Friday Interesting Links

Every so often I run into a number of things that I think are interesting and useful but that I don’t feel like I have enough added value to write a whole blog post about each one. This is one such week. I hope you will find at least one of these links interesting and useful.

CeeBots – from their web page (which is available in English, French and German):

CeeBot is a brand new concept that will introduce you to programming while having fun. The programming language you'll use is very similar to those used by professional programmers to develop their products. CeeBot introduces many modern concepts found in today's most popular environments like C++, C# or Java.
After teaching you the syntax of CeeBot, progressive exercises will lead you to use important concepts such as variables, loops, conditional branching, functions, classes, objects, etc.

OurCourts – This is a new project  that will eventually include an educational game about the US Court system Retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is involved in this project. Right now it holds a lot of useful links and information but there should be more still by the fall.

Randy Guthrie interviews a student who will be an intern at Microsoft this summer. I hope he does a follow up after the summer. Randy also has a lot of resources for students here.

Chris Stephenson of the CSTA blogs about the recent meetings that CSTA ran to discuss K-12 computer science outreach with a number of universities and colleges. She discusses the various levels of support that universities are (or in some cases are not) putting into this effort.

On a related topic there is information about Microsoft Tech Trends events here. Tech Trends events are one way that Microsoft is working with colleges, universities and in some cases high schools to create and run events to get students interested in the CS and IT fields of work and study.

Kenny Spade Joins the Academic Team at Microsoft

Kenny Spade is the new ADE covering northern California. His blog is at twitchgamer.com

May Posts in Review

May was an interesting month for me in several ways. One area that I struggled with though was blogging. Perhaps it is because the school year is winding down but I could not seem to stay on a roll. Still there were a couple of posts that received a lot of traffic. XNA was big because of the Zune announcement. And people seemed to be interested in projects for use in their classrooms. I have a long post about a good sized group project that I want to propose. It will be coming later this week if I finish writing it. The top discussion item was on code optimization.

Speaking of the Zune and XNA connection that post was here. In a bit of irony a lot of the traffic seemed to come from the trackback to the XNA blog announcement where there is really more original information. Though to be fair to myself I did link to other sources of information.  Speaking of more links, information about an online tutorial for Zune/XNA is here.

In the area of computer science programming project ideas I had one post (here) that linked to a number of good projects by someone else. But I also had a complete description of a code breaking program that got a lot of traffic. Lots of that came from search engines but even more of it game from Dzone. My thanks to the person who listed it and the others who voted for it. I need to figure out how to add Dzone links to my blog like the Digg one I have a Windows Live Writer plug-in for. More project ideas are coming. In fact my goal for the summer is to develop a bunch of new programming project ideas.

I had a number of useful things for people using Microsoft Office as well.  Here and here I talked about tools that make it easier to find things on the new Office 2007 ribbon interfaces. If you are teaching (or just using) Office 2007 those are tools you’ll want to check out.

Other cool things that I talked about in May included:

• Worldwide Telescope (post)
• Popfly Game Creator (post)
• Online Analog Clock (post)

June is now off to a running start. Yesterday marked five years I have been working at Microsoft. The time has flown as I continue to have a good time working with great people – inside and outside of Microsoft. The best is yet to come I think.

[Note that this is crossposted from my primary blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth ]

An Analog Computer Clock

Every so often I like to highlight some technology that is just plain cool. The clock below is one such.

Michael Scherotter created this watch image using a very high end, very sharp looking watch with permission of the manufacturer. While I typically do not wear a watch I do have an appreciation for them. Digital watches are just plain boring while high end watches like the Ball are as much works of art as they are examples of fine engineering. So taking the looks of the watch and replacing the “works” behind it with a computer code is interesting. It may not be as portable or even as accurate (computer clocks are notoriously inaccurate) but it is a really cool clock for a computer desktop.

Michael has written a blog post about how he created this application that makes interesting reading. The purpose of this project was largely to show what can be done with Silverlight. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more cool Silverlight applications as the newer versions are released.

Who Cares How Fast the Code Is?

Ironically one of the problems teachers can have with teaching about optimizing programs is that computers are a) so fast now and b) getting faster all the time. Students often do not see the need to create more efficient algorithms because they assume that what they have is fast enough and if it isn’t then the next computer they buy will “fix” the problem by being faster. And truth be told with most of the toy programs we are forced to use in a classroom situation (not enough time for really large complicated projects) things do work out that way. But real life is more complicated then that. So we really owe it to students to discuss code optimization (and refactoring which is closely related.)

I’ve had a couple of conversations with students over the years that basically took the form of “yeah it is slow but it works and I’ll never need to run it again.” There is some logic to that of course. I once had a program that I ran maybe once a week. I had thrown it together in a hurry to meet an immediate need. Once I realized I would need it more often I also realized that it was very inefficient. I saw several ways that it could be a lot faster. But I did some math. It took about a minute too long (it could possibly run in seconds) and it would take me at least an hour to re-write it. Was I going to run it 60 times? Probably not so where was the payback for my time? I did get a new computer shortly there after which was fast enough that the run time was cut in half so now the payback time was 120 more runs – so it would really cost me more time to fix then it would save me. That sort of math takes place more than many would think by the way. But sometimes it comes out very differently.

Sometimes the issue is around applications that really need to be fast. Other times it is around hardware that has some limitations that have to be taken into account because changing the hardware is not an option. Cy Khormaee recently talked to Paul Oliver of Legendary Studios to come up with a list of optimizations that should be taken into account when creating games for the Zune device. The Zune was designed as a music player not a game device. Since XNA Game Studio 3.0 (now available in preview) lets programmers create games for the Zune this creates an interesting learning opportunity. Specifically the hardware limitations have to be taken into account if one wants to create a game that performs well enough for people to really enjoy. This is an opportunity to have a real “teachable moment.” The list Paul and Cy have makes for a good read and the start of some interesting discussions.

Also on performance, Dare Obasanjo, who deals with some very large data intensive social networking applications, took a look at some scaling problems with Twitter recently on his blog. He examines how basic design choices can make the difference between an application that really works and one that collapses under the weight of input/output needs. This is a discussion worth reading about as students consider that many of the most important applications revolve around how data is saved and retrieved.

Microsoft Education Team Blogs

The Microsoft Education US Specialist Team just started there own blog. This is the technical team that supports Microsoft’s pre-sales efforts to education. The blog itself should be interesting and there are a couple of introductory posts there already. One of the other useful things they have is one of the most complete lists of education related blogs by Microsoft people I have ever seen. It’s a world wide bunch with a number in the United Kingdom and at least one in Australia. There list is below.

