Interesting Links 23 February 2015

It's February break for my school. I’m trying to take it easy this week. And catching up with grading of course. I suspect a lot of teachers use so-called vacation time to catch up on school work like grading and planning. I also hope to play with some tools I haven't had time for. With any luck at all I’ll get my new 3-d printer working. And maybe a Kinect project I want to start. We’ll see!  IF you’re looking for interesting things I have a few good links below.

I love the suggestions that come fromCS Teaching Tips @CSTeachingTips For example “Give students a caesar cipher to teach how characters can be treated as numbers and to reinforce string manipulation. http://ow.ly/IiLhJ  “ I love Caesar cipher projects! Also this one “Give students a large data file to sort when teaching sorting algorithms. http://ow.ly/IiJZ7 “ Sorting small data sets is boring, feels to easy and doesn’t give one a real chance to see performance differences.

Computer Science Teacher: 2015 CSTA annual conference – Registration is Open. Will I see you there?

Fun images to help visualize how computers have changed. Your students may find these interesting.

Algorithms – Teaching coding structures to 6th grade.

New collaboration features in TouchDevelop   This opens some interesting possibilities. I’m wondering about how several students modifying the same program at the same time will work out in class.