Interesting Links December 7 2009

A lot of links last week that anticipate Computer Science Education week came my way. Well you’d expect that and I have a number of them to share. But that’s not all. A little about Silverlight, a little about programming languages, and a little about other things. First though the CSEdWeek links.

Besides Congress there have been other announcements from government and other officials about Computer Science Education Week.

• Wisconsin governor proclaims next week as Wisconsin Computer Science Education Week
• The Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District has designated next week as LAUSD Computer Science Education Week

Plus some college.university announcements and web sites.

• Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Education Day site is at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~csed09 All of the talks will be made available over the web after the event.
• Georgia Tech’s Pitch on National CS Ed Week http://computinged.wordpress.com/2009/12/03/georgia-techs-press-pitch-on-national-cs-ed-week/

Now for some additional (beyond what I linked to last week) resource links with ideas on how to celebrate.

• Ideas for celebrating computer science education week from the CSTA blog.
• Brian Scarbeau has been promoting Computer Science Education week for several years now. Check out his CSEdWeek page.

Leigh Ann Sudol sent the following announcement to the APCS mailing list.

Another cool thing is the emergence of Keepon and BeatBots as an internet phenomenon. Keepon is a little squishy robot that was designed to dance to a beat - its breakout video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPdP1jBfxzo&feature=fvw and an article about how its being used to help autistic children here: http://beatbots.net/2009/04/10/popular-science-robots-to-fight-autism/

How do you feel about free software? Did you know you can download the beta of the next version of Office, Office 2010. http://www.microsoft.com/office2010 So far it has been downloaded over 1,000,000 times.

Interested in Silverlight and games? Coding 4 Fun has a great post on creating a pinball game in Silverlight using the Physics Helper Library + Farseer Physics

Peter Vogel (@PeterVogel) pointed me to an article called Top 10 Programming Languages Used at Microsoft. It’s an interesting list but believe it or not Java isn’t on it. :-)

Interested in getting kids thinking about inventions? Or about how to go from idea to product and company?  From the TCEA Twitter feed (@tcea) comes a link to a fabulous Inventor's Handbook for students from the Lemelson-MIT program.

Computer Science Education Week Website is Live

The Computer Science Education week web site is now live at http://www.csedweek.org/ Some good stuff there. I especially like the “Why computer science” page.

• Computing is ubiquitous; it touches everyone’s daily lives
• Computer science-related jobs remain strong despite extraordinary economic challenges
• Numerous issues depend on computing, including the following:
  • Securing our cyber-infrastructure
  • Protecting national security
  • Implementing electronic health records
  • Increasing efficiency of the energy infrastructure

And there are quite a few resources listed in the computer science education resource page.

Microsoft is a proud sponsor of Computer Science Education week and has a web site up at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/csew/ for the occasion. Articles and information about computer science careers, learning resources and links to other CS Ed Week sites and information.

Technorati Tags: CSEdWeek

Let’s drop English from the curriculum

Just for fun, at your next faculty meeting or school board meeting try the following out.

Let’s drop or at least reduce the English requirement for graduation. Let’s face it these kids have been talking and writing for years. They know English. It’s not like they’ll all become professional writers. Some of these kids already speak better English than their parents.

Probably will not go over very well. But somehow things like the following go over just fine.

We don’t need a computer science requirement. Let’s face it these kids have been using computers for years. They know computers. It’s not like they’ll all become professional programmers. Some of these kids already know more about computers than their parents.

Ok so an argument can be made that the two are not exactly the same but I think they are closer than many people would like to admit. And there is this fact that students have generally had 8 full years of English before  they get to high school and almost no one has a computer science course (computer science does not mean using applications BTW) before high school.

Computer science is a critical piece of knowledge these days though. In any line of work or study computer science is going to be a tool that one will use. Sort of like how everyone will be reading, writing and speaking in any line of work or study. We really do a disservice to students by not giving them at least a taste, a vocabulary, some basic concepts of computer science.

College is too late. In fact some would argue and I would probably agree that middle school is not too early. One of the things a good education does, at least in my opinion, is to expose students to as many possibilities as possible. Given how important computer science has become and its increasing importance how can we say a school is doing a good job if students are not exposed to computer science?

Next week is Computer Science Education week. (Read the ACM Press Release.) Is your school doing anything for it? If you don’t have a real computer science program at your school perhaps this week can be a catalyst to get one started.

 

Technorati Tags: CSEdWeek

Software Development – Old School V. New School

One of the links floating around a lot recently has been this article from the recent Microsoft Professional Developers conference - Microsoft's top developers prefer old-school coding methods. It seems particularly hard on visual programming tools which are left mostly undefined. So of course I wanted to watch the whole talk. You can find the video stream (about an hour long) at Microsoft Perspectives on the Future of Programming and I do recommend it as a very interesting panel. The panel spent quite a bit of time talking about parallel/concurrent programming, some time on safety of programming and memory management and garbage collection. Some of it at a very high level which you’d expect with people like Turing award winner Butler Lampson and super computer pioneer Burton Smith (watch his talk on The State of Parallel Programming as well.) on it.

But the comments about developing software using text versus using visual programming seems to have garnered the most discussion. For example:

"Graphical programming environments are usable when they are useless, but unusable when they would be useful," said Jeffrey Snover, another Microsoft distinguished engineer and creator of Microsoft's PowerShell scripting tool for Windows. "When there are five things on the screen, you can burp that out [in text]. But when there are 500 things, [graphical programming] is completely unusable. You zoom in and zoom out and you lose all context. I think it's just smokin' dope."

And what he says is largely correct. If you want to add a handful of objects to a form drag and drop is quick and easy but you could probably do it manually (i.e. write some code in text) to do it pretty easily. On the other hand if you want 64 objects (say for a board game) you’ll probably prefer to write some code to add them all. (BTW I have an article about creating arrays of objects you may be interested in) That being said I do like drag and drop for beginners. Why? Because specifying all the little details for an object using text is tedious and for most beginners unnecessary knowledge. It lets beginners do some things that they might not otherwise be ready for. The analogy in the talk is how anti-lock brakes mean that drivers don’t have to be quite as skilled on snow and ice then they used to. Is that bad? I’m not so sure it is.

The panel doesn’t directly address drag and drop languages like Scratch and Alice. That paradigm is one I’d really like to see taken to greater depth. With the right IDE to manage complexity and some reasonable extensions to the language to make them less domain specific what possibilities might open up? I hope we as a discipline are not to close minded and backwards looking not to try.

But you know, no matter what some people will stay old school. There are drivers out there who not only eschew anti-lock brakes but automatic transmissions. I’ve heard them say “it’s not real driving” if you use an automatic. Well it’s different and sometimes the old way is better. I like real wheel drive and a standard on a sharp windy road myself. On the other hand I really like my automatic transmission in stop and go city traffic. So the idea of one “real” way is a myth and will probably always be a myth.

Are you going to SIGCSE 2010?