 

It's all about edU

Off Campus

UC in Education blog

Higher Education Tech NE

Higher Education Tech Mid-Atlantic

Kevinsul's Mgmt Blog

Cool stuff and happenings for HiEd

HiED West Region News

Application Platform and Development Tools

A Work-Life Balance

Computer Science Teacher

Dan on eScience & Technical Computing @ Microsoft

MSOZACADEMIC

Academic Care Blog

Microsoft Belfast - School Technology Innovation Centre (STIC)

UK Live@edu Blog

The UK Higher Education Blog

Microsoft UK Schools News Blog

The UK Further Education Blog

UK Academic Team Blog

OneNote and Education

Higher !nnovation

New Developments in XNA Resources

Well the big announcement at the XNA Blog this week was the new community games option now available at XBOX Live. Well that and the new redesign and other extra added features of the XNA Creators Club site. It’s pretty interesting that premium members will now be able to create games, submit them for community review and then inclusion in XBOX Live Marketplace.  But for me the best part was the added new content and redesign of the educational area.

The XNA Creators Club educational content catalog includes utilities, sample code, and starter kits for people to use to learn how to use XNA and some of the concepts that are most important for console game development. Me? I particularly like the new role playing game starter kit.

Oh and speaking of content and links, Cy Khormaee has been having a guest blogger at his blog. Paul Oliver of Legendary Studios has been blogging there about his activity converting an XNA game to run on the Zune device. Interesting reading.

Some New Education Technology Blogs

A couple of people I know and respect have jumped into the blogosphere in the last week or so. They have both been helpful to me with information and support so I wanted to give them a shout out – a little link love in blogger terms.

Mike Tholfsen and his team at OneNote have kicked off the OneNote and Education blog. I linked to an interview with Mike (see it here) last January. In that post I introduced Mike in part with “Mike is the OneNote Ninja - there is not much about OneNote he doesn't know. But Mike also has a passion for education and where OneNote and education mix (which they do very well) Mike is nothing short of The Man.” This blog is new and there isn’t much there yet but I predict it will be great for anyone looking at improving the way students do note taking with OneNote. And I would expect Mike to come up with some innovative ideas that not everyone would think about.

The other new blog I would like to recommend to you is EDUFun by Erik Leaseburg. Erik’s “goal for this blog is to allow parents, students, teachers/professors and administrators to share questions, ideas and resources on effective and fun uses of technology in and outside the classroom to facilitate life-long learning. “ He’s already posted on things like the new Worldwide Telescope, RoboChamps and Popfly Game Creator. It may be a race between us to see who can find and post the fun educational technology links first. Game on!

Schools As Communication Free Zones

I have this general policy that when I don’t have anything to say I don’t say anything. OK I admit that I have trouble sticking to that policy sometimes. And at the same time I tend to be rather opinionated which means I often have a lot to say – which may or may not be a good thing. And while I do occasionally editorialize on this blog I have been trying to be more objective and resource sharing in my blogging here. But I find myself more and more frustrated with the state of online censorship within schools. So I’m going to rant a bit.

Do we really  believe that students in school should be seen and not heard? Do we really believe that the only means of communication students should have with the world (or their friends) is voice communication in strictly supervised situations? Do we really believe that we are doing students favors by not letting them reach the social aspects of the Internet? Do we really believe that online chat and discussion sites are pure evil?

A couple of events have brought this home lately. First was a couple of talks I gave as schools recently. One at a college had a couple of my demos not work because the web sites were blocked. The students were unsurprised and their response indicated that they thought it reflected poorly on the college than on me. A week later I gave a workshop at a high school and the tech person had done a good job of checking the sites I needed (even without me asking) to whitelist or otherwise unblock them. Of course the unplanned part of my demo that tried to use Facebook died at the firewall.

Then last week a teacher reported that the RoboChamps web site was being blocked at his school as a “social networking site.” (details here on why I thought it good for schools) Seems weird to me but, well, what do I know? I wonder how many online help forums for technical and other educational discussions are being blocked as social networking sites? Speaking of social networking blockage, this morning teachers on Twitter were talking about ways to get to Twitter from school when Twitter is blocked and Netvibes is now blocked.

I’m seeing a lot of interaction among teachers on Twitter these days BTW. (I’m at http://twitter.com/alfredtwo if anyone is interested) Students still seem to be oblivious to Twitter though. I’ve heard a lot of tails of blog sites being blocked at schools as well. Given how isolated many teachers, especially tech teachers, feel in their schools this interaction online seems like a great thing to me. Something to be facilitated and perhaps even taught rather than something to block at all costs.

Why is social networking seen as automatically evil these days? Evil sexual predators? Come on – we know that students are more at risk at home than online. By about an order of magnitude. Is it the distraction? Sounds like a classroom management problem to me. Well they might put up something bad – what ever bad means. Are they really more likely to be “bad” at school then in the privacy of their bedrooms later that same day? I don’t think so. Aren’t we really missing some good educational opportunities?

There are teachers doing creative and inspiring projects using blogs, wikis, Skype, and other web 2.0 tools. If kids are going to create videos for YouTube why not have them create and share educational videos? If they are going to write about their feelings why not use online journals (perhaps inside a school firewall) and other online publishing tools to let them create for the media they live in? Why can’t we take advantage of the teachable moments (and tools) of student activity rather than let them mess things up on their own?

I blame administrators as much as anything. Followed closely behind by parents. People who don’t understand the web, don’t want to understand the web, and are just looking for the easy way out to make it look like they are doing something. Oh they are not all like that. There are many great innovative administrators and enlightened parents. But they are not the ones doing all the yelling and screaming. In the end it comes down to making life easy and appearing to do something.

One last comment, the students are blowing through the filters as if they were not even there. Anyone who believes otherwise is only fooling themselves. Do you think students are not laughing themselves silly at getting to sites they know their teachers can’t get to? How much does that do for teaching respect for teachers, schools and authority in general?

World Wide Telescope

The other day Microsoft Research released their WorldWide Telescope application. This application uses imagery from a number of telescopes both on earth and in space to provide a way to look at the sky that is very easy and impressive. The navigation is very smooth and easy. You can also zoom in and out using a scroll wheel. I understand that there is a lot of imagery from the Mars rovers there so if you want to look around Mars in some detail you can.

The New York Times had an article about this and I like this quote:

There are many online astronomy sites, but astronomers say the Microsoft entry sets a new standard in three-dimensional representation of vast amounts data plucked from space telescopes, the ease of navigation, the visual experience and features like guided tours narrated by experts.

“Exploring the virtual universe is incredibly smooth and seamless like a top-of-the-line computer game, but also the science is correct,” said Alexander Szalay, a professor of astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins. “No sacrifices have been made. It just feels as if you are in it.”

Getting the science right was important to the researchers who created this. The project leads are amateur astronomers with a serious interest in the topic. The WorldWide Telescope is sort of like having a planetarium on your computer screen. I’ve had a lot of fun using it this week and I expect to use it to help me find things in the night sky to view live as well.

You can also view tours that others have created or even create your own. Also if you are one of those very serious people with a telescope that can be connected and controlled by a computer there is software to connect your telescope to this software see live what you are looking at recorded on the screen. If you have any interest in the night sky at all this is one application you’ll want to install. If you are teaching astronomy I can’t see how you’d want to live without it.

Best Practices: Designing Mobile Applications

These days mobile devices are everywhere. One of the cool things about Windows Mobile devices (Smartphones and Pocket PCs among others) is that they can be programmed fairly easily using Visual Studio. Built in simulators allow for quick debugging without the need for an actual physical device. The big difference between programming for a mobile device and a standard PC though may just be the user interface design.  The screen size is one obviously piece of that but there is also the differences in input – small keyboards, styluses, and no mice.

Recently Hilary Pike presented on the subject of mobile application design and then wrote about it on her blog. She posted her slide deck as well. I learned a lot from the blog post and associated deck.

I know a number of teachers who have their students create mobile applications after the AP CS exam (coming up on May 6th this year I think) for something different. This deck and blog post may be very useful if you are one of those. Or honestly for anyone thinking about creating their own mobile applications.

Oh and before I forget, Hilary also posted a bunch of links to sample Mobile applications here.

XNA Links for Teachers (and other learners)

Note that since I wrote this there have been some changes. See this post for more information -http://blog.acthompson.net/2013/02/xna-is-dead-or-will-be-soon.html

I’ve been hearing from a lot of high school computer science teachers that they are looking for some fun and educational things to do with their AP CS students once the exam is over. For some of these teachers some XNA looks promising. For those people and more I decided to put this collection of resources together in one place. I’m open to adding more if people leave me comments or send me email. What works for you to get jump started with XNA and game development?
Official XNA Sites

• Creators Club Online – Home base for XNA Game Studio Express information
• Online Support Forums – The first place to go with your technical problems!
• Essential Software – What you need (in software) to get started

Books

• Rob Miles XNA Book

Projects – By and For Educators
Very Silly Games

Very Silly Games is a "Library of Gameplay silliness" from which you can pull down fully working XNA games you can play instantly on your computer or, once you have joined the XNA Creators Club, on your Xbox 360.

XNA Game-Themed Assignments

Kelvin Sung from the University of Washington at Bothell has a project that is building XNA Game-Themed assignments for use in computer science classes.
The project home page is here.
The Release Guide with a lot of information and links is here.

Video Demos
GuitarMatey

GuitarMatey is a 3D game for the Xbox that allows you to improvise guitar music with the accompaniment of a backing track. Five pirates dance for you as you play the game. While GuitarMatey lacks a real objective or purpose, it is perfect to help you learn about developing 3D games for free using XNA and our partner tools. 
Full details and links to the videos may be found here.

When Cods Collide

Betsy Aoki has created a simple 2D game in XNA that involves collision detection. It looks like a useful series and it is a fun read. So here are the links:
· Making a 2D XNA Game - When Cods Collide - Part 1
· Making a 2D XNA Game - When Cods Collide - Part 2
· Making a 2D XNA Game - When Cods Collide - The Final Chapter

Modify an existing game in 10 minutes

Hilary Pike has created a short quick moving demo/screen cast on modifying an existing 2-dimensional XNA based video game. In just 10 minutes she walks the viewer through some key gaming concepts and then adds Collision Detection and Score Keeping to the game.

XNA Pong Game

Dan Waters has created a Pong game as a tutorial for beginners. This might be a piece of code a bright student might enjoy improving on themselves.

Other Sets of Links From Teachers
Brian Scarbeau’s XNA Class links - http://sws.lhps.org/XNAforstudents/tabid/347/Default.aspx
Patrick Coxall’s collection of videos - http://www.ottawacatholicschools.ca/teh/content.php?doc=3697
[Note: Cross posted from http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/04/22/xna-links-for-teachers-and-other-learners.aspx ]

Digital Dorm - In A Bus?

Edwin Guarin is driving a bus fitted out as a high tech, lots of games and devices, digital dorm room to campuses around the NorthEast.  He's writing about the trip on his blog.  He's showing of computers, Zunes, Xbox 360 (apparently Rock Band is popular on the tour so far) and giving away gifts and prizes. Its a fun way to get a look at some cool technology.

The full schedule is here. Stops this week include:

• Hofstra University
• NorthEastern University
• UMASS Boston
• Bunker Hill Community College

Next week

• Bentley College
• Harvard
• Boston University

Still more following that - check the schedule for schools, dates and times as some of the locations are yet to be determined. If he comes to you campus or to a campus near you stop by and tell Edwin I sent you.

Getting A Job - The Blizzard Edition

This week Clint posted his interview with John Cash from Blizzard Entertainment over at Channel 8. The "money line" in the interview is something like "you know that math you think you'll never need? Well you're going to need it." John keeps his college physics and calculus textbooks at his desk and uses them regularly.

John also talks about how when they interview people they look for people who go beyond on their own and actually finish things. Apparently lots of people start developing their own games but few actually finish. They are looking for people who can finish. Imagine that!

Is There A Future For High School Computer Science?

OK that is a fairly provocative title. But I think it is actually a fair and reasonable question. The decision last week to drop one of the Advanced Placement Computer Science exams (which I discussed here) has brought a whole new level of discussion about computer science education in general and high school computer science education in particular. Now clearly I believe that it is important that these is a future for high school computer science but doing the right thing is not necessarily a part of the educational process.

So what has the discussion been looking like? If you follow your news in the main stream media or just on blogs you probably haven't heard much of the discussion. So far it appears that the discussion has been taking place on mailing lists. Not exclusively of course. The one news story I have seen so far was this one in the Washington Post.

Cay Horstmann has a blog post titled Is Computer Science the New Latin? That post shows the enrollment numbers for the last several years in the AP CS exams. Cay also has some suggestions for what people in industry can do to help promote computer science as a field. I'm going to have some more suggestions about that in the coming days. Industry really does have to help if we don't want to see the shortage of qualified people drop still more.

Dave Warlick has a post that starts off being about the four exams that are being dropped but ends with discussion of the AP CS AB exam and related issues. He makes a couple of good points including "I remain convinced that the problem has much more to do with how we teach computer science than the tests we give at the end." This is a concern that is being expressed by more and more CS education professionals as well.

Tom Finin has some numbers about the overall drop in computer science enrollment in his post. You'll see those numbers a lot if you dig into the problem. Tom points out a common belief (which I share) that "Eliminating the computer science AP test will discourage high schools from offering computer science courses and their students from taking them." If this day of No Child Left Behind all electives are under serious strain. At many schools the only reason computer science survives is the allure and prestige of that AP designation. Now one AP exam remains but as I pointed out the other day changes are in store. Will all schools be able to keep up? I have my doubts.

