Interesting Links 29 March 2010

In yet another example of how poorly I do at predicting what is going to be interesting and/or controversial almost no one read and absolutely no one commented on my post about companies getting involved in curriculum writing last week (Curriculum, Companies, Cooperation and Conflict). My asking of the question Where does Computer Science Belong? did a little better with some interesting comments. I recommend the comments at least.

Related to that last post and question, Cameron Wilson of ACM wrote a post called Computing and the Common Core that you should read. The most important part of it is his call to action.

Now the community can support this breakthrough by sending letters for support for the inclusion of computer science in the final document. The initiative is taking comments on the draft until April 2. There are two ways to comment. The first is by taking the survey, which as an additional comment area where you can express support for computer science. (Follow this link  and click on the "submit feedback" to get to the survey.) The second is by sending letters to commonstandards@ccsso.org.

Interested is seeing some good college/university projects? The US Imagine Cup finals have opened up their People's Choice – Video Gallery. Watch the videos and vote for your favorite team. Send your friends and students over as well. This will give you a good idea of what the Imagine Cup is all about. And perhaps inspire some students to enter this global competition going forward. It’s amazing.

Concerned about accessibility and how it relates to educating your students? From the UK Higher Education blog:

We’ve just issued the third edition of our accessibility guide for education, and it’s available as a download from our accessibility site. The site also includes a number of accessibility video case studies.

The Accessibility: A Guide for Educators has been updated to include information on Windows 7 accessibility features, and current assistive technology product recommendations.

Rob Miles (@robmiles) has posted some XNA videos at http://verysillygames.com/Screencasts Rob also has a blog post on Windows Phone Accelerometer Support in XNA that you may be interested in.

Are you planning for Office 2010? Have you downloaded the free beta? There is not a free e-book available called First Look at Office 2010. Get yours now?

Speaking of Office there are some interesting downloads that will be interesting to many teachers. There is a brand new Chemistry add-in for Microsoft Word at http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/ChemistryAdd-in/Pages/default.aspx There is also a math add-on for Word at the download center and math worksheet generator at Microsoft Education Labs.

Over at ZDnet Mary Jo Foley (@maryjofoley) kicked off a new blog post series last week - Microsoft Women Worth Watching. Day 1: Julie Larson-Green. Day 2 was Betsy Aoki: Microsoft Women Worth Watching.

Intel has some videos about intelligent devices - with Intel chips inside of course :-)

Rob Bayuk (@TeachTec) has been blogging and Twittering Office how-to tips including - Add sounds, movies, and animated pictures to your PowerPoint presentations. For more like that follow the Teacher Tech blog.

From the ACM SIGCSE mailing list (I think) I found this great collection of programming assignments in Python. I can see these easily adapted to other programming languages though.