I see over on the SIGCSE 2010 blog that early registration for SIGCSE is now open. In my opinion SIGCSE is the most important computer science education event of the year. Now I know that a lot of people see it as primarily a higher education event and for sure most attendees are in higher education. But there are always a lot of high school computer science teachers there. Lots of AP CS teachers. Lots of CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) members. And usually a lot of local high school CS teachers taking advantage of the opportunity. It’s tops on my list every year. ISTE (nee NECC) may be larger in shear numbers but SIGCSE is larger in terms of the density of computer science educators. And I’ll tell you a little known (or perhaps just little admitted) piece of information – the overlap between advanced high school courses and entry level college courses is pretty high. So there is always a lot of value in attending SIGCSE for high school CS teachers.

Some great information/introduction from the conference web site:

The SIGCSE Technical Symposium addresses problems common among educators working to develop, implement and/or evaluate computing programs, curricula, and courses. The symposium provides a forum for sharing new ideas for syllabi, laboratories, and other elements of teaching and pedagogy, at all levels of instruction. We invite those interested in computer science education and computer science education research to contribute to SIGCSE 2010.

CONFERENCE THEME: Making Contact

SIGCSE 2010 continues the long tradition of bringing together colleagues from around the world to make contact via paper, panel, poster and special sessions, as well as workshops, birds-of-a-feather, and informal settings at breaks and meals. We celebrate and encourage these contacts that allow us to renew and make new connections as we discuss the challenges and excitement of computer science education.

SIGCSE is March 10-13, 2010 in Milwaukee Wisconsin this year. That’s actually a good thing I think. I am expecting hotel and airfares not to be too outrageous. So it may be more affordable for more people. Well I’m planning on going. I hope to see many of you there.

Interesting Links and Twitter Lists

Short work week last week. Not a lot of great links showing up in my RSS reader or my email inbox. It seems like a lot of people took the week off completely. I needed a bit of a break and I’m sure many others did as well. I do have a couple of interesting links to share though. Two of them are among my Twitter lists. Twitter recently added a feature that lets one create public and private lists of people’s accounts on Twitter. I’ve created several of them. And several private ones (like family members for example). I’d like to talk about two of the public lists though.

@alfredtwo/education – This is a pretty good sized list – well over 200 people. Who is on it? Technology coordinators, computer teachers of all sorts, English teachers, Librarians, middle school teachers, education consultants, professors of education and related subjects and more. Basically I look for people who are in education and technology in education. This is the list of people I follow to learn about the latest in educational Web 2.0 applications. I look to this list to learn about new ideas in teaching, classroom management, dealing with administrators and tech support people and much more. This is my attempt to keep my finger on the pulse of education as it is shared on the Internet. It’s a pretty interesting bunch of people. One might even say eclectic as well.

@alfredtwo/cs-teachers – This is a pretty short list right now but I really hope it grows. This is the list I use to look at Tweets (Twitter messages) from people I know to be actual computer science teachers. People in the trenches as it were who are teaching programming, serious web development, AP CS and other computer science courses. There aren’t enough of them out there in my opinion but I don’t want to miss anything the ones I know about say. If you know of people who should be on that list please let me know.

You can follow either of those lists or any of my others if you have a Twitter account. Or just follow me @AlfredTwo and see what I find interesting during the week.

Now for some other links.

Karen Lang had a very interesting post at the CSTA blog called Down and Dirty Programming which is a fascinating look into a course she created to prepare students for programming competitions. It is a look into different learning styles, classroom management, and how students learn. This article is well worth the read and I hope you’ll do so and leave some comments over there as well. Join the conversation!

CACM (aka Communications of the ACM) had an interesting article about how schools are making computer science relevant by adding video game development to CS courses. Closely related is a CACM blog post by called Games in Schools--Sugar-coated Learning? The latter is about educational computer games. Frankly I see a close tie between the two topics because I see a lot of interest in having CS students create games that are educational for other students. And perhaps as a way to  teach computer science. See Kodu for example.

Thoughts on the Edublogger Awards

Earlier in the week I received an email telling me that nomination for this year’s Edublogger Awards are now open. Some really great blogs are nominated every year. Last year my main high school computer science blog was nominated which I thought was really great. I didn’t win which was not as great but honestly I can’t say that I am surprised nor that I felt like I deserved to win. The thing is that these awards are really designed for more general education blogs. What I am trying to do here is to create the very best blog resource that I can for high school computer science teachers. It’s a bit of a niche audience. And while others read and I hope benefit from what I write I don’t ever expect the have the audience of a Vicki Davis or Will Richardson (who is not writing as much as he used to unfortunately) who write about Web 2.0 and education by any stretch. Nor do I expect to reach the likes that Ken Royal, Doug Peterson and Larry Ferlazzo whose posts or articles, information and resource lists are useful to huge numbers of teachers around the world. And honestly I hope I never have a larger readership than Scott McLeod whose Dangerously Irrelevant blog is at the top of my must read list these days. So I don’t expect to ever win any big blogging awards. For a while that bothered me. I have a frail ego, you know, being a man and all. :-)

I’m ok with it though. No really. As I look at what I am trying to do and who I am trying to reach I think I’m going ok. If you know of a blog that is aimed at high school computer science teachers that is doing a better job let me know. I want to follow them and learn from them. And try to do better.

Since today and I’m in a thanking frame of mind what I am focusing on is thanks for the people who read here, who comment here, who share ideas and resources for me to post and share with my readers and most of all for those people who come up to me in real life and say “I get useful things from your blog.” You make it all very worthwhile for me. And I also want to thank the people whose blogs I have listed above for all I learn from them. Keep it up.

Oh and the very best computer science related blog out there is Mark Guzdial’s Computing Education blog. But he and I are trying to do different things so I’m fine with that. Besides that I am grateful for all I am learning from his blog. If you are interested in computing education at any level Mark’s blog is a must read. Thanks Mark!

What does it look like?

Every so often someone suggests a project and I ask myself “why wasn’t I clever enough to think of that?” Actually it happen more often than I would probably like to admit. There are a lot of really good out of the box thinkers in education. The other day was just such an example. And I learned about it on Twitter with reinforces to me the value of Twitter for learning. Chris Champion (blog Twitter @ChrisChampion) Twittered “Asking students 2 find images to describe programming terms.” What a great idea. The student finds a picture and places a good definition as a caption. Great memory aid!

Chris went on to say “ROFL when student found an ad: child with lice inspection comb for "Debugging”” Kids are going to surprise you. They are often much more clever than we expect. I suspect that many students coming up with images to describe programming terms are going to come up with humorous ideas. Humor stimulates a lot in the brain so I suspect this is a very good outcome. But even without humor having images has got to be helpful in making ideas stick. And if you are stuck for things to hang on the computer lab wall there you go. :-)

You can see the ad Chris’ student brought in here – Lice as debugging. If you try this with your students I hope you’ll share any particularly interesting results you receive.