The discussion in the mailing lists has been different in interesting ways between how high school teachers and college/university faculty are reacting to the news.

The high school people are responding primarily to the loss of the test and what he means to enrollment and to the value of the test. Many people believe that the AB exam, which has been cut, is the one that should remain because it is the more valuable course. Others are discussing the possible changes to the one remaining exam and if or how much like the current AB exam it will become. All good questions/issues. This has very definite short term consequences for high school CS people.

The higher ed people are using this largely as a discussion of larger issues - dealing with declining enrollment, how do we teach computer science, what should the CS1 & CS2 courses look like, and other important pedagogical issues. Frankly I think these are wonderful discussions to have and I'm very glad they are going on. It doesn't help the high school situation much in the short term though. Still I am learning a lot from it.

I've been thinking about what I think the AP CS exam should become BTW but I'll wait for another post to lay that out. In the mean time I see losing one of the two APCS exams as a huge blow to the prestige of CS education. I can see that in the long term a single exam/course may be a good thing as long as it is the right curriculum. I also believe that for it to be successful on any level there has to be a clear and strongly recommended prerequisite course. Sure college students can jump right into CS 1 but a) in practice that doesn't work as well as people like the think and b) high school kids are not college kids. They need a head start. I don't believe that many high school students can really handle a year long college course in a high school year. (If nothing else there are not as many study hours per course in high school.)

In the near term this change is going to effect how administrators view CS's importance relative to other areas. The same is true for students and their parents. Plus of course many students will just take one course when they would otherwise have taken two. I just wish higher education, though their admissions officers, would express some sort of preference for a real computer science course on transcripts for students applying to science, technology, engineering and math programs. That would help more than almost anything else I can think of.

Students 2 Business - Its About the Jobs

Students 2 Business (S2B for short) is

"a Microsoft® Community Initiative designed to connect Microsoft partners and customers with qualified students for entry-level and internship positions.

The objective of the S2B program is to inspire local businesses to communicate the competency requirements for new talent, to evaluate the skills of students ready for an entry-level job or internship and collaborate with Microsoft and local education institutions to provide the curriculum and training needed to ensure students are prepared to meet the innovation needs of company’s around the globe.

Students engaged in S2B benefit from unique mentoring, training and certification opportunities. Various offerings are available to students at each stage of S2B – when profiling, in application and after job their connection."

The US site is here. The world-wide site (there are some 28 countries involved at this point) is here.  The world-wide site will help you connect to the right country site. There are links there for students looking for jobs, industry people looking to hire and university people who want to help their students get jobs. Check it out. You know, this would also be an interesting site to look at if you want to plan ahead and know what companies are looking for down the road.

Cross posted from Alfred Thompson's High School Computer Science blog

Ex-Apple Guy Interviews Steve Ballmer

I never thought I'd see Guy Kawasaki at a Microsoft event but it happened. Earlier this week Guy Kawasaki interviewed Steve Ballmer at the MIX08 event. It's a very interesting interview and at times very funny. Usually events like this have someone tossing "softball" questions but Guy really doesn't pull any punches.

I enjoyed the back and forth over the new light Apple laptop. I found it interesting that Guy uses the same cell phone (a Motorola Q) that I do because he depends on the connection with Exchange for email. Windows Mobile is pretty good really. Apparently Kawasaki does some work with Microsoft and he actually has nice things to say about the changes he has seen in the company.

I haven't finished watching it yet but so far it is one of the most interesting interviews with Ballmer that I have seen.

[BTW please visit my main CS Education blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth ]

XNA - Games for the Zune

Well there are always questions about an handheld game device from Microsoft. Well this isn't it. But what the XNA team did announce today is that XNA Game Studio 3.0 will support creating games for the Zune. And yes there will be multi-player games using the Zune's built in networking. Now that should be interesting. The announcement on the XNA blog is here. There is also a FAQ on the Creators Club web forum. Read the FAQ here. One thing of note is that your games will have access to non-DRM music on your Zune as well. That should make for some interesting mash up games.

But there is more. What about people being able to distribute or even sell their home grown games though Xbox LIVE Marketplace? Yep, that is coming as well. The announcement on the XNA blog is here with an FAQ here. Looks like some sample community games are available now and "will be playable for a very limited time." Get them while they are free people!

Personally I'm pretty psyched about the Zune games. I got a Zune for Christmas and some casual games to play on it interests me quite a bit. I like the idea of students having to learn how to deal with limited screens and limited memory as well. Nasty of me isn't it?

DreamSpark - Microsoft Gives Software to Students for Academic Use

OK so it is already all over the blogosphere that  Bill Gates announced a new program called DreamSpark to give software to students. (The official press release is here BTW) So I'm kind of late to the party already. Channel 8 is going to be a key source for developing news on this project so you may want to keep looking over there.

In fact to kick it off there is an interview with Bill Gates (in case you were wondering who that guy with Max Zuckerman was) talking about the program and about the future potential of software.

So what is being offered? Glad you asked!

Microsoft developer tools.

• Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• XNA Game Studio 2.0
• 12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club

Microsoft designer tools. Expression Studio, including:

• Expression Web
• Expression Blend
• Expression Design
• Expression Media

Microsoft platform resources.

• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server, Standard Edition (Yes, Windows Server Edition!!)

There are two key FAQs.

• FAQ for students interested in DreamSpark
• FAQ for university administrators who want to know what this all means for them.

A couple of questions have come after that. They are probably in the FAQs but maybe you can't wait or maybe they are not. Yeah, that's why I was waiting to blog so I could answer more questions. No really! OK maybe not  but it works out well that way.

What about high school?

It's coming. It has a high priority as the next step. Bill Gates says it will happen and that commitment appears several times in the press release and in other official statements. I'll have more information about this as things get settled and information becomes available.

How do students learn how to use this stuff once they have it?

I've got a few resources listed here and I am working on getting more listed. So return often. And if you have some to recommend please leave them in the comments.

• Beginning Developer Learning Center - a great place to start with videos, tutorials, and projects for learners of all ages.
• Coding 4 Fun - Lots of fun projects most with step by step instructions and many with videos.
• MSDN Forums - These are the forums the professionals use but beginners are welcome and there are lots of people willing to help with technical questions. A lot of students and faculty members are already there asking the tough technical questions.
• XNA Forums - If you want to learn how to develop video games with XNA this is the place to ask questions.
• Channel 8 and the Channel 8 Student Union - lots of information in the videos there and lots of good discussion in the forums of the Student Union.

What about faculty? What about classroom/course use?

Microsoft is retaining their existing programs for getting software into the classroom and for course/faculty use. The MSDN Academic Alliance program (MSDN AA) is great for getting software for teaching labs, including a lot more than DreamSpark offers students, into the hands of faculty. Also there is the IT Academy program. If you are a faculty member who teaches IT/CS or related topics you really want to check those programs out. MSDN AA and IT Academy are both programs that already include high schools in case you were not aware of that.

