Windows Phone 7 Rockstar Award

If you have been reading my blog (or following on Twitter @AlfredTwo) you have been reading about the US Imagine Cup finals. Hopefully you have found some interesting things and maybe becoming interested in getting involved if you are a student or presenting the idea to your students. If so I want you to know that there are some events in the worldwide Imagine Cup that are still open to entries. One of the events that excites me the most is the Windows Phone 7 Rockstar Award.

To win the Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” Award, your team is challenged to create a Windows Phone 7 application (app) in either Silverlight or XNA Game Studio.  This app needs to be designed with the consumer in mind and should be as visually compelling as possible. Be prepared to demonstrate your team’s app entry running on an actual Windows Phone 7 device or in an emulator. Mobile applications are “all the” buzz today. Windows Phone 7 is a revolutionary new platform and you have the opportunity to be a part of it. This is your chance to think of something that is truly outside the box and be one of the first developers, ever, to be building apps for Windows Phone 7.  Create an app that people will love having on their Windows Phone.

And of course there are prizes!

• First Prize: $8,000 USD, a trip to the Worldwide Finals in Warsaw, Poland from July 3-8, 2010, and a Windows Phone for each team member.
• Second Prize: $4,000 USD and a Windows Phone for each team member
• Third Prize: $3,000 USD and a Windows Phone for each team member

Get full information about the competition at the Windows Phone 7 Rockstar Award site.  BTW DreamSpark has partnered with Windows Marketplace for Mobile so you can sell your mobile applications! Go to DreamSpark to learn more!

US Imagine Cup Finals This Weekend

Today I have a presentation to give around mid-day and then I go  home to pack for a trip to Washington DC for the US finals of the Imagine Cup. Ironically last year’s finals was in near by Boston/Cambridge but I had to miss it to attend a meeting in, you guessed it, Washington DC. This year I get to go. We’ll see the selection of the top Software Development Invitational team who will get to go to the world wide Imagine Cup finals in Poland this summer. We will also pick the best (of the 10 finalists) in the US game development addition. Some of those teams are moving through the final rounds of the world wide competition which is running in parallel. Yeah, its different.

There is also a people’s choice voting for the Software design category. Visit the People’s Choice Video Gallery and vote for your favorite. Next Monday we will be running a community showcase April 26, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 2:00 PM, at the Newseum in DC. Read about the Imagine Cup community showcase here and please come by if you are in the neighborhood! I’m really excited to see the Newseum BTW. From all I have read and heard it sounds like a very interesting place.

I’ll be twittering a bit – we’re using the hash tag #ICUS10 for US Imagine Cup related tweets. Several others should be tweeting as well. I’ll be posting updates on Facebook and I plan on blogging news here at the end of the day. So I may not have a post Friday because of travel (but I may – we’ll see) but you should see posts on Saturday and Sunday with a wrap up on Monday.

Technorati Tags: Imagine Cup,ICUS10,IC10,USIC,USIC10

New Silverlight 4 Training Kit Available

  Microsoft has just released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4. You can also download the entire offline version of the kit here.  You can use the 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs online or offline from links on the Channel 9 site.

The key to this training material is not the features it covers (though it covers a variety them) but rather that it teaches from the perspective of building a business application.

 

The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes a whitepaper that explains all of the new Silverlight 4 features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and a 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4. The business applications course includes 8 modules with extensive hands on labs as well as 25 accompanying videos that walk you through key aspects of building a business application with Silverlight. Key aspects in this course are working with numerous sandboxed and elevated out of browser features, the new RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more!

It really expects some previous knowledge of Silverlight but I’m going to give it a whirl myself anyway.

Teachers Don’t Talk Enough

I was invited to be on a panel at Northeastern University (I was a last minute fill-in but happy to attend) talking about Teaching With Technology. Now the difference between teaching technology and teaching with technology is a big one. And important one. I’m big on both but honestly think that teaching with technology is a better way to teach technology than teaching technology for its own sake. The panel was taking and discussion questions based in large part on the keynote presentation by Don Marinelli from Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center which Don co-founded with the late Randy Pausch.

We had an hour scheduled for the discussion but we could have gone for hours. Really hours without repeating or running out of questions and discussion topics. The discussion was lively and, for me at least, very engaging. I see this with just about any panel I attend either in the audience or as a panelist. I also see “more time to network and talk with colleagues” as a major bit of feedback for most of the educational conferences I am aware of. If you’ve been to some of the major edtech conferences (TCEA and ISTE for example) you will see long conversations in the halls, outside the meeting rooms, at blogger cafe’s and just about any free space. People blog and twitter about these conversations being the best part about some conferences.

Why? Because teachers just don’t have enough time to talk with their peers in their daily work lives. Yet talking with ones peers is a wonderful way to learn new things, share ideas, ask weird but useful questions, and generally develop oneself as a person and as a professional. But teachers are locked up isolated in their classrooms most of the day. faculty lounges while occasionally helpful have limitations. Too little time in them for one thing. Too many other things going on it them. And all too often a slightly toxic atmosphere in the schools that could most benefit for helpful learning.

So what to do? I recommend blogging and twitter. Yes you have heard this from me before (well unless you are new to my blog. :-)) If you are looking for a more scholarly set of reasoning check out Rationalizing Academic Blogging by Mark Guzdial who is a tenured professor at Georgia Tech. Start with reading them and adding your input to the discussions. Really the comments are often the very best part of a blog post – especially with this blog. Then think about writing your own blog. You know stuff or you wouldn’t be a teacher – share it with others. Come on and join the conversations. You know you want to!

Michelle Hutton of the CSTA posted a good blog roll at the CSTA blog. You are following the CSTA blog right? For teachers in all areas there is a great list of blogs at the Moving Forward wiki. Start with Education blogs by Discipline and when you create your blog make sure you add it to the list.

BTW I have just updated my personal blog roll on my primary blog. The CS Teacher list includes:

Mark Guzdial – Computing Education Blog

Wicked Teacher of the West

Leigh Ann Sudol - In Need of a Base Case

Kathleen Weaver - Teaching CS in Dallas

Eugene Wallingford – Knowing and Doing

Ben Chun – And yet it moves

Stacey Armstrong - A+ Computer Science

Brian Scarbeau - A high school CS teacher in Florida

Mr. Higgins Blog (who I need to bug to update more often :-) )

Yes this is another repost but I really think these blogs deserve more link love and attention from search engines. And from you to.

Visual Studio 2010 Now Available

Well it is official – the final release of Visual Studio 2010 is not available. If your school has an MSDN AA account you can download it from ELMS now. If you don’t have MSDN AA, why not? Also for students who are part of the DreamSpark program you can download Visual Studio 2010 from there as well!

For everyone, the Express editions are also now available as free downloads/net installs from the Visual Studio Express Editions web site.

For those of you working at schools, including high school, colleges and universities, that have MSDN AA memberships Hilary Pike posts detailed steps for how to access Visual 2010 in MSDN AA, DreamSpark, and MSDN AA ELMS:

Visual Studio 2010 RTM and .NET 4.0 now available through DreamSpark, MSDN, MSDN AA, and TechNet

MSDