Five Year Blogging Anniversary

Today marks five years of blogging for me. That day was a Saturday as well. Funny how things work out.

I have to say that time does fly when one is having fun. My first blog post was at a blogging/community site called the Spoke. I wrote about business travel that day. It was the start of an experience that has made me friends and acquaintances all over the world. And broadened my thinking on many topics.

Today the Spoke has been closed but I have moved my blogging in more directions. I blog about social computing and other more random topics at by blog on Live Spaces – my Alfred Thompson the Cyberspace People Watcher  blog. I blog about computer science and education topics at blogs.msdn – my high school Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson blog. I blog about random stuff at  Mr T's rants and ravings – a blog hosted by a former student. And I micro-blog at http://twitter.com/alfredtwo Perhaps I should consolidate into one blog somewhere. Perhaps one day I will. But for now this is working for me.

So to all who read my blogs, link to my blogs, comment on my blogs and those who have participated in blogging with me for the last five years – Thanks!

Useful Web Links for Computer Science Teachers

I keep doing sets of links to hand out at various conferences. It seems like every time I do the list comes out a little differently. Some new things. Some things have new addresses. And the order of things changes for the audience. This list is from a pair of handouts I have put together for a high school curriculum panel at Stevens Institute of Technology and for TCEA. Since I’m been working on this I haven’t has as much time to write for the blog. So here’s hoping this serves as double duty.

K-12 Faculty Community Site http://www.microsoft.com/education/FacultyConnection/precollegiate 

A source for curriculum resources, teacher forums, and program announcements

Programming Languages for Beginners

Alice – http://www.alice.org  – A 3-dimensional, drag and drop programming language from Carnegie Mellon University

Kodu - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

A graphical programming tool for younger students.

Scratch – http://scratch.mit.edu  – a light weight 2-dimensional, drag and drop programming language from MIT

Small Basic - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

MSDN Academic Alliance http:// www.msdnaa.net

A Microsoft program for schools to get Microsoft Development software for labs, teachers, and students.

DreamSpark for High schools https://www.dreamspark.com/HighSchool/Default.aspx

DreamSpark High School provides professional-level development and design tools to students enrolled in an accredited, secondary educational institution at no charge.

XNA Game Studio Express http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna

Software for developing games for Windows, the Zune and the XBOX 360. Also links to the XNA community with sample code, tutorials and support forums.

Visual Studio Express Editions http://msdn.microsoft.com/Express

Free development tools (IDEs) for Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C# and Visual Web Developer

Beginner Developer Learning Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb308754.aspx

A web site for people of all ages who want to learn programming and web development. Tutorials, videos, projects and web casts

Microsoft Robotics Studio http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics

Visual Programming Language for robots, runtime libraries for higher level programming, a 3-dimensional robot simulator with sample simulations, tutorials, and videos

Coding 4 Fun http://blogs.msdn.com/Coding4Fun 

A web site for hobbyists and computer tinkerers - sample projects and information for doing fun and interesting thing with programming; often combined with interesting or unusual hardware

Alfred Thompson’s Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/AlfredTh  Which is of course my real official blog.

Sharing of resources, links, and information of interest to K-12 Computer Science Teachers

The 2009 Alice Symposium – Call For Papers

Just passing this along in hopes that people interested in Alice will see it an take advantage of this opportunity. I have no connection to the conference or the Alice Project. I’m just a fan.

Deadline: March 15th, 2009

The 2009 Alice Symposium

Duke University

Durham, NC

June 17, 2009

Symposium website:

http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/aliceSymposium2009

The one-day Alice Symposium is June 17, 2009. This symposium is for Alice teachers at levels of instruction ranging from Middle school and High School to College and University.

Note: Two-day workshops will be available before and after the Alice Symposium.

June 15-16: Alice 3 workshop focusing on Alice in AP and CS1 courses

June 15-16: Alice 2.2 workshop focusing on Alice in pre-AP, pre-CS1 and non-majors courses

June 18-19: Media Computation

You are invited to submit a paper or an abstract for the symposium.

All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. We have requested "in-cooperation" status with SIGCSE. If this status is granted, papers will also be made available for publication to the ACM Digital Library.

TOPICS

• Studies involving the use of Alice
• Experience papers
• Nifty Alice teaching ideas
• Interdisciplinary use of Alice
• How to teach with Alice
• Alice use outside of the classroom
• Alice and computing concepts
• Alice and animation
• Other Alice ideas
• There are two types of submissions: Abstracts and Papers.

