DreamSpark, AppHub and Windows Phone Development

So are your graduating high school seniors bored? or perhaps you are still looking for things to do after the AP CS exam. or maybe you know college or high school students looking to make a few bucks writing code? (Student Develops Games For Windows Phone 7) Edwin Guarin has a new post out called Dreamspark and App Hub Registration process REVEALED! that partners well with my post called Student Access to the AppHub for Windows Phone 7 with information for students who want to create Windows Phone applications and add them to the Windows Marketplace for free. All the information students (18+ I think sorry) need to know to get started is there. Or there and below.

Looking for learning materials? Visit the Windows Phone developer resources pages on App Hub. Here you will find  topic pages so you can learn everything you need to know to create great apps and games for Windows Phone:

• Silverlight for Windows Phone
• XNA Game Studio and XNA Framework
• Windows Phone Developer Tools and Device Unlock
• User Experience and User Interface
• Application and Execution Model
• Input, Touch and Gestures
• Launchers and Choosers
• Security
• Frame and Page Navigation
• Isolated Storage
• Performance
• Advertising Services
• Camera and Photos
• Media – Audio and Video
• Push Notifications and Live Tiles
• App Bar and Controls
• Location and Mapping
• Networking and Web Services
• Sensors
• Globalization and Localization
• Porting Your App or Game to Windows Phone 7
• Application Publishing and Marketplace

BTW if you are a high school teacher and want to make sure your students have access to DreamSpark check out Gautam Reddy’s wonderful blog post that explains the step by step of signing a high school up for DreamSpark

Enter the Student App-a-thon

Bob Familiar (@bobfamiliar) and Lindsay Lindstrom (@LindsayInPhilly) have both been blogging about the Windows Phone Student App-a-thon! For US college students 18 and up.

Be one of the first 1,000 students to publish an App in the Windows Phone Marketplace between April 11^th and June 30th and choose between Halo Reach®, Fable®, or three other games for Xbox 360®. That’s not all. The student who publishes the most Apps will receive $5,000 cash or an equivalent prize package. The three students who publish the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th most Apps will receive $1,000 each.

Computer Science Curricula In Flux

I don’t know when I have ever seen as much going on with computer science curriculum going on at one time. In the K12 space there is an NSF initiative looking at a new pre-APCS course while the College Board, also with NSF support,  is hard at work developing the AP CS Principles course. CSTA is reviewing and looking at updating the ACM K-12 CS Model Curriculum. With all that going on in K12 one might be tempted to think that was enough. But it’s not. There is actually an important curriculum review going on in higher education computer science curriculum.

Specifically the CS 2013 project is going on to review curriculum recommendations for undergraduate computer science curriculum in American (and potentially other) universities. This is an effort undertaken jointly by the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society, the two main computer science professional societies. This effort is still in the early stages but a steering committee has been appointed and is holding regular meetings virtually and face to face. The steering committee made a brief report at the recent SIGCSE conference and more public information will be available over time. The committee has opened a web site (from which I have copied some introductory information below) at http://cs2013.org 

Computing Curriculum: Computer Science 2013 (CS2013) Overview

Following a roughly 10 year cycle, the ACM and IEEE Computer Society jointly sponsor the development of a Computing Curricula volume on Computer Science. These volumes have helped to set international curricular guidelines for undergraduate programs in computing. In the summer of 2010, planning for the next volume in the series, Computer Science 2013 (CS2013), began. The charter for this effort is given below.

Charter

To review the Joint ACM and IEEE/CS Computer Science volume of Computing Curricula 2001 and the accompanying interim review CS 2008, and develop a revised and enhanced version for the year 2013 that will match the latest developments in the discipline and have lasting impact.

The CS2013 task force will seek input from a diverse audience with the goal of broadening participation in computer science. The report will seek to be international in scope and offer curricular and pedagogical guidance applicable to a wide range of institutions. The process of producing the final report will include multiple opportunities for public consultation and scrutiny.

The membership of the committee includes faculty from many universities as well as a few representatives from industry. You can se the whole list at CS2013 Steering Committee. You will probably recognize some names there. If you  get to the very last name on the second column you’ll find Alfred Thompson. Somewhat humbling to be in such august company but I’m doing my best to keep up.