By the way I am on Twitter @AlfredTwo. If you’re on Twitter please follow and let me know you are out there.

Interesting Links 23 November 2009

Ever wonder how they get the sound effects for car racing video games? A Tesla gets recorded for Microsoft games. Interesting story really.

Hacking and ethics I was really hoping more people would leave comments and opinions on that post.Especially after a former student of mine left a strongly dissenting view. Is he right? What do you or your students think?

I saw this first on a Tweet from @Microsoft: “Make learning fun: Game Design Challenge -- build mini-games on XNA Game Studio 3.1” Games for Learning Institute Announces Design Contest for Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Platform. Looks like an interesting project to get people to think about simple, small games with real educational value.

Interested in Silverlight? Perhaps with an eye to teach it at some point? There is a new 3 Day Deep Dive into Silverlight curriculum at the Microsoft Faculty Connection educational community site.

New on the Microsoft on the Issues blog - Forum Highlights Innovations in Education : Posted by L. Michael Golden Corporate Vice President, Education

There is a new public beta of Office 2010 out now. Are your tech people looking at it? Are you looking at it? I’m loving it but of course I’m biased. Plus the new features in Outlook rock for me.

For all your space science geeks - Be a Martian web site from NASA and Microsoft

Interesting tech ed blog post by Ken Royal @kenroyal last week - 15 Things All Classrooms Should Have PK-12  Has he got it right do you think? Or are things missing or extra? What’s our classroom like these days?

New to Twitter last week is @CSEdWeek to Twitter for all the latest on Computer Science Education week (website opening any day now). What is your school doing that week? CSEdWeek is on Facebook as well.

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Hacking and Ethics

I get a lot of interesting email. Today I received an email from a student in Japan asking me the question “Do you think that hackers will decrease if we improve Information-ethics-education?” My first thought was yes. My second thought was no. My third thought was maybe. Helpful answers? Perhaps not but it is a complex question.

By hacking I assume, based on context, that me means the breaking into systems sort of hacking rather than the old-fashioned “trying all sorts of things to see what one can learn sort of hacking” that was the more common meaning in “the old days.” And of course many of the people breaking into systems even today claim no malicious intent. They seem oblivious to the feelings of violation that people quite naturally feel from having strangers poking through their computers. If we started some ethics training in young people learning computer science maybe we could help there.

I do think that ethics training is quite necessary and that it will help reduce some forms of hacking by the sorts of people who get formal education in computing and IT. It doesn’t reach or do much with the self-taught learners or the people who are learning informally from people who are already hacking. So the effects of ethics training on hacking or as I would prefer to say “cracking” are perhaps limited. That doesn’t mean it should not be done. I note that it is included as a part of the APCS curriculum.

Also it is most often the people who get formal training who wind up in commercial software development (Though not always of course) and there we may need ethics training even more. Take the case of the two programmers recently arrested as being complacent in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Perhaps some more ethics training would have helped there. Maybe not of course as a lot of money can move many people. But one can have hope.

The motivations for cracking are many. Sometimes it is money. Sometimes it really is learning. And sometimes it is people looking for a chance to prove themselves. I think we can help the latter two by a combination of ethics training and increasing the legitimate options for learning and proving ones self.

Frankly that is one of the cool things about the DreamSpark program. If a student can get a legitimate copy of Windows Server 2008, set it up, secure it from Internet endeavors and demonstrate to peers or potential employers that they know what they are doing that is a good thing. That they can do it without cracking some company security is bonus! We can also provide show off opportunities in schools, in contests (see the Imagine Cup for example) and service projects that may help as well. But at the root we have to instill some ethical sense in students from the very early days. School is a good place to start.

BTW as a starting point for discussion there is a link to the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Interesting Links November 16 2009

Early in the week last week the @tcea Twitter account tweeted (Twittered?)

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel." Anonymous

That has sort of been my thought for the week. How do we make our students feel? Our peers feel? Other people we interact with? Do we leave them feeling better or worse about themselves, about life, about us, about what we want them to know? It is the sort of thing that makes Twitter a lot more than people saying what they had for breakfast for me.

Interesting article called Educators That Rock!: danah boyd danah impresses me because of how well she approaches young people on the internet with questions rather than preconceived notions. I wish more school administrators and policy makers did the same.

Just What is Computer Science? Perhaps the key question for computer science educators as discussed on the CSTA blog.

One of my friends turned me on to http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html for anagrams. It is an interesting look at how a computer can generate anagrams but I think it is also a good way to have a discussion about how it still takes a person to pick out the really interesting or even ironic anagrams after the computer generates them.

Looking for a timely discussion topic? Take a look at Debate: This house believes that the cloud can't be entirely trusted on the web site of the Economist magazine.

Mark @guzdial followings the continuing saga of getting graduation credit for Advanced Placement Computer Science at  Georgia Board of Regents reconsiders APCS decision and will now "count" it. Next, the Department Of Education has to look at the issue again.

From @blogCACM “CSTA Chapter Liaison Fran Trees writes about email etiquette with 20 useful composition tips (plus 1 good joke)”

From @PeterVogel I see that Paint.NET 3.5 has been released in final form. Paint .NET is free software that is widely respected as an alternative to applications such as Photoshop. IF you are looking for a great tool for image editing this may be what you need.

From Liz Davis aka @lizbdavis I see that MIT is hosting a free Intro to Scratch workshop on Saturday, November 21 from 1-3pm at MIT Media Lab.

Microsoft Technology Blueprint for Primary and Secondary Schools

These resources provide guidance to assist educational institutions in fully utilizing their current technology and migrating from their current state to a more efficient and effective institution. Because each school has unique issues, priorities, and resources, no general Technology Blueprint can be expected to address the specific needs of all schools. Although educational institutions have very specialized requirements, many lessons that have been learned in the business world can apply to the needs of educational institutions. Visit the Microsoft Technology Blueprint for Education website to learn more.

Dealing With Complexity

I had an interesting conversation with two teachers last week. One the chair of the computer science of a large state university and the other a teacher in a career/technical high school. We were talking about how beginning programming students worked on their programs. I said that time and again I’d seen students trying to fix nested loops by adding end loop constructs in random places until they got a clean compile. Then they were often surprised that the code didn’t work as they expected. The others responded that a lot of those sorts of problems came from students trying to write too much code at once rather than working more iteratively.

For example, one teacher is using Alice which is a great tool. But many students start by adding all the characters they think they need all at once and then have trouble getting them to all work the way they want. The college professor related students trying to write all the methods and functions in a project at once and before testing any of them. The end result was code that was all but impossible to debug because finding where there heart of the error was is so difficult.

Students want instant results though. They think that they can keep many more details in their head then they actually can. Perhaps it comes from multi-tasking so much. Perhaps it is just youthful vanity. or perhaps it is because they see others keep large amounts of details in their head (perhaps their teacher) and assume that it is easy. Lots of students assume they are smarter or more knowledgeable than their teachers. Usually they’re wrong. What they fail to realize is that years of practice and experience gives their teachers an edge that only time and practice will let them catch up to.