ABSTRACTS

If you wish to give a presentation, but do not wish to submit a full paper, you may instead submit a 250 word abstract describing what you wish to present. Presenters will have approximately 20 minutes for their presentations, including questions and answers. (Please note that abstracts, while available in the conference proceedings, will not be made available to the ACM Digital Library.)

PAPERS

Papers will undergo a blind reviewing process. Papers must not exceed five pages. Authors will have approximately 25 minutes for their presentations, including questions and answers. Papers submitted should follow the ACM SIG Proceedings format. Information is available from the symposium web site.

Windows 7: To the Beta and Beyond

Something for the IT people at your school or district.

Date: Thursday, February 12th

Time: 11:00am Pacific Time

https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard

Join Mark Russinovich and a panel of subject matter experts for a live discussion of what's in store for IT pros with Windows® 7. Learn about the evolution of features like Group Policy, BitLocker™ To Go, DirectAccess, BranchCache™, and Software Restriction then get tips on troubleshooting, deployment, and application compatibility. Bring your questions—Mark and the panel will answer as many as they can during the hour-long event, then publish the rest in a Q&A after the event.

Find answers to your Windows client OS deployment and management questions with resources, tools, monthly feature articles, and guidance from subject matter experts and early adopters. To learn more, visit www.microsoft.com/springboard.

As part of the “virtual” experience, you may submit your questions about Windows 7 Beta to the panel live during the event—or submit questions in advance to vrtable@microsoft.com.

Springboard Series: The resource for Windows desktop IT professionals

One More Reason to Be Proud of Working For Microsoft

Microsoft named top U.S. company for community investment in survey of peers Interesting article about “a survey of major corporations [of which companies are] doing the best job of investing in its community. The survey was part of a study published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.”

IBM and Dell were 4th and 5th. Google and Intel were tied for 6th (although I think that should be seventh but what does it really matter.) Lots of the giving of all five companies is for education. This is not surprising as all of these high tech companies really require not only educated employees but customers.

I’ve been really pleased to be a part of a lot of work that Microsoft has done to support education over the past several years. There is a clear indication at all levels of the company that Microsoft has to support education. For the good of the students, society and Microsoft itself. I’m glad that other companies including those that Microsoft competes with feel the same way.

What are you?

Just for the fun of it I was taking a series of poll questions at Microsoft’s Microphone application on Facebook this afternoon and all of a sudden this question came up and I was stumped.

Do you consider yourself primarily a:

• Gamer
• Programmer
• Computer Scientist
• Artist
• Technology Hobbyist
• IT professional

And I didn’t know. Clearly not gamer or artist. IT professional? What does that even mean today? I work for a computer company but not really in an IT role. And while I have done that it never defined me. So that’s out.

These leaves technology hobbyist which feels ok but not quite. And then programmer and computer scientist. I want to say computer scientist. I really do. But do I reach that bar or am I “just” a well educated programmer? I think I would have to answer computer scientist but admit that this is as much aspirational as actual. And I have to think about how I define computer scientist.

So where do you see yourself?

Thanksgiving Reading

Why post anything on Thanksgiving? I mean people are all spending time with family or sleeping through football games on TV and generally staying away from the Internet for a couple of days.  Well maybe not. I get bored and I don’t watch TV and my wife loves me enough to let me stay home while she enjoys “Black Friday.” Honestly she loves it. So typically some time over a long week end I get online hoping to find something to read. And lo and behold the Internet is closed. OK not closed but there is far from the typical amount of stuff out there to read. So clearly I should do my part for those of you who are like me. If any …

Here is an interesting article on games. The Army is spending $50 million over 5 years to develop games to train solders. That’s a lot of money. But even more than as something to train solders I think (hope) it might inspire a lot more people to look at other sorts of educational games. Especially those that are more customizable. [Hat tip: Brian Scarbeau for the link.]

Teamwork in searching? Interesting article in the NY Times (free subscription required) about a Microsoft Research project that allows several people to research together using different computers. The product is now available for free and is called Search Together. It seems like this might be a very helpful tool for students doing group research projects. Maybe you want to use some time this long weekend to try it out?

