Monday, November 23, 2015

Interesting Links 23 November 2015

clip_image002Microsoft Underground Part 1 – Dawn DuPriest is a middle school math and computer science teacher who was invited to Microsoft headquarters with some other teachers for a multi-day event – workshop and “underground tour”. This post is a trip report of sorts about what she saw and learned. Wish I could have been there.

Minecraft vs Project Spark vs Kodu Game Lab a teacher does a side by side look at three interesting and highly graphical tools for learning programming.

Finding the best coding language for beginners (revisited) - by Bob Irving @birv2 Bob makes a good case for Python. Bob’s a bigger fan of Raspberry PI and Minecraft than I am (at least right now) but his opinions are worth reading.

Bumblebees Are Teaching Smart Cars How to Drive – a lot we can learn from nature.

The new in-browser compiler for the BBC micro:bit is live! Seems like something new in the BBS Micro:bit world every week.

Linux kernel dev Sarah Sharp quits, citing ‘brutal’ communications style via @networkworld Interesting look (from one perspective) of communication in the open source world. Meanwhile, a Google study on what makes a team successful lists “Psychological safety” as the most important quality. Some good discussion points about how communication should work.

What students and teachers really think about computer science in schools is report by @HuffPostPol about the Google funded study that the Gallup Group prepared. To the surprise of no one actually teaching computer science a lot of people have incorrect ideas about what computer science actually is. And more.

A Call to Action for Higher Education to make AP CS Principles Work a post at the blog@CACM by Mark @guzdial Mark covers some great points. For AP CS Principles to really work there have to be college/university courses that student can get credit for after passing the AP CS exam.

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1 comment:

  1. Garth10:33 AM

    Minecraft vs PS vs Kodu; dang, beat me to it. I still have to play more with Minecraft. I think CS teachers are missing a lot with these three. No, they do not prepare kids to code in a college class, but they do prepare kids to think of ideas, plan strategies, work out logic and the basics of loops, decisions and so on. It would seem that a course consisting of these three IDEs would attract a lot of interest with the kids. A nice introductory drug. I have to start digging up resources. Next year is going to be here fast.

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