Faculty can also get access to software though the Faculty Connection sites.

• Faculty Connection for high school Faculty
• Faculty Connection for Higher Education

Science and Engineering Links

Did you know that next week is National Engineering Week? Well it is. So in honor of that a few links.

Check out the Try Science web site - Sponsored by IBM. There you will find a list of science competitions by a wide range of sponsors and for a number of different age groups.

Last week I wrote about Maker Faire. If you are interested in science and engineering taken for fun and excitement check them out.

Last year I had the following links which appear to still be good.

Discover Engineering Online
Introduce a Girl to Engineering - This year's date for this is the 21st BTW
The Sightseer's Guide to Engineering

Engineering is fun, interesting and a great way to change the world. Spread the word!

Technorati tags: engineering, engineering week

Build, Craft, Hack, Play, Make!

It looks like Maker Faire is starting to ramp up for this coming May. I'm trying to see if I can justify a trip out to California for it this year. Last year a couple of my friends worked the event showing off some really cool stuff and had a great time. Maker Faire is sort of s geek version of a county fair. It is a cross between a big county fair and a science fair with an emphasis on making things that are fun and interesting as much if not more than practical.

There is a "call for makers" out now. You can find out how you can show your own interesting projects there. I borrowed some information from the call for makers page and put them below but you should go here if you are interested in taking part.

Maker Faire Bay Area Entries: Deadline March 12, 2008

Key Points:

• Entries Due: March 12, 2008. Space is limited, please submit your entry early!

• Maker Faire Tryouts (See below): February 17, 2008, The Exploratorium, noon – 4pm.

• Notification of Acceptance: Entries submitted by March 12 will be notified by March 19.

• Maker Bay Area: May 3-4, 2008
  Hours: Saturday 10-6 pm; Sunday 10-5pm.

The Bay Area Maker Faire for 2008 will be May 3-4, 2008 in San Mateo, CA.

Some Interesting and Useful Curriculum Links - Visual Basic, XNA, Other Intro CS

Over the holiday I did some browsing around the Internet. I found a couple of new blogs to follow, read some posts by people who hadn't blogged in a while, and just stumbled across some interesting things while looking for something completely different. Among my discoveries were some interesting curriculum links that I thought were worth sharing.

One of them is a set of online modules for teaching Visual Basic written by Professor Larry Press from California State University, Dominguez Hills. The modules are here with each line in the table being a module with hot links to information, projects, code, etc. You can read a summary including some of their findings on how well this worked here.

From the east coast, MIT has been making curriculum available online for a while but now has a new high school page with courses designed by MIT students for high school students. You can also get a good look at their online introductory computer science courses here along with introductory courses in a number of other subjects.

Last but not least Brian Scarbeau has started to blog about the new XNA course he is teaching this semester at his high school. Brian links to information about his curriculum and the textbook he is using. I hope he has time to keep it up though I know he is a busy guy.

Some good things out there on the Internet these days. It's just a matter of finding them.

[Cross posted from my main blog.]

Projects for a Programming Course

At their best teacher blogs are full of information and idea sharing that benefits other teachers. For teachers of computer science or computer programming one of the most useful things teachers do is to share projects. A good project engages students while at the same time enforcing important concepts that have been covered in class. A prime example of this is a recent post by Mr. Higgins (aka Higgy).

In this post he lists out and describes the projects he is using with his Advanced Placement Computer Science A course (APCS A). The list includes some fairly basic and perhaps familiar projects like ASCII and number base conversion up to some more complex and new (at least to me) projects like a Galton Board. For some he has links to more complete descriptions that I think many teachers will find extreamly helpful.

All in all this is one of the most useful CS teacher blog posts I've run into in a while.

Robotics and .NET Fundamentals Series

Sometimes it really pays to have smart friends and let them figure things out for you even if you don't really plan it that way. Early this week a received a brand new robot in the mail. I've been waiting for it for a while. The problem of course is that it came at a bad time. My schedule this week was full. I had some travel and a bunch of meetings that took me out of the office just about every day and filled the time in the office with other things. So the robot stayed in the box. A very sad thing.

Fortunately for me one of my friends and co-workers also received an identical robot this week. Now I don't know if he had more time or if his wife had a shorter list of things to do after work then mine did or if he just goes without sleeping. But long story short Dan had time to setup and experiment with his robot.

But it gets better and this is what is going to make my life easier. Dan Waters has created a series of videos of his initial setup and experience that I think are very well done. I've been watching them to prepare before  I setup and experiment with my own robot. The index for the series (they're all in nice short manageable chunks of time) may be found here. Hopefully I'll have some things to report about my own stuff shortly.

BTW If you haven't already you may want to check out and install Microsoft Robotics Studio and Visual C# Express (both free downloads) for use with Dan's projects.

Popfly Goes to School

Popfly is a very easy to use and yet powerful mashup tool for non-professional developers. It's really a lot of fun to use and lets amateurs create some really interesting combinations of data and displays.

Professor Mark Frydenberg of Bentley College teaches technology to business students. One of the things he does very effectively is to use technology to teach technology. This year he has added Popfly projects to the mix. Recently Bob Familiar who is an architect evangelist for Microsoft interviewed Professor Frydenberg about how this all fits into the curriculum.

Bob introduces the interview here but the interview itself is here on Channel 9.

Max Builds a PC

My friend Mac is building a PC from parts. Over at Channel 8 (First post in the series here) he's looking for recommendations and suggestions about parts. Looks like a good conversation is taking place already but there is always room for more.

Oh by the way did I mention that he's going to give the resulting computer away to one lucky contributor to the discussion? Yep, here's his plan:

In this series, I will present my point of view about a certain computer component (like a graphics card or motherboard)

YOU comment and tell me your point of view and why

Once we have all the components discussed and chosen, I'll build it and post video to show exactly how I did it

Here's the fun part... when I'm done, one of you clever community commentators will WIN the new PC!

It seems like a lot of students are "in to" building their own computers. Perhaps it is the new car hacking for the 21st century. If you or someone (perhaps a student) are really all about the custom computer send them over to Channel 8. Perhaps they'll win their dream computer.

How Do I - Videos

I found out about a bunch of new videos that show how to do different things with different Microsoft development products. They all run between 10 and 15 minutes and focus on specific tasks. They are adding new videos every week so you may even want to subscribe to the RSS feed.

What topics/tools do they cover? Glad you asked. Here's the list:

ASP.NET

ASP.NET Ajax

Devices

Native Coding

Visual Studio Extensibility

Visual Studio Tools for Applications

Silverlight

Visual Basic

Visual Studio Team System

Windows Forms

Windows Presentation Foundation

The site is called "How do 1? and you can find it here. I've already got my eye on a number of them to watch this week. I see them as a good way to digest things in a short period of time that fits into my schedule. I'd love to hear what others think.