Functional Programming? Ever wonder about it? It’s getting a lot of attention in many higher education computer science circles. Sure you can use a special functional language like F# but what if you want to learn in a different context? Eric White has a blog post that introduces a set of tutorial information that uses Visual basic as the language for functional program. You may want to start out at Introduction to the FP Tutorial which makes the case for functional programming.

Study: Math Teachers 1 Chapter Ahead of Students – This is a typical problem in computer science education as well. I taught a course where I was only 1 chapter ahead of students once and still feel guilty over it. How can we fix it? I don’t know. If you have ideas I’m interested in hearing them.

Leigh Ann Sudol has a post titled Numb3rs and Trains and CS with a bunch of interesting links and a discussion on the TV show and how it relates to making computer science mean something to people.l

IT Challenge 2009 Worldwide Competition for High School and College Students Ages 16 and Over

Attention all high school students 16 and over. Are you interested in information technology?

Microsoft Imagine Cup Announces the IT Challenge 2009 Worldwide Competition for High School and College Students Ages 16 and Over. This worldwide competition is focused on finding solutions to real-world issues. We need you...to imagine a better world, and then make it happen. 

COMPETITION DATES
You can still compete, but don't delay there's only 5 quizzes left!

Infrastructure 11/23/08
Application    12/9/2008
Application    12/20/2008
Management     1/14/2009
Management     1/31/2009

Sign up today: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=23

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Why should you participate?

• You can further develop your IT talent by participating in a global competition.
• You get a chance to compete with peers from other countries.
• You have access to Imagine Cup forums to network with other students with similar technology interests.
• The IT Challenge adds value to your education. The online quizzes are like mini-certification exams. You can use them as practice exams or see what it's like to take a Microsoft certification.
• Eligible students who move on to round 3 have the potential to win up to US$8,000 in the WW Finals plus an all expense trip to the Imagine Cup World Wide finals in Cairo, Egypt, in July 2009.
• There are no fees to register for the IT Challenge competition and guess what, you can compete online!
• And better yet, you get access to virtual labs and 100+ hours of premium technical e-learning and e-books to prepare for the competition.

Check out past competitors http://channel8.msdn.com/Tags/ImagineCup08finals

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What’s the process for signing up?

The IT Challenge is an individual competition based on four themed online quizzes (client, infrastructure, application, and management technologies). Competitors are challenged to demonstrate proficiency in the art of developing, deploying, configuring and maintaining IT systems that are efficient, robust, and secure.  In addition to analysis and decision-making processes, this invitational challenges students to demonstrate proficiency in the science of networks, databases, and servers.
Remember, you are only required to participate in (and pass) one of the quizzes in Round One to move onto the round 2.  Every eligible entrant that receives a valid score of 50% or higher on any single Round One quiz as determined by Imagine Cup will advance to Round Two. Here are four easy steps:

Step one: Register for the IT Challenge
Step two: Compete in Round 1 online* (feel free to try practice quizzes before the “real thing”)
Step three: Eligible winners compete in Round 2 online.
Step four: Eligible students who move on to Round 3 have the potential to win up to US$8,000 in the WW Finals plus an all expense trip to the Imagine Cup World Wide finals in Cairo, Egypt, in July 2009!

For a complete description and information about eligibility and judging criteria, visit http://imaginecup.com/Competition/Rules-Regulations.aspx

Sign up today: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=23

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ABOUT IMAGINE CUP: The Imagine Cup brings together more than 200,000 students from over 100 countries around the world where they compete to help find the answers.  And no matter who comes up with the best solutions - everybody wins!

In 2009, the Imagine Cup challenges the world's most talented students to "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today." Some might use technology to help a brother or sister get an education. Or find entirely new approaches for medicine.  Or discover ways to counter the inequalities that exist between genders around the world.  These students might ensure the sustainability of our planet or help deliver universal primary education.  Yeah, it's that important.

The United Nations has identified some of the hardest challenges in the world today in its Millennium Goals. This year the Imagine Cup uses these ambitious challenges as a guiding light to inspire change all over the world. Learn more about the eight Millennium Goals by visiting http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals.

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Have you heard about Academic Second Shot? If you are planning on taking a certification exam, you get two shots at passing a Microsoft 072 (academic series) certification exam, and the first exam is offered at a student discount!

Register now for an academic discount on your first exam www.microsoft.com/learning/2ndshot 

For more information, please contact Lani Fraizer at lani (at) synergiesinsync.org or call (916) 458-6460.

