Interesting Links 1 October 2012

Well it’s a new month. It’s been about three weeks in this location (for the blog) and I sure do appreciate how many people stuck with me over the move. Seems like more people are commenting as well which I really appreciate. Comments always add value and not just that they help me not to feel like I am writing for the null set of readers. BTW if you get a chance please remind others that Alfred Thompson’s computer science education blog has moved to http://alfredtwo.BlogSpot.com

Anyone interested in teaching computer science will want to read Bret Victor responding to Khan Academy's new CS curriculum with "Learnable Programming" I found pointers and references to it seemingly everywhere I went last week. I am thinking about a blog post but already several people smarter than I am have done so.  Mark Guzdial wrote Learnable Programming: Thinking about Programming Languages and Systems in a New Way  which is really good. Eugene Wallingford wrote REACTIONS TO BRETT VICTOR'S VISIBLE PROGRAMMING which takes advantage of the fact that he had heard Bret Victor speak on this topic  quite recently. All of these are well worth your time.

Looks like Rob Miles @robmiles and I both posted about finding programming bugs last week. His is at Sneaky First Year Programming Lab Fun while mine was at Find The Bug. Rob’s is probably better but read them both and decide for yourself.
Garth Flint has some interesting thoughts on the old “Draw A House” programming task that a lot of people use. If you’ve dismissed this project in the past Garth’s post may change your mind.

Interesting article in the Washington Post  In cyberattacks, hacking humans is highly effective way to access systems,  A lot of computer break-ins and related security problems are people issues not technical issues. We sometimes forget this.

Ray Chambers, has released the source to his Kinect Quiz project Also from Ray is his Kinect Maths Game with source code. It’s in the early stages but looks interesting.

You will remember a month or two back, that I started working on a Kinect Game. The idea of the game was to use more active gestures to answer questions in Mathematics lessons. To use the game, students will calibrate their custom movements for addition, subtractions, multiplication and division. Once they have answer the questions, It will give them a sound if correct. If they have got it incorrect then it will give the students an error noise.

Speaking of sample code - Hello Blog Reader Sample for the Windows Store in C#, Visual Basic.Net, JavaScript and even C++!

Via Hydrogene,  Minimal Posters of 6 Women who Changed Science & the World. Grace Hopper is one of them!!

Hal Berenson is a really smart guy and has written a couple of posts I feel like I should pass along. The first is called Developers ignore creating “Windows Store” Apps at great peril which I think students should read when they think about outside projects. Teachers should read it as well as they think about what sorts of technology to be teaching students. While you may not be thinking you need to prepare students for the work force this post does give some idea where things are going for them. Much better than my To App or Not To App post.

The second is called Windows 8 and Arrogance (or not) and discusses some design decisions that were involved in Windows 8. It gets a bit personal about Microsoft President in charge of Windows Steve Sinofsky who replies in the comments. Agree or disagree with the various conclusions the discussion is facilitating and educational. Don’t avoid the comments. There is great stuff there.