Top November Posts

November was an interesting month in some ways. It seems that when I really for for an opinion piece it attracts more attention in both readers and comments. At the same time some informational posts quietly attract a lot of readers.

Is Computer Science Dying was the most read and most commented on post largely because it got some good attention from Dzone. Comments from Dzone readers are honest and respectful. Some goods comments were left on this post. Thanks!

Carrot, Stick, Attract, Retain, Boys, Girls which was about attracting more minorities and women - especially women also attracted a fair amount of comments and readers. Not everyone sees the shortage of women as either a problem or something we can or should make extra efforts to do things about.

My Ideal First Programming Language rounds out the top posts in terms of comments last month. I think that anytime you get programmers or other computer scientists to talk about programming languages you'll get at least as many opinions and there are people in the conversation.

Speaking about first languages. Links to My Game Builder (blogged about here in October but still getting a lot of attention) Scratch and Alice were among the most followed links in November. It sure looks like people are looking for innovative ways to teach young people about programming.

The last top November post I'll mention is my comments about the Kindle from Amazon. Robert Scoble added it to his link blog which sent me a few readers. An awful lot of people were doing search engine searches for the Kindle though and that accounted for most of the traffic. That's still a device I think will be interesting to follow BTW. If the Amazon people are reading the Internet discussions and taking them to heart the V2 version might just really be amazing. One commenter pointed out that the Kindle could greatly reduce the weight of elementary school backpacks. There have been some studies that indicate that some children are suffering back problems from too heavy back packs. Could the Kindle be a solution to a health problem? Stranger things have happened.

Thanks again for all of you who stopped by to read, the leave comments or to send me feedback via the connection link. You can also reach me by email at Alfred.Thompson (at) Microsoft.com. 

I am in Texas (near Dallas) this week taking a course. I hope to keep up with blogging and email but course work will take priority during the day.

Math Add-in for Microsoft Word

Here is a little goody for all of you out there (especially you math teachers) who are always struggling to add mathematical things (formulas, graphs, etc) into Word documents.

The Microsoft Math Add-in adds computational and graphing capabilities to the Equation Tools Ribbon of Word 2007.
With the Microsoft Math Add-in for Word 2007, you can:

• Plot a function, equation, or inequality in 2-D or 3-D
• Solve an equation or inequality
• Calculate a numerical result
• Simplify an algebraic expression

I tried this out and it is very easy to use with lots of helpful explanations and "how to" instructions. You have to have Word 2007 of course but the add-in itself is a free download. More information and the download are here.

WiiMote (Wii game controller) and Microsoft Robotics Studio

I've written before about the Wii controller with links to software that allows a programmer to use a WiiMote with a Windows computer over at Coding 4 Fun. (Note that the code has been updated since that original post.)

The latest cool thing I have seen that involves the WiiMote is Zeddy Iskandar showing off his sample code that uses Microsoft Robotics Studio and a WiiMote to control a robot remotely. The demo uses a Lego NXT based robot but I'm sure the code sample could be used to run other kinds of robots as well.

Over at Channel 8 (this post) there is a video demo and step by step instructions including code examples that Zeddy used. Check it out!

Visual Studio Express 2008 is out

Visual Studio 2008 was released to manufacturing this week and there is a lot of news about it around the Internet. Almost lost in the excitement (well geek excitement anyway) is that the newest versions of Visual Studio Express have also been released. You can get them here.

One of the blogs you'll want to look at though is Dan Fernandez who lists the 15 things he likes best about the newest Visual Studio Express products. And he includes my favorite thing - they're free. If you are into game programming in C++, as a lot of people are, Dan introduces the new Game Development Kit for C++ that works with Visual C++ Express. And much more.

The Beginning Developer Learning Center has been refreshed as well. There are a lot of brand new and updated learning resources there. Take a look.

Channel 8 at European TechEd

The Dutch Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) have been at the European Teched event interviewing attendees and presenters. These interviews are appearing on Channel 8 and they are pretty good.

Yesterday an interview with Rob Miles who is a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull showed up. Rob has a blog which is one of the first ones I read when ever it is updated. He's also working on an XNA textbook which looks very good. I should warn you though that Rob is well known for bad jokes and he tells a couple during the interview.

A couple of days ago an interview with Caroline Philips who is the Microsoft Academic Lead for Western Europe. Caroline talks about her own time as a student and what it is like to be a woman in what is sometimes thought of as a man's world. Caroline is a great person who does an amazing job with Microsoft's European academic and student programs.

So visit Channel 8 and check out the most recent additions.

Let's Find a Reason It Can't Work

The Internet is hard on ideas. It's hard on people who express ideas. OK maybe I mean people who participate in conversations (and rants and flame  wars and stuff like that) on the Internet are hard on ideas. And it is not enough that they don't like something - everyone must dislike it. If the idea doesn't work for them it should be destroyed completely least it find a foot hold with people it does work for. Internet forbid that other people's needs/wants/desires should be met.

OK now you're wondering what I am talking about. Let's take an example from current events. Have you been following the discussion about Amazon's Kindle - electronic book reader? (Take a look at some of the comments over on Scoble's blog here and here or this review that makes the Kindle look like the second coming of 1984) The venom that is coming out is amazing.

Now I can see problems with the device (I'd like to be able to give away a copy of a book when I am done with it for example) but I also see opportunities (I talk about some educational possibilities in my other blog) as well. Its a version one product after all so there are bound to be issues that need work and things that will change and even unexpected consequences that will have to be dealt with. But are flame wars the best way to respond? Apparently on the Internet they are.

My wife doesn't like the idea of the Kindle BTW. She loves here books in paper. And that is fine - no one is going to stop printing books anytime soon and they probably never will. But shouldn't people have alternatives? Shouldn't there be more than one way to read a book? Well not on the Internet apparently.

On the Internet if someone disagrees with out they are not just wrong, misunderstanding or someone with different needs. On the Internet someone who disagrees with you is either an idiot or evil. The last time I attracted the critical eye of a big name blogger his fans called for my firing because anyone with my opinions was obviously too stupid to hold a job. Yeah that convinced me I was wrong.

What is it about the Internet that makes flame wars, insults and over the top arguments so attractive? Is it the pseudo anonymity? Is it the lack of physical connection? Or is it just that so many people are able to jump in on your side that starts an avalanche of negativity? Probably a combination of things I guess.

But it doesn't have to be that way. People could jump into a discussion and add positive comments, make suggestions for improvement perhaps even find common ground that relationships and improvements can be built upon. That seems to take more work though. Sometimes you have to look a little harder to find the good things in products, companies, ideas, and people who initially turn you off. You have to think about things. You have to make an effort. Jumping up and down on an idea and calling people evil idiots is just so easy.