I  think we all try to get students to break problems down into small pieces. We emphasize modular coding with small methods and functions. We talk a lot about top down design where we break a large problem down in to progressively smaller pieces. I wonder if we don’t always talk enough about getting each small piece to work right before moving on to the next one. Do we talk enough about unit testing? Do we talk enough about keeping it simple?

I think this is a point that goes far beyond programming BTW. In English class I remember being told to start with an outline and then fill in the outline. One didn’t try to write the whole paper as one run-on sentence. Rather one planned out each section and wrote them in order. Well maybe not exactly in order but one typically made sure one section was in good shape before moving on to another section. Or at least that is always what worked for me. Many problems work better if one focuses on one piece of the project at a time. That is the most efficient way to do things.

Software is getting more and more complex all the time. Student projects are generally fairly simple compared to professional software development. that just means that it is more, not less, important that they learn to keep it simple, work in phases, and deal with complexity from the very beginning.

Wait while I look that up on the Internet

Recently I have been doing some mock interviews with high school students. I have some business cards with a coded message on the backs with a challenge for students to solve the code. For a number of the mock interviews I handed the student one of these cards and asked them “what’s the first thing you would do to solve this?” The first part of the code looks like “8BF3A13B” and some many students say “that looks like hex. so I’ll convert it to decimal.” Others say they will compare it with a table of ASCII codes. But at least one in four says “I’ll search for it on the Internet.” OK some of them say they will “Google it” which of course lets me asks me ask if they are sure Google is the reference they want to use when interviewing with someone who works for Microsoft. :-) I learn a lot from the answers to that question as well. But I digress from the issue of if searching for answers on the Internet is really problem solving.

Of course the Internet is a great resource for looking for information and finding the answers to all sorts of questions. Watching student search the Internet for years now I have to say that many of them do a very poor job at it. They don’t always know how to ask questions or what questions to ask. Now searching for an example of a coded message is easy. I expect that many students who get these coded cards from me or from others in my group will find this blog post in the future. I will be of almost no help to them at all though. Well at least not with decoding the message. False positives on the Internet are common.

Information is only half the battle though. Problem solving may start with what questions to ask but it moves on to knowing what specific information or algorithm must be use to solve general problems. This is where it gets difficult for many people. I think that learning to move from specific to general is the key important thing in teaching computer science. This is what makes the difference, for example, between teaching the syntax for a loop and having students who can use a loop to solve problems. Or for that matter in math the difference between teaching what the Pythagorean theorem is and having students who can look at a problem and think “I need to use the Pythagorean theorem to solve this one.” Students need to exercise the problem solving muscles.

There is a fine line though between making things too easy and too hard. Finding it is the art of teaching.

BTW a related post is Are Your Students Good Problem Solvers, or Good Mimics? on the CSTA blog. And there is a collection of puzzles in the archive of the Microsoft College Student Puzzle Day event.

Interesting Links November 9 2009

Welcome to this week’s collection of interesting links. Some of these I found on Twitter, some on various blogs, and some came by email from various people. I hope you find something useful here.

The Innovative Teacher Network is now the new Partners in Learning Network, free public/private communities for teachers. Join & get AutoCollage & Songsmith free

We are a global community of educators who value innovative uses of information & communication technology that improve learning outcomes. By joining the Partners In Learning Network, you can:

• Create or join communities & discussions
• Find lesson plans and activities, as well as share your own resources
• Access free tools and learning programs for your classroom and school
• Collaborate with like-minded colleagues, improve education in your own classroom and community, and ultimately help improve the quality of education globally

Barbara Boucher Owens from ACM SIGCSE has an interesting post on Computer Science Education week. It’s not too early to too late to start thinking about having an event at your school.

On the CSTA blog I found this cool picture of a sign explaining FIFO in every day life.

Great visual for explaining the concept I think.

MIT BLOSSOMS STEM education initiative - math, engineering, physics and Bio videos for students.

Here is a list of the most lucrative college degrees from Money magazine. Engineering and science degrees are at the top. Why are students not looking at them? Why are guidance counselors pushing students into other areas? I don’t get it.

Are Your Students Good Problem Solvers, or Good Mimics?  Nice post on the CSTA blog. Are we really turning out critical thinkers or jsut students who can regurgitate solutions to known problems?

Liz Davis @lizbdavis has some fine Scratch lesson material assembled. It is 6 45 minute lessons for her 8th grade class. Take a look and see if it fits into what you are trying to do.

Do you or your students know what a really large data center look likes today? Take a peek into one of the new huge data centers Microsoft has been building.

Recently a young "TIME for Kids" Reporter visited Microsoft to Learn About the Future of Education. They interviews Joe Wilson who is one of the senior people in education outreach in Redmond and someone I get to work with from time to time.

Sequencing

Imagine you had a pickup truck that you used for work. One day the person in charge of company vehicles says to you “we’re going to replace your pickup truck with a Prius. We’ll be saving money on gas. Isn’t that great?” You of course reply with something like “But I need the room in the back of a pickup truck to carry things.” And they reply “well you’ll find a way to work it out.” Can you see that happening? Does it sound like a good idea? Of course not. One lays out the needs and starts from what meets the needs and then works in other factors. A Prius is a great car for what it is designed for but it was never intended as a pickup truck replacement.

How about this version? A true story. Several years ago a teacher I know came back from summer vacation to find that all of her Windows PCs had been replaced by Apple Macintoshes. With no warning to her. Now of course none of the applications she had been teaching worked and the textbooks she could not replace were all wrong. But hey, the tech support people said “you have new computers! Isn’t that great?” Crazy? Well it happened.

I hear these stories regularly. Someone decides that they are going to change the hardware and/or software platform for some reason that sounds good to them. But they don’t take the applications that are being used into account. They’ll leave fixing that to the user. Shouldn’t planning for computer use, in industry, at home and at schools, start with the user facing applications software? Select that and then go looking for an operating system and a hardware platform to run it on. Am I wrong?

Most recently I have heard this in the context of people looking for “replacements” for Visual Basic because their school is migrating to some OS other than Windows. Even if I were not heavily biased towards Windows and Visual Basic (you know I am) this would drive me crazy. As it is none of the Visual Basic alternatives I have looked at look anything like a sideways more. A big step backwards is how they look to my (admittedly biased) eyes. But teachers being presented with this situation never seem to push back. Why not? Tech support is there to support  the teacher aren’t they?

I was a high school technology coordinator for several years and I always viewed my job as being an enabler – someone who helped teachers teach. When ever evaluating operating systems, be it a change or an upgrade, the first thing we did was to get a list of all the applications in use. Then we tried to verify which ones worked and which ones didn’t work with the potential platform. I saw it as the technology department's role to make sure that either everything worked or their were viable replacements that the users approved of before making or even suggesting a change. Everything gets tested. Only when it all works is a change implemented.