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Are you already participating in the Imagine Cup's IT Challenge or Academic Second Shot?

Please take a few moments to share your feedback with us: lani (at)synergiesinsync.org.

Announcing Small Basic From Microsoft DevLabs

Do you remember the old days of learning how to program with a simple, easy to use, uncomplicated version of BASIC? A lot of people including a lot of teachers (and more than a few professional developers) do. But in general companies are working on more and more powerful version with added complexity. Here now is step sideways. Not all the way batch to the command line but not so far forward that it takes a trained professional to use Small Basic is a new development tool for beginners. For over a year Small Basic was a part-time project by a software developer at Microsoft. He had a small number of people who experimented with it, tried it with their kids, and provided feedback. Today Microsoft released it into “the wild” as part of the new DevLabs portal. (Nice video there with Microsoft engineers talking about innovation and inspiration.

A little more information from the Small Basic portal site:

Small Basic is a project that's aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.

• Small Basic derives its inspiration from the original BASIC programming language, and is based on the Microsoft .Net platform. It is really small with just 15 keywords and uses minimal concepts to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible.
• The Small Basic development environment is simple, yet provides powerful modern environment features like Intellisense™ and instant context sensitive help.
• Small Basic allows third-party libraries to be plugged in with ease, making it possible for the community to extend the experience in fun and interesting ways.

You will find a getting started guide at the Small Basic Portal BTW. Check it out and send me you feedback or discuss it in the Small Basic forums or the Small Basic Blog hosted my the developer behind it.

Cross posted from my main high school computer science teacher blog which is updated more regularly.

Tech Talk Tuesday For Teachers

I got a lot of “T” words in that title. What I found this week was a whole calendar of videos and presentations created by the “Microsoft in Education” team that are aimed at teachers, Tech Coordinators, and others involved in using computer technology in schools. Some of the talks are under the “Teacher Tech Tuesday” banner and are aimed specifically for teachers. Some of the talks are yet to come and can be joined live when they are being presented. Others have already happened but can be viewed on demand. A few of the upcoming talks are listed below (borrowed from Mike Tholfsen‘s blog which is worth you checking out as well.)

Here is the schedule for upcoming Teacher Tech events

• Live Oct 27 10:30AM-11:30AM Pacific Time
  Overview of Microsoft Expression Studio 2
  Microsoft Expression Studio takes your creative possibilities to a new level. The... (learn more)

• Live Oct 28 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  Teacher Tech Tuesdays - Live Service Solutions for K12 (S+S)
  Create a collaborative academic community that extends beyond classroom walls. Enhance the... (learn more)

• Live Nov 3 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  21st Century Leadership
  What are the key characteristics of an effective, technology-rich leadership development program... (learn more)

• Live Nov 11 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  Teacher Tech Tuesdays - Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers
  The perfect resource to help teachers get more organized. The toolkit is... (learn more)

• Live Nov 18 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  Teacher Tech Tuesdays - Building/Creating/Leveraging Communities — Blogging & Web 2.0 fundamentals
  Learn how to safely support & encourage new media in your organization... (learn more)

• Live Dec 2 11:00AM-12:30PM Pacific Time
  Tech Talk Tuesdays: MSDNAA/IT Academy
  Microsoft presents the MSDN Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) Program. MSDN AA is... (learn more)

• Live Dec 2 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  Teacher Tech Tuesdays - Creating effective communications with OneNote & Outlook

  Learn how Microsoft tools can help you stay in touch with students... (learn more)

• Live Dec 9 11:00AM-12:30PM Pacific Time
  Tech Talk Tuesdays: Introduction to the 2007 Microsoft Office System
  The 2007 Microsoft Office System is a complete set of desktop and... (learn more)

• Live Dec 9 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  Teacher Tech Tuesdays - Everyone can be an astronaut with World Wide Telescope
  Take your class on a journey with the World Wide Telescope (WWT)... (learn more)

• Live Dec 16 1:00PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
  Teacher Tech Tuesdays - Introduction to Photosynth
  Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using... (learn more)

Friday Links 101008

I have a small backlog of interesting links so I decided to group some of them in this post. Some are different from what I usually post and some are more typical. But I think they are all interesting to someone who is likely to be reading this blog. I hope so anyway.

I don’t usually link directly to a comment on another blog but this is an exceptional comment. Alan Kay replied to a post by Mark Guzdial recently. In it he compared computer science and programming to Jazz and creating music. A remarkable thought provoking post to say the least. My reply to Mark’s series of posts is boring and unenlightened by comparison. There are some good comments on Mark’s first post on the subject as well.

BTW Robb Cutler weighs in with the whole “Computer Science Without Programming?” question on the CSTA blog. Well worth a read. That makes four CS blogs weighing in on the subject. If you know of more leave me a comment, send me an email or Twitter me at http://twitter.com/alfredtwo

Web hosting is a question I actually get asked about from time to time. A surprising number of students and even teachers what to know about hosting their own websites independent of their school (or others their business. Clint Rutkas has a post about what is involved in a post called “Web Hosting, what to do and where to get it” He wrote this in response to a student who asked him the question. From now on I am just going to point people to Clint’s blog.

I found this article in ComputerWorld that postulates that the current economic crisis may help drive more students into computer science and information technology. Why? Well because finance and investment banking doesn’t look so good as a way to get rich anymore. Interesting idea. The article circulated about the team I work with and Randy Guthrie lays out some of his thinking in a post titled “Financial Crisis May Be Boost for Computer Science/IT Education” Something to discuss in your class or Personal Learning Network (PLN a term I learned from twitter.)

Speaking of Twitter, also on Twitter I found a nice video called “Adding binary numbers explained in 2 minutes” that is just what you’d expect. A two-minute video demo on how to add binary numbers. Sure you can do it yourself in class but you could also link to this as a resource students can access for review or watch a couple of times until they get it down pat.

Beginner Developer Learning Center

One of the questions I get all the time is “I have a student/child/nephew/daughter/etc who wants to learn programming on their own. Where should they go?” My answer is always the Beginner Developer Learning Center and from there to the Kid’s Corner. I may also recommend Popfly as a starting place because it is so much fun. But if they are interested in more than mashups and games, which many of them are, the Kid’s Corner is the place to start. Well this week the Kid’s Corner went though a complete re-design and re-launch and it is better than ever.

The same great resources that were there before are still there but there are some great new ones as well. One of them that I particularly love is a new video on classes and objects. This video is 10 minutes long and features a bunch of kids explaining objects, classes, inheritance, and more using themselves and cardboard boxes as examples. The language is suitable for students as young as middle school without losing the important parts of the concepts. It may be the best 10 minute explanation of objects and classes I have ever seen.

There is also a seven minute explanation of what the Internet is and how it works. This is also suitable for younger students. I can see it being used by a lot of computer literacy classes. I’m sending a link to it to my 83 year old father too.

Everything at the new version of the site is rated Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced to help people select where they should start. So for home schoolers, after school programs, individuals who want to learn on their own or even teachers looking for supplemental resources this is a great place to start. Of course teachers will also want to make sure they check out the resources at the Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection site as well.

Microsoft Campus Tour Video

I’ve been taking a short blogging break this week. Frankly I’m just flat out with other work lately. Yesterday was meetings and preparation for a talk I gave today at Nashua Community College. I had a great time there because both before and after the talk I had a chance to talk to students in a casual environment. And well yes there was pizza too. One of the questions that often comes up when I talk to students, and a lot of adults as well, is what is it like to work at Microsoft? My work situation is a little less common than most but not as unusual as you might expect. Microsoft has a lot of people who work remotely where remote means from their own homes.

But most Microsoft people work in more traditional offices. These offices are literally all over the world and Microsoft has offices in a lot more places in the US than most people think. But the largest share of Microsoft employees work in the Seattle Washington area. Calling some of those buildings traditional may actually be a bit of a stretch though. Recently the Amazing Max (Agent 008) filmed a video tour of various buildings and campuses that Microsoft has in the Seattle area. Sure it is a recruiting sort of video but it really gives a view into what the Microsoft campus is like. I’ve been to most of the buildings Max tours and what he shows is how it is.

Check it out. I found it interesting, entertaining and informative. If you want to know what office conditions are like at Microsoft look here.

Fun With Colors

I’m in the middle of a deep review of some curriculum for developing web pages. (This curriculum was talked about in a previous post.) It’s really good stuff and I think a lot of teachers will find it valuable. During the course of this review I came upon the discussion of colors and how they are represented in web pages. Colors are defined using a mix of red, green and blue specified as a hexadecimal number. These values go from 0 to ff (or 0 to 255 for you decimal people.)