If an idea survives all this then it goes on to great success I suppose but I worry that a lot of ideas with potential never get the chance to be fine tuned and improved but are killed in the early stages of life. Sigh.

Tomorrow's Book Today

Amazon has a new electronic book called Kindle. It looks pretty good and has good battery life and can store a lot of books. The wireless Internet (limited to buying and downloading reading material) with no extra costs is a huge benefit I think. I like that they backup your data for you as well.

The one question I have that I don't see is if you can give a book to someone else when you are done reading it. I could live with it not being on my reader afterwards as that only seems fair.

It is expensive though and I wonder if the $400 price will be a show stopper. Time will tell I guess. But you know there was a time when I didn't think I would pay several hundred dollars for headphones and then I discovered the Bose Quiet Comfort II and a sale was made. This could do the same.

I love the idea of carrying several days reading in one neat little electronic package. And of course being able to download a new book in a minute is pretty cool as well. It's sort of like a DVR for books. Get it when you think of it and read it when you want.

Carrot, Stick, Attract, Retain, Boys, Girls

Is the shortage of women in computer science caused by a failure to attract women or are women being chased away? That seems to be at the heart of some recent discussions I've been following on the subject.

Recently one educator talked about using games as a carrot to attract women into the field. While some debated the effectiveness of this method another educator objected to the use of the term "carrot" and the idea that women needed to be attracted to the field. That educator teaches at an all female school which gives a different perspective of course. No one disputes that the number of women in the field is at a low that is not healthy but the cause is clearly up for discussion.

On the "we're chasing them away" side I submit a list of "10 Programmers you'll encounter in the field" that I came across recently. While I don't think the list is intended to be all inclusive I find it telling that there are no types on the list that I can picture many people, let alone women, aspiring to be. Those are common stereotypes that are perpetuated by the media and I fear by some people in the field and they describe a very uncomfortable atmosphere. The popular media is not particularly helpful here either.

To overcome some of that uncomfortable atmosphere, especially in education, there are resources available for teachers. Recently in the CSTA blog, Leigh Add Sudol posted a link to a practice guide from the National Center for Education Research. This guide lists five recommended strategies for encouraging girls in Math and Science. Leigh Ann has a great summary of the guide which I recommend reading if you make time for anything at all.

Several years ago I attended a training event at Carnegie Mellon (where Leigh Ann is teaching these days) that included a lot of great information about how not to to scare girls away from CS classes once there were in them. I learned quite a lot and found that these techniques helped me with a lot of the boys in my class as well.

One of the things we forget is that in the range of attitudes, confidence levels, and learning styles there is real overlap between boys and girls. Things that make some girls uncomfortable can make boys uncomfortable as well. Likewise some girls will like the same things that some other boys like. We have to make sure we don't lose site of the fact that stereotypes are not a sound basis for categorizing all students.

Your way, Your play, XNA: Modify a 2D Game in 10 minutes

Short attention span? No problem. Hilary Pike has created a short quick moving demo/screen cast on modifying an existing 2-dimensional XNA based video game. In just 10 minutes she walks the viewer through some key gaming concepts and then adds Collision Detection and Score Keeping to the game.

Also at her blog post you will find links to other XNA resources and of course the sample code for the game used in the demo. This demo will give a good overview of what one can do with existing game code for XNA projects. And of course collision detection and score keeping are important things for just about any good computer game. Share it with your friends.

Cy Khormaee Now Blogging

Cy Khormaee, new to my team, just opened a blog. Welcome to the blogosphere Cy!

Computer Technology, Agriculture and Africa

My friend and co-worker Philip DesAutels is in Africa this week. Philip has a wide range of experience including some time in the Peace Corps bringing technology to farmers and other agriculture programs. So he was invited to participate in the Zambia Workshop Workshop II: Delivery Systems. The conference runs November 11-16, 2007 and is in Livingstone, Zambia. (Some people get all the good trips!!)

The purpose of this conference "is to identify possible transformative approaches, both technological and non-technological, to the creation and distribution of agricultural information." I have heard Philip and others talk about the ways that technology, including computer and communications technology, can help people in rural areas become more fully engaged - to their advantage - in the global economy.

Philip is blogging about his trip and the conference and I look forward to reading more about the trip, the conference and the ways that technology is making a difference in Africa and around the world.

Creating An Install Project and More

This is sort of a two for one post. The first thing that happened is that Clint Rutkas created a little program to delay the start up of all the applications he had running when his computer booted up. While the program is useful for itself I think it is also useful as a way to see how things are done. Things like reading files, setting up configurations and of course starting processes. You can read about the program and get the source code here.

Well the next thing you know Clint's manager (Martin Schray) said "how about an installer to make it easier to install?" The obvious reply was "great ideal Martin, let me know when it's done." We're a casual group here. The other thing about our little group is that we seldom miss an opportunity for take advantage of the "the teachable moment." In this case that means that Martin recorded a screencast that demonstrates step by step how to make an installer project. You can see the screencast here. So if you have wondered how to create an install program using Visual Studio 2005 now you have a place to go.

I of course have just jumped in to tell others about it. I love work. I can watch it for hours. :-)

Hilary Pike now blogging

So it looks like Hilary Pike has decided to give blogging a real try. Welcome Hilary!

Good Times at a Halo 3 Party

Dan Waters has a video blog about a recent Halo 3 Party he helped pt together. It highlights one of the cooler parts of his (and to some extent my) job.

Oh for the simple early days of programming

The other day at a conference (ReMIX07 - what a great event) a couple of us had a brief chat about the old days. I think it was started by one of the speakers talking about managed code and garbage collection as if they were both new and part of object oriented programming. Of course both have been around for decades and pre-date object oriented programming by many years. BASIC-PLUS ran on a virtual machine and had garbage collection back in the 1970s when I first started using it.

This all started me thinking about the old days. I guess that is a sign that I am old. I hear people talking about being in the field for 20 years as if it were a long time and think "wow it's been a long time since I was only 20 years in the field." I read yesterday that 66% of Microsoft employees are under 40 years old; 18% under 30. Since I started programming in 1973 I suspect that something like half the employees at Microsoft are younger than my first computer program. Somehow I find that scary. But I digress - perhaps another sign of age.

At ReMIX I was hearing about a lot of exciting new technologies for software development. Silverlight for managing media.  The Expression Suite of tools for design for user interfaces in all sorts of applications. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) for enhancing the user experience of client applications. Popfly for mashups. The list goes on and on. Don't even get me started on new dynamic languages like Ruby and Python. On one hand it is a very exciting time to be in the computer industry and in software development in particular.

On the other hand part of me longs for a simpler time. The introduction of the CRT as a viable tool started this mess off BTW. Before that most input was done in strictly formatted punch cards. It was all about getting the data in a form the program could digest easily. Oh sure we still had to validate data but getting it is was easier. And output was also simple. Your choices were basically to print a report on a line printer, punch things to still more cards or write things to a tape of disk in a format that was arranged a whole lot like that on a punch card. Input and output was simple.

