Interesting Links 13 April 2015

Spring may actually be coming. Only of few piles of snow left on my property and I was able to take done the Christmas lights on the tree in front of my house. Usually I can get to them a lot earlier but we had a lot of snow this year. I also filed my taxes. Not my favorite thing but I have to say that modern software makes the job a lot easier than it used to me.

Speaking of leaving things to the last minute – if you are a CSTA member have you voted for the board elections and by-law changes? Please do so. It is a key opportunity to make a difference in your organization.

I spent some time over the weekend checking out the TouchDevelop curriculum by @michaelebraun. Looks pretty interesting. 

I’ve really been seeing a lot of Kinect resources lately so I am really looking forward to the Tuesday session at the annual CSTA Conference called "Out of Your Seat Comp Science: Coding Using the Kinect"  being presented by: Doug Bergman.

Which reminds me that early bird  registration for  CSTA 15 ends 4/15/15 - save $50, register now! There's only a couple of days left for you to take advantage:

 
Speaking of Kinect, - Kinect to Small Basic is now available. That is pretty exciting I think as it makes Kinect more approachable to more developers.

Scratch Jnr is now available for Android  which seems like a good thing.
Some articles to think about:

• The Hackathon Fast Track, From Campus to Silicon Valley on the New York Times
• Being good at programming competitions correlates negatively with being good on the job

Everyone gets excited about these but are they as good as we’d like to think they are? And what do they prove anyway?