There are lots of tools on the web and elsewhere that let people pick colors and then supply the hex value they need of course. If you work with web pages on a regular basis you probably even have a favorite. But as a programming geek I decided it would be fun to write my own. Yes, there are people for whom writing a little code while everyone else is watching TV is our idea of fun and relaxing. So I came up with this:

I like sliders. :-) The user moves the sliders to get the color they want (the code sets the background of a picture box in this case) and the hex value is placed in a text box. I used a text box because it is easy to do a copy and paste from text boxes. The key code looks like:

ColorBox.BackColor =  Color.FromArgb( iRed,iGreen,iBlue);
txtHex.Text = iRed.ToString("X2")  + iGreen.ToString("X2")  + iBlue.ToString("X2");

Yes, that is in C# just to remind Clint that I do use it now and again. Interestingly enough when I made my Visual Basic .NET version I was able to copy/paste much of the code from the C# into the VB. Or course I had to delete all those semi-colons afterwards. In any case it is very nice that the ToString method lets the programmer request that integers be displayed as hexadecimal values. I was toying with the idea of writing a function to do that but a) I like the idea of using built in facilities and b) that is something I might leave for students in an assignment just because I am evil. :-)

A little side trick that shows the amazing coolness of Visual Studio and .NET, I opened up two copies of Visual Studio with the C# project in one of them. In the second I created a new Visual Basic Windows application project. Then I did a copy of all the objects on the form in the C# project and pasted them into the form of the VB project. Then I just added code. Again some copy paste, removed the semi-colons but with different syntax and stuff for specifying form level variables and functions/sub routines. I also did not have to explicitly initialize the form level variables because Visual Basic does that on its own. I’ll probably do it to make the program more self documenting though. That’s just good practice.

Hum, I wonder if I should set the color of the words above the slider based only on the value of that particular slider? Not sure how that would look. Left as an exercise for the reader perhaps?

Now These I Get

This is the basic digital lifestyle sort of video. I’ve seen it a number of times and am surprised Microsoft doesn’t make more of it.

This one is a fun look at business and the new Microsoft Office.

Online Programming Contest for Canadian Students

The DWITE programming competition for Canadian high school students is ramping up again for the year.

From their About page:

The primary purpose of the DWITE Online Computer Programming Contest is to provide an avenue for Canadian secondary school students to practice for more recognized programming contests like CCC and ECOO.

This is a series of five online events over the course of the school year. One of the great things about it from my point of view is that they allow a wide variety of programming languages. C, C++, Java, both Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET, PASCAL and even more. Yes, Turing (used a lot more in Canada than in the US) is on the list as well. So if you are in Canada and are a high school student, teach high school students or know high school students you may want to know more about this. Check out their web site here.

Crossposted from my main high school computer science blog.

Latest Bill and Jerry Video

It’s about 4.5 minutes long and you can see it here. I think its kind of funny. More on the what’s this all about here.

Alfred Thompson The Microsoft Education Blogger

Microsoft Institute

Here is something more for the administration side of the education business.

Microsoft Institute Overview

Participate in a unique professional development experience that will provide you and your organization with tools and resources to create and support innovative environments and organizations. Based on key learnings of Microsoft initiatives and our Partners in Learning program, (which has already reached nearly 3.5 million educators in more than 100 countries), this program will give you new ideas to implement in your organizations, district, classroom, or workplace.

You’ll have ample opportunity to participate in, investigate, and debate different theories and practices that can lead to improved learning environments and more effective organizations. We limit each three-day session to 40 or fewer participants to ensure an environment in which everyone can contribute, offer unique perspectives and learn from one another.

Guests are strongly encouraged to attend the full three-day experience. Each day builds on the knowledge gained the previous day. Multi-functional teams from organizations ready to create change are the preferred audience. There is no registration fee to attend a Microsoft Institute.

What you’ll learn

The Microsoft Institute will expose you to new tools and educational resources that have been developed through the Partners in Learning projects as well as our experience in education, government, and innovation. You’ll learn about the vision for the School of the Future and the process that went into creating it. You’ll learn how to use the Education Competency Wheel—the professional development and hiring tool used at the school—in your organization. You will be exposed to new technologies and learn how to implement them. You will get glimpses into how we run our business and think about managing innovation.