Giving everyone their own terminal with a screen complicated everything. I don't miss having to specify the X and Y coordinate for every object (and I use the term object loosely for what we did in the early CRT days) on the screen. Windows Forms (which I first discovered in Visual Basic) were a huge advance and remain quite simple to use. Still once a program had to care about the user the door was opened for the need for real designers.

I guess my hope at this point is that people will use tools like Expression and WPF to allow designers to design and set up the user interface. That should let programmers deal with the easy stuff. The stuff that for me is more fun - working with the data.

In the mean time I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed by all the new stuff. It's great and it will make things better for the users of course. But I can't help but think that in some ways all this growth in tools, in options, in the whole field means that computing is becoming more and more a young person's job. I'm running as fast as I can to keep up. At some point one has to specialize I think. A little simplicity in the way of a narrower focus may be the best path to continued sanity.

[Cross posted from my blog at http://act2.spaces.live.com more computer science stuff is usually at my high school computer science blog but this seemed a better fit elsewhere.]

Clint Rutkas Joins Microsoft

I'm happy to welcome Clint Rutkas to the Academic Relations Team at Microsoft. Clint has an interesting blog at http://www.betterthaneveryone.com/. At his site you will find some interesting tail of a computerized disco dance floor among other projects. He's also created a computerized bartender. Both are programmed using C# as I understand it.

Clint has been contributing to Coding4Fun for a while (big surprise there huh?) and that work will continue as well. This week Clint is at GameFest. I look forward to reading that trip report.

I can see that Clint is going to be an interesting and valuable member of the team. Welcome Clint!

Mr T's Rants

Who is this Mr T (or is it Mister T) and why does he fascinate me so much? OK I'm playing with you. I just want to see how long this takes to show up on Technorati.

Microsoft Web Experience events in LA & Denver

Let it not be said that I am not a team player. Apparently Kirk Allen was accused of running a stealth event that not enough people knew about. So for the ones in LA and Denver he is trying to bribe motivate bloggers to create a buzz around the event. So here is my modest attempt to help. Well maybe the drawing for an Xbox 360 had something to do with my generosity.

Microsoft is hosting free Microsoft Web Experience events at the Los Angeles Microsoft office on June 8th and the Denver Microsoft office on June 15th. They will be presenting information on building the next generation user experience on the web. They are providing breakfast and lunch, hosting a reception with beer and wine, and attendees are automatically registered in a drawing for an XBox 360 and a Zune that will be given away at each event. For more information, visit http://kaevans.sts.winisp.net/Shared%20Documents/webexperience.aspx.

Technorati tags: MicrosoftWebExperience

Email Addresses

I was reminiscing about email today. I thought I would give a history lesson in case some of you were having trouble getting to sleep.

 As some of you know I came late to the Internet and email. I didn't get my first email address sometimes in 1982 which was long after a number of my friends got theirs. The first address that I used beyond just digital (in 1983) was

{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4} !decwrl!ark!thompson

You'll notice a couple of things. One is that the username was last not first. Also there is no @ sign. Thirdly there are a couple node names in the list. Things were complicated back in those days. One had to know the path between your computer and the computer you were sending to which is why the user name came last. Only the final system would try to find the user once the email got to the right place.

 There were some key Internet systems that most other systems were programmed to know how to reach. Those systems were programmed to know how to reach many other systems. So often when one gave out their email address you would start with a couple of computers that someone's computer was likely to know. Those are the systems in the curly braces.  You would give someone a couple of key systems in hopes that their computer knew how to get to one of them.

decvax was one of the key Internet router systems and the gateway into and out of Digital Equipment which had one of the largest computer networks in the world.  ucbvax was at the University of California at Berkeley and was another key system. ibmnp4 was the IBM router. All three of those systems knew how to get to decwrl (Digital Equipment Corporation Western Research Lab) and decwrl was in charge of knowing how to get to all of the computers on DEC's network. ark was the name of the computer I lived on and decwrl knew how to get to it. The ark knew how to get to other systems inside the company network but relied on decwrl and decvax to find a way to computers outside the network.

 Once upon a time you had to be a real geek to use email. Today we have DNS and things are a lot more simple. Perhaps its too simple.

More bloggers in my group

Jim Pinkelman is my manager. He hasn't said much yet but when he does I think it will be worth it.

Dan Waters is new the company, new to the group and on his way to moving to Florida from Texas. He's already blogged about one big academic event he's been to - a conference on a cruise ship.

. . . . .

J Scott Thompson is not in my group and he is no relation but I do like his "Dispatches from the World of K-12 Education"

Edwin Guarin now blogging

Edwin Guarin the newest member of the ADE team is now blogging.

As for me I am still active at my high school computer science blog but I am also getting active at my general education issues blog at On10.net.

Alfred Thompson

Updated Blogging At

Computer science education related things continue to be posted at my Computer Science Teacher blog. It is aimed at being helpful to K-12 computer science teachers but middle school and high school computer science teachers will probably find it the most useful. I occasionally add a post at MSDN Student Flash with my friend and co-worker Diane Curtis. That site is primarily for college and university students but some high school students may find interesting things there as well.

Social computing stuff continues to be posted at my Cyberspace People Watcher blog at Windows Live Spaces.

Recently I have been posting some entries at the A blog on Education in general at On10. On10 is a really cool site with videos for people who enjoy technology. The topics of my blog at On10 are general educational technology and education things. Several other people contribute education topics there as well and you can get to those all at once using the education tag.


Alfred Thompson

People in my group who blog (Updated)

Seems like more of us are blogging every day.

Diane Curtis (at Windows Live Spaces)

Diane Curtis (ath theSpoke)

Philip DesAutels

Ivan Lumala

Ranjan Sen

Juan Vargas

Sam Stokes

Gus Weber

Brandon McMillon

Alfred Thompson

Randy Guthrie

Krishna Kumar

Martin Schray

People in my group who blog

Recently a number of the people I work with have created blogs. I thought is only fair that I link to them. Here they are:

Diane Curtis (at Windows Live Spaces)
Diane Curtis (ath theSpoke)
Philip DesAutels
Ranjan Sen
Juan Vargas
Sam Stokes
Gus Weber
Brandon McMillon
Randy Guthrie
Alfred Thompson At MSDN At Live Spaces
Krishna Kumar
Martin Schray

Also blogging at ...

Recently I have been posting some entries at the Education Blog at On10. On10 is a really cool site with videos for people who enjoy technology. The topics of the Education blog at On10 are general technology and education things and several other people contribute there as well.
Computer science related things continue to be posted at my Computer Science Teacher blog. Social computing stuff continues to be posted at my Cyberspace People Watcher blog at Windows Live Spaces.

Alfred Thompson