Of course to me the role of technology support goes beyond just careful evaluation of platform changes. When a teacher wants to use some new software it is tech supports job to research how to make it work not the classroom teacher’s. It drives me crazy when tech support who will not even let a teacher download solutions tells the teacher that they (the teacher) have to present technical solutions for them (tech support) to implement when software doesn’t work right.

Who works for who in educational technology?

 

Note: see also Your technology coordinator works for you, not the other way around by Scott McLeod.

But I Don’t Want to be a Programmer

One of the things I hear pretty regularly is that not everyone needs (or wants) to be a programmer. Some people want or perhaps even need to do some programming or more generally programming like activities but they don’t want to be full time programmers or computer scientists. These people can be a lot more effective and productive if they at least learn the basics at a fairly good level. Mark Guzdial talks about some of this on a recent post called Talk on Meeting Everyone’s Needs for Computing

The “bigger” problem is the number of people who program and who want to learn more computer science, but who do not want to become CS majors or learn to be software engineers.  A paper out of CMU predicts that we’ll have around 3 million software developers in the US in 2012, and about 13 million end-user programmers.

Another term that comes into use is non-professional programmers. In other words these are people who program but do not do it as their career/full-time profession. Non-professional programmers is actually a super set that includes end-user programmers and people who programmer recreationally or hobbyists. Yes there are people who write code for fun. Lots and lots of them.

Thirty five years ago when I was first learning to program the idea of a software hobbyist was a pretty strange idea. They did exist of course but you had to have some real money (unlike Bill Gates I could not afford to buy an Altair computer to play with) and some serious interest. learning to program was pretty difficult. It was mostly assembly language on computers that hobbyists could get access to. The idea of end-user programmers was even more of a strange concept. Computers were kept in locked rooms with access tightly controlled and limited to highly trained professionals. All that has changed now.

Computer science and programming have now become a life skill. It is something “regular people” can use in their daily jobs, for fun, and as a mental exercise. Computers are inexpensive and most people have access to them. Development software is cheap (often free) and easy to acquire. (See Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions for example) In daily work life people have access to programming to modify their existing tools (see creating macros for Excel for example) Just last night I talked to a high school student who told me he was habitually creating macros for Excel to solve tasks. I suspect that he will have a huge advantage as a knowledge worker totally apart from any programming type jobs.

I think that schools should be making sure that students have the option to learn and use these sorts of tools. Teaching computer science is not just about turning out computer programmers any more. Today teaching computer science is about supplying students with the tools to succeed in just about any field they go into. And as a plus some of them may find a lifelong hobby. You don’t have to be a fantastic physical specimen to create a great computer game. of course this mean we have to teach the subject well and in ways that interest students – that make them relevant to them. Media computation seems like a great example. game development? Sure. Robots? Sure. And yeah we can do the math thing for the math geeks. :-) But at the very least we need to expose everyone to this field. Let them try it first before they decide it is not something they want to learn and use.

Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection Redesign

Back a year or so ago Microsoft opened the Pre-collegiate faculty connection web portal to share resources for computer science, computer programming, web development and other related teaching areas. It’s been a pretty successful site with tens of thousands of teachers visiting it for news and resources. This week it was time for a site refresh. The new site is now up and I think it looks pretty good. Of course I like blue themes. :-)

More importantly the site navigation is (I think and hope you agree) cleaner and clearer. We’ve also added some colleague connections – links to other blogs and useful web sites that we think you will find valuable. Of course I’m biased as this blog is first on the list but the others are great as well. As before there are links to software for educational use, curriculum for various courses and topics, and links to online training resources that you can use for yourself or with your students. If you haven’t visited lately (or even if you have) please stop by and look around.

Web 2.0 and Other Educational Resources from Microsoft

OK, this may not be the definitive index to Microsoft resources for teachers but it’s close. Something for everyone from elementary school English teachers to high school science teachers (check out the world wide telescope) to high school computer science teachers. Lots to choose from.

Web 2.0 and Other Educational Resources from Microsoft

1. PhotoSynth - http://livelabs.com/photosynth/

You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With nothing more than a digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

2. Worldwide Telescope - http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/Home.aspx

WorldWide Telescope (WWT) enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world. Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.

3. Office Labs – Concepts http://www.officelabs.com/Pages/ConceptTests.aspx

a. Community Clips

If there’s a new trick or skill you want to learn in Microsoft Office, but you don’t have the time to take a course, check out Community Clips. It offers a portal through which you can easily browse, view, share, and discuss informal "how-to-use” Office videos from around the world. It also gives you the ability to record your own screens and voice, so you can create your own training videos to share.

b. SharedView

Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what's on your screen. Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time. A Windows Live ID (Passport, Hotmail, or MSN) is required to start sessions, but not to join sessions. New in version 1.0: we have added a web based join experience to make SharedView even easier.

4. Live@edu - http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu

a. Office Live Workspace

If the H1N1 flu virus keeps your students away from the classroom, continue the learning online by using Office Live Workspace to:

· share assignments

· distribute handouts

· post presentations

· enable group collaboration

Use this free online service to publish and share Microsoft Office Word documents, Office Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations. Students can get class information from anywhere they have Internet access.

b. Skydrive

With SkyDrive, you can embed public or shared folders on Windows Live Spaces. Everyone can see what’s public, but only people you’ve granted permission can see your shared folders.

Computer Science and Computer Technology Resources

1. Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection - http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/bz/default.aspx

Microsoft’s site for K-12 educators where you can access resources developed for middle school and high school technology, computer science and math teachers. Just released: A tutorial and Curriculum unit for teaching and learning Expression Web – the latest Web development software.

2. MSDN Academic Alliance - http://msdnaa.net

The MSDN Academic Alliance is the easiest and most inexpensive way for academic departments to make the latest Microsoft software available in labs, classrooms, and on student PCs. The program, which is available in more than 45 countries worldwide, has two primary goals:

1. To make it easier and less expensive for academic institutions to obtain Microsoft developer tools, platforms, and servers for instructional and research purposes.

2. To build a community of instructors who can share curriculum and other learning resources to support the use of these technologies.

3. DreamSpark - https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

DreamSpark High School provides professional level development and design tools to students enrolled in an accredited, secondary educational institutions at no charge. Register now and give your students access to all the great software and training DreamSpark offers.

4. Expression for Educators - http://expression.microsoft.com/education

These educational materials provide a variety of resources for learning Web design with the tools provided in Microsoft Expression Studio software.  Students, educators and hobbyists of all ages will find quick tutorials, short learning units and extensive course content to fit their individual teaching and learning styles. The range of difficulty goes from easy - with the quick start tutorials that require no previous Web design experience- to a more advanced level for people who are already skillful at using Web technologies and employing design strategies.  The one semester web design course is appropriate for high school and introductory post-secondary technology courses.

5. IT Academy - http://www.microsoft.com/education/msitacademy/default.mspx

The Microsoft IT Academy program is designed for accredited academic institutions worldwide. Today there are thousands of Microsoft IT Academies in more than 100 countries and regions.

The program provides educators with the tools they need to effectively train students on Microsoft technologies, prepare students for the global economy, and create a skilled community. This subscription-based membership program offers curricula, courseware, and online learning for students focused on a profitable career path, life-long learning, and Microsoft certification.

6. Alfred Thompson’s High School Computer Science blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth

Alfred Thompson's blog about teaching computer science at the K-12 level. Alfred was a high school computer science teacher for 8 years. He has also taught grades K-8 as a computer specialist. He has written several textbooks and project books for teaching Visual Basic in high school and middle school. Alfred is the K-12 Computer Science Academic Relations Manager for Microsoft.

Other Education Resources for Education

1. Innovative Teachers Network - http://www.innovativeteachers.com/Pages/Welcome.aspx

The Innovative Teachers Network makes it easy to find the resources you need, contribute your favorite curriculum resources, and connect with educators to transform your classroom into a technology-rich environment for classroom learning!

2. Microsoft Partners in Learning - http://www.microsoft.com/education/pil/partnersInLearning.aspx

Partners in Learning is a global initiative designed to actively increase access to technology and improve its use in learning. Our goal is to help schools gain better access to technology, foster innovative approaches to pedagogy and teacher professional development and provide education leaders with the tools to envision, implement and manage change.

3. PiL (MSFT Institute)

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. One coming October 27 - 29, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

4. Microsoft Education Teachers Site - http://www.microsoft.com/education/teachers/default.aspx

The home page for Microsoft resources for teachers of all levels.

5. Digital citizenship curriculum - http://www.digitalcitizenshiped.com/

The Digital Citizenship and Creative Content program is a free, turnkey instructional program. The goal is to create an awareness of the rights connected with creative content. Because only through education can students gain an understanding of the relevance of and a personal respect for creative rights and grow to become good digital citizens.

Visual Basic Resources

I was asked on Twitter if I had a Visual Basic resource page for teachers and I had to admit that the one I used to maintain was sadly out of date. That’s just wrong. So I went through all the Visual Basic keyworded post on this blog, visited a couple of other sites and put this list together. I’m going to try and keep it up to date. Please let me know (at my main blog) if you find other things that should be here, broken links or any other recommendations you may have.

Curriculum Sites

K-12 Faculty Community Site A source for curriculum resources, teacher forums, and program announcements

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

Projects and Feature Discussions

Visual Basic .NET Projects - A set of projects for the classroom. There are teachers notes for each project as well as pages that can be duplicated for distribution to students  as programming assignments. You can find this (and more) at the K-12 Faculty Community Site as well.

An article I wrote on creating control arrays. This article covers both Visual Basic .NET and C#. It is suitable for beginners. Teachers who are used to teaching with control arrays in Visual Basic 6.0 and earlier will find this useful.

Simon is a simple game I wrote. Simon is a game that involves four different colored buttons that randomly depress and beep. The player then has to press the buttons in the same order that they beeped. This most useful part of this project is a special button class that inherits from the PictureBox object.

Fun With Colors – This little project with about six lines of code may be a more interesting “hello world” than “hello world.” It uses some sliders to select a color to show up in a picture box. This is also a nice way to introduce how computers handle colors. Yes, the code looks like C# but if you remove the semi-colons it works just fine in VB.

When Is A Short Circuit a Good Thing? Confused about the difference between And and AndAlso and Or and OrElse? This post explains it all.

Sshhh… it’s a secret (Matt Gertz) Matt Gertz shows you how to code up and deal with substitution ciphers. Ciphers are a lot of fun and seem to interest both boys and girls.

Prime Numbers, Code Challenges, and Programming Languages Coding up a solution for generating prime numbers. With some added discussion about different programming languages.

Coding 4 Fun 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.

Code Samples A large collection of code samples in Visual Basic for doing all sorts of things. Looking for sample code for students to review and/or use? Send them here. (Provided by Microsoft) See also:

How Do I in Visual Basic

“How Do I” Videos — Visual Basic

Exceptions, Data Validation and Political Correctness A discussion on the differences between different styles of error handling and data validation.

Software Access

MSDN Academic Alliance A Microsoft program for schools to get Microsoft Development software for labs, teachers, and students for very little money.

DreamSpark for High schools DreamSpark High School provides professional-level development and design tools to students enrolled in an accredited, secondary educational institution at no charge. Sign your school up today and start handing out access codes to students and get out of their way. :-)

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

Add ons and Tools

The Visual Studio Learning Pack 2.0 is a software package created by Microsoft to help students learn about computer programming. It consists of the following five components: Sort Designer Control, Search Designer Control, Visual Declarative Designer, Assistant Class Designer and Visual Programming Flow Chart

VB Coding Standards Document Not from Microsoft but still a very interesting look at what coding standards look like in the “real world.”

Career Information

Are you students asking who uses this Visual Basic stuff? Send them to the “I’m a VB” web site for interviews and videos with members of the Visual Basic team and lots of professional developers who use Visual Basic.

Third Party Web Sites (Not Microsoft and I can’t vouch for everything there)

Temple of VB web

VB-Helper

Engaging Students in Computer Science – Teacher Workshop in New Jersey

I’ll be heading to New Jersey in a couple of weeks. Now if you are not from New jersey you may not think that is a good thing. A lot of people have a very limited perception about New Jersey from some TV shows and movies I don’t have to name. But those of us in the know understand that New Jersey is aptly named “The Garden State.” The people there are great and I enjoy attending and speaking at events there a couple of times a year. So I’m pleased that I will be speaking at a workshop day at Drew University that is being organized with the Computer Science Teachers Association NJ chapter Saturday, October 17, 2009.

Drew University and CSTA Northern-NJ Chapter will host a CSTA TECS workshop for computing teachers on Engaging Students in Computer Science.  The workshop will be held at Drew University on

Saturday, October 17, 2009.

The workshop will include the following presentations:

• The Real Projects for Real  Clients Course ( RPRCC) Initiative: Attracting Young Women to Computing Majors: An ACM-W Project Presented by David Klappholz from Stevens Institute of Technology
• Introduction to Alice2.2 and Alice 3 Presented by Don Slater from CMU and part of the Alice team there
• Promoting a Code of Ethics and Professional  Conduct throughout your Computer Science Curriculum Presented by Steve Kass from Drew University
• Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio Presented by Alfred Thompson which would be me. :-)

For more information about the workshop visit http://www.users.drew.edu/ftrees/TECS

It promises to be a very interesting and educational day. I’m really looking forward to it. I hope to see some of my blog readers there.

Firestarter Event Series – Information about Microsoft Technologies

Are you a school or district IT person looking for more information about the latest Microsoft technologies. Or perhaps you are a teacher looking to introduce some of these technologies to your students. In either case these free sessions may be useful for you.