Who should attend

Organizations are encouraged to send multi-functional teams—visionaries and implementers, teachers, school leaders, administrators, superintendents, city officials, and school board members, and technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Yes, it is free to attend. You do have to pay your own transportation and accommodations but if you are near upcoming locations like Tampa, FL or Washington DC you may very well want to check this out. A sample agenda is here.

Foundations Of Digital Games Conference

The Game Development in Computer Science Education conference has been renamed and this year’s event is called the Fourth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. This is the premier educational conference for faculty who use game development to teach computer science concepts and principles. In the past we have had a small number of high school computer science faculty come on the conference but I am hoping that by giving people early warning we can get more this time. A lot of the work being done for early university computer science scales to high school as well. Frankly I am also hoping that some of the pioneering high school faculty out there will submit papers (and hopefully get them accepted) and be able to present as well. My observation is that some high schools are really getting a lot of value out of game development courses and people can really learn from those experiences.

Conference dates:

April 26-30, 2009

Conference location:

Disney Wonder cruise ship, departing from Port Canaveral, Florida, USA

About:

FDG '09, the International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games is a focal point for academic efforts in all areas of research involving computer and console games, game technologies, game play and game design. Previously known as the Conference on Game Development and Computer Science Education, this year's conference takes on a new scope covering the breadth of game research and education. The conference is targeted at researchers making contributions that promote new game capabilities, designs, applications and modes of play.

The call for papers can be found on the web site for the conference at www.FoundationsOfDigitalGames.org The web site is still building out and more information will be coming over the next few weeks and months. I’ll post much of it here as well.

Oh and yes the conference is on a cruise ship but it is as serious and professional a conference as you can imagine. The venue (especially with very limited cell phone and Internet coverage) promotes an awful lot of serious, valuable and educational conversations. The networking potential (of the human kind) is in my opinion unparalleled. Some of the top computer science faculty in the world present at this conference. There is also good attendance and technical presentations by people in the main stream of the game industry. This is an amazing learning opportunity.

Interesting Links – 15 July 2008

I am struggling to  catch up from my vacation. One of the trailing points in my activity is blogging – both reading and writing. I’ve got over 500 blog posts (mostly in the education category – aren’t you all on vacation?) to read. But I’ve come up with a few things already that are worth giving some attention to.

The $40 Billion Gorilla – Ben Chun had an interesting post complete with slide show on his talk titled “Bringing a $40 Billion Gorilla Into Your Classroom: Using Video Games to Teach Computer Science” with some links to some free resources he uses. $40 billion is the projected value of the video game development industry.

Learning Before Learning – A Canadian university student, Aziz, takes on the controversy about students learning things on their own before they are taught them in class in a post called “Learning Before Learning (or getting ahead of school curriculum)”. I have to think about this one still

Imagine Cup Advice – This year’s Imagine Cup recently finished up and involved students from around 100 countries this year. Two university faculty whom I respect greatly have posts about what it takes to make a successful team for a competition like this. Didith Rodrigo from Ateneo de Manila (Philippines) wrote her comments at a post called Moving forward from the Imagine Cup While Rob Miles from the university of Hull (UK) wrote a post called How to Make a Great Imagine Cup Entry A lot of their advice works for any important project (or start up business plan) that has to be presented to an important audience. Well worth the short reads.

Interesting Things Among My Team – I work with an interesting group of people just about any way you define “interesting.” A couple of them are up to special things these days. Clint Rutkas is getting very close to getting his self stabilizing skate board working. He’s got a video of him testing it on his blog here. Clint writes about some of his remaining issues here. I love that he admits in advance that his father is going to say “I told you so.”

The connection between music and math is fairly well known but there seems to be a connection between music and computer science as well. (I don’t just mean things like Dan Waters’ creation of Guitar Matey for the Xbox 360 using XNA either) DeVaris Brown who is a full time high tech member of the Microsoft team is also a professional DJ under the name DJ Fury. So when the Imagine Cup team needed a DJ for a major party in Paris they brought DeVaris along. The interview is here and you may find it very interesting just how computer technology fits into his DJ practice. He uses technologies like SilverLight and Popfly to bring his shows to the Internet. I wish I was a talented and as musical as DeVaris but I’ll probably have to stick with just being better looking. (I added that to see if DeVaris reads my blog. :-) )

Well I have a lot more catching up to do. More interesting stuff to blog about soon.

[Note: cross posted from http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/07/15/interesting-links-15-july-2008.aspx to give my friends some extra link love.]