discussion. Listen in and you will hear stories of guidance "dumping" unqualified students into CS classes to fill
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 6 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, August 29, 2007 8:05 AM

Are You Reading This Blog From The Source?

Here is an interesting ethical question. Perhaps it is one worth discussing in class. I would welcome comments and discussion here as well. [Come on Alfred - get to the point. ed.] Well at least one and probably more web sites are reproducing content,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 12 Comments
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Wednesday, August 29, 2007 5:11 AM

Will Cell Phones Save Education

There are a couple of different opinions of cell phones in schools. Some see them as basically evil tools of cheating and distraction. Many schools ban then outright. Some allow them but only with serious restrictions. (You can read some of that here
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
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Thursday, August 16, 2007 8:37 AM

Fonts, computers and road signs

One of the things that increased use of computers as devices for generating words for people to read has caused is a lot more research on fonts as they relate to readability. Philip DesAutels , a manager in the Academic Relations group at Microsoft, wrote
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, July 27, 2007 2:26 AM

Turning Our Backs On Tech

Or perhaps the growing shortage of Chief Information Officers (CIOs). All of a sudden I've been getting copies of or links to this column in Fortune by Geoff Colvin . According to some sources there is a shortage of really qualified CIOs in the US. I
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Wednesday, July 04, 2007 3:27 AM

Why would you want to teach high school computer science?

Brian Scarbeau and I had an interesting conversation in Atlanta last week. Brian blogged about some of it . One of the concerns we both have is the shrinking pool of high school computer science teachers. A friend of ours just left teaching to take a
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 10 Comments
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