Heat up your skills with the all-new Firestarter event series. Each day tackles a single Microsoft technology, including free sessions presented live by Microsoft developer and IT pro evangelists and technology specialists - with special appearances from community luminaries. Attend in person, via live meeting or download the webcast at your convenience.

DEVELOPER EVENTS

Seattle - Silverlight

Thursday, Sept 17, 2009

8:45 AM - 5:00 PM Pacific Time

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: SCOTT GUTHRIE

Microsoft Conference Center/ Bldg. 33

1st Floor, Cascade Room, 16070 NE 36th Way

Redmond, WA 98052 – USA

LIVE EVENT | REGISTER >>  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032422412&Culture=en-US

LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >> http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032423163&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Get ready for this season's hottest technology event. The FREE Silverlight™ 3 Firestarter sessions will burn up Redmond, WA on Thursday September 17th and we've got a stellar line-up of Microsoft speakers, including a keynote from Scott Guthrie and presentations from Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and other community leaders. You'll learn what's new and noteworthy in the latest releases of Silverlight and Expression® 3. We'll also give you a rundown on .NET RIA services, toolkit, and more. Don't miss this sizzling opportunity to go deep into Silverlight 3 with Microsoft's best and brightest.

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online event experience.

New York - ASP.NET MVC

Saturday, Oct 3, 2009

8:30 AM - 5:15 PM Eastern Time

Grand Hyatt New York Hotel/ Ballroom B

109 East 42nd Street

New York, NY 10017

LIVE EVENT | REGISTER >>  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032424184&Culture=en-US

LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >> http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032424194&Culture=en-US

In March 2009, Microsoft added a new option for developing web applications on the .NET platform: the ASP.NET MVC Framework 1.0. You've probably heard quite a bit of buzz in the Microsoft web development community about it. But perhaps you haven't had a chance to take a deeper look at it yet. Then we have an event for you! We will be hosting a full-day ASP.NET MVC Firestarter event live from New York and online to take you from 0-300 level in a day.

At the ASP.NET MVC Firestarter, we'll give you a quick tour of the framework, then peel back the layers and dive deeper into how it works. As part of that, we'll spend time discussing the design and development practices that lead to the creation of the MVC framework. By the time you leave, you'll have enough knowledge to get fired up and start building web applications on the .NET platform.

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online event experience.

IT PRO EVENTS

Seattle - Windows

Friday, Sept 18, 2009

8:00 AM - 5:00 PM Pacific Time

Microsoft Conference Center/ Bldg. 33

1st Floor, Cascade Room, 16070 NE 36th Way

Redmond, WA 98052 - USA

LIVE EVENT | REGISTER >> http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032422413&Culture=en-US

LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >> http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032423124&Culture=en-US

Windows® 7 and Windows 2008 R2 introduce fantastic new technologies to streamline your business, enhance security and save you money. This Windows Firestarter event will introduce you to these features and then dive deep into how they work. See how DirectAccess provides the remote user with virtually the same experience they would have if they were in the office. Learn how Group Policy and PowerShell can simplify the administration of your network, regardless of how large or small it is. Experience a simpler yet more rich Web surfing experience with new Internet Explorer® 8 features. See new BitLocker™, AppLocker and User Account Control Features that are designed to protect your data no matter where it is. We will also dive into how easy it is to deploy Windows 7 the way you want it deployed - your image, your way - even if you are migrating from Windows XP. Join us for this demo heavy session on all of this and more at Windows Firestarter.

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online event experience.

Alpharetta - Windows 7

Saturday, Oct 17, 2009

8:00 AM - 4:45 PM Eastern Time

Microsoft Alpharetta Office

Centennial Park 1125 Sanctuary Pkwy Suite 300

Alpharetta GA 30009

LIVE EVENT | REGISTER >>  http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032424192&Culture=en-US

LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >> http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032424195&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Windows® 7 introduces some fantastic new technologies to streamline your business, enhance security and save you money. We'll start this Windows Firestarter event from the users point of view and have a fun and lively introduction to some of the new features in Windows 7. Next we'll move onto DirectAccess and show how remote users can connect seamlessly to the corporate network, giving them virtually the same experience as being in the office, all of this without VPN! We'll then move on and learn how to protect your drives and data with BitLocker™ and show how Windows 7 extends this protection to USB drives with BitLocker-To-Go™.

Finally we'll round off the day with an in-depth look at how to automate your deployments of Windows 7 with System Center Configuration Manager. This information packed, demo intensive day will kick-start your Windows 7 knowledge and get you well on the way to being prepared for deploying Windows 7.

Seating for the live event is limited, so register today. If you can't join us for the in-person event, register for the online event experience.

Interesting Links Labor Day 2009

I’m not really working today. Well just this post really. For the most part I have been largely offline for Labor Day weekend. Enjoying family, sun, books, and relaxing. My wife and son start school with their students tomorrow. They’ve been doing the usual back to school teacher days last week. Their rooms are ready. Plans are in place and tomorrow it is what I like to call “show time!” But to help you get going I have a few links from the previous week to share.

Glen Westbroek a teacher I follow on Twitter @gardenglen has been sharing posters from his classroom. I thought this one about how many days without a failing grade was fun.

According to this post at the CSTA blog Race to the Top should make STEM a higher priority and make sure it includes computer science. I have to say that I completely agree. Speaking of the CSTA, are you a Computer Science Teachers in K-12? Are you a member of the CSTA? What is the CSTA? You should join!

Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) continues to Tweet interesting links  “Yes Yes! We should be teaching our children to think  - The Observer”

From Leigh Ann Sudol (@lsudol) Programmers top 10 sentences Though you may want to be careful with what WTF means.

If you use or want to create Math worksheets Microsoft has released a new prototype Math Worksheet Generator from Education Labs http://bit.ly/2POnxm There are more tools for teachers coming from Microsoft

The US Imagine Cup web site is online http://www.imaginecup.us/ The US rules have been changed this year to allow high schools students 16 and older to participate. Some of my co-workers are a little afraid of the idea that high school student teams may show up some of the college teams. I say go for it. Make a name from your self as a high school student.

Interested in astronomy? The Worldwide Telescope team at Microsoft Research launched a big update last week. Read about the new worldwide telescope changes here.

From Microsoft Learning (@MSLearning) there is a new (and free!) E-Learning Course: Introduction to XAML

Dimitris Gkanatsios (@dgkanatsios) has a new blog post (in English he’s in Greece) on a simple shooting game with Silverlight 3 and C#

I found this interesting leaning game - Fun with Math Imaginary Blackjack Game in a blog post by Megan Golding (@mgolding) which is more a math thing – imaginary numbers are a big part of it – but I thought it worth sharing more widely.

Have interesting links to share? Feel free to email me (alfredth (at) microsoft.com), leave a comment or Twitter me @AlfredTwo

Latest Interesting Links September 1 2009

August was something else for me. I had some travel. I had a lot of work. And I did some things around the house. That’s what August is for right? You may or may not have noticed but blogging was a little lighter than usual for me in August. Only the third time in the last close to four years that I posted fewer than 20 posts in a month. I’m trying to work on quality over quantity. Judging by the large numbers of comments it may be that I am improving. I hope so. I want to provide value, provoke discussion, and ideally build a little bit of community. It’s a work in progress.

Community leads me to my first link of the week entry. Scott McLeod is continuing his PUSH to get links to top blogs in PK-12 education. Last week one item he was looking for was excellent PK-12 business and computer science education blogs. Mine is there as are several I have listed on the side of my blog. We could use many more though so I hope if you know some you will contribute. They are looking for a lot of other subject matter blogs as well so jump on in. Thanks!

Are you still running Internet Explorer 6 at your school or on your home computer? Time to upgrade. Microsoft is donating 16 meals to Feeding America for everyone who upgrades from IE 6 to IE 8. They are donating 8 meals if you upgrade something else. If nothing else this should be an incentive to at least give IE 8 a try. I’m using it and have been since early beta.

I get the occasional question about people who want to teach and/or learn something of the more important, key features of Silverlight 3. Well a number of hands on labs were developed for and with the National University of Singapore and they are available now. in a hands-on manner I am hopeful that well see more soon so keep looking here for news.

I love the Computer History Museum and recently came across a small Photo Gallery showing some of the  weird, fascinating objects including a giant Cray super computer and a 60Kg hard drive that they have on display. You can’t see it in any of those pictures but some of the early military computers actually had ashtrays and cigarette lighters built into the console tables. My how things have changed!

WIPTE.ORG is running an educational video contest. $3000 for 3 Minutes: Tablet PC in Edu Video Contest from WIPTE.ORG Check it out if you use Tablet PCs in your school or classroom.

Well Popfly is not mostly gone which makes me very sad. But the Popfly Game Engine Code has been released on Codeplex under the MS-PL.

Also last week I found http://robotevents.com/ "The community portal for robotics and education" Looks like some good links.

Foundations of Digital Games conference calls for papers are out. It will not be on a ship this year which is good for people who could not convince deans and principals and business manager that it was a real conference. Some of us will miss the ship venue however.

BTW Microsoft has opened a new higher education portal for faculty, students and administrators at http://www.microsoft.com/education/highered/

CareerForward: Career Preparation in a Global Economy (cFWD)

Course background:  CareerForward is a media-rich online learning program, developed through a unique public-private partnership between the Michigan Department of Education, Michigan Virtual University and Microsoft. The program helps students wrestle with some of the burning questions about their futures: What am I going to do with my life? What is the world of work like? What will I need to succeed? What’s next for me? Using a variety of multimedia, course topics explore these questions and more. Throughout the course, students are asked frequently to reflect on what they’re learning, to write their thoughts down as a continual refinement of their thinking, and to discuss their thoughts with other students, either in-person or online.  Students can work with local educators to access the online course, which takes about four to six weeks or approximately 20 hours to complete. The course is designed to be facilitated by a local teacher and can be used independently or as part of an existing face-to-face course in career planning, business or global studies.

cFWD student/teacher video:

http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/031c7926-608f-42eb-aa7f-a29

cFWD course location:

http://nroc.careerforward.org/careerforward/

cFWD trailer:

http://www.mivhs.org/coursefiles/careerforward/index.htm

cFWD online teacher webcast

http://educationwebcasts.com/Webcast.aspx?i=4265

New XNA Curriculum Resources

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 1: Computers, C#, XNA and You

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 2: Programs and Colors

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 3: Getting Player Input

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 4: Displaying Images

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 5: Writing Text

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 6: Creating a Multi-Player Game

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 7: Playing Sounds

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 8: Creating a Timer

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Chapter 9: Reading Text Input

· Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio - Text Sample Code

Here is a quick overview of the first item in the list.

Learn the underlying skills and principles of software development--as you design and build your first games for Xbox 360, Windows, and Zune.

Designed specifically for students with no computer science background, this curriculum teaches the fundamentals of C# programming and the XNA Game Studio framework--for skills you can apply to game programming and beyond.

· Write code to create and control game behavior

· Build the game display--color, graphics, text

· Create multiplayer features

· Capture and cue sounds

· Process input from gamepads and keyboards

New Windows Live Movie Maker Available

I’m a huge fan of the Windows Live set of tools. I use Windows Live Writer to write and post all of my blog posts (to several different blog engines – I used it to cross post this from my main computer science teacher blog for example) and Windows Live Messenger keeps me connected to friends all over the world. And Photo Gallery has a lot of great features. Sticking together several shots into panoramas is a big favorite of mine. The version of Movie Maker that was available for Windows Vista and Windows 7 lagged behind a bit. The version for Windows XP was actually a little better. But that has changed. I found this announcement in my email yesterday.

Today, Microsoft announced the global availability of the new Windows Live Movie Maker. With the new Windows Live Movie Maker, it’s easier to turn videos and photos into great-looking movies and slideshows, using many popular camera types and file formats on the market today. It’s an effective tool for teachers to bring the benefits of multimedia to the classroom, where it can help engage students and increase retention.

One of the key enhancements that teachers and students will use is the sharing capability. Once a movie is complete, it can be easily shared with other teachers, students or even friends and family across TV, PC or mobile device or by uploading them to video-sharing sites.

Teachers and students can download the new Windows Live Movie Maker for free by going to download.live.com.

I really like the idea of easy sharing for example. Students love to share their work and of course many of them are already excited about the idea of making movies. This is a multi-media generation and they are not interested in static poster board displays. Not in seeing them and not in creating them. My wife has been using a Flip video with her students and I know she is excited to do more with it this school year. I know a lot of other teachers who are doing the same. Making movies engages students. So I think the timing on this announcement is great.

BTW I am hoping to put some educational videos together about various computer science concepts. This is the tool I plan to use to edit them. Are you working on video demos? I’d love to hear about them if you are.

To learn more about the new Movie Maker (for Vista and Windows 7) and see real movies created with Movie Maker, please visit www.moviemakerpreview.com or check out the Windows Live team blog post. (Lots of helpful links and information at the Windows Live Movie Maker Blog Post BTW so I might start there.

DeVaris Brown is in the house, ah, Blogosphere

One of the younger and much hipper members of the Microsoft academic team, DeVaris Brown just opened a new blog called Tales From the Road. Besides technology he'll be blogging about what his life as a technology evangelist is about. I'm subscribed.

You can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/devarispbrown

CSTA Podcast Series

Getting ready for school to start? I understand that students are already returning in some parts of the US. Over the next three weeks or so most students will be back in class again. Are you interested in listening to some interesting podcasts to get yourself ready and get some ideas for the new year? Check out the CSTA Podcasts. Several new ones were added recently including one interview with yours truly.

Just Added!

Building CS Community Partnerships
Alfred Thompson

Level 1 of the ACM K-12 Model Curriculum
Anita Verno

The Critical Need for CS Education
Chris Stephenson on the NPR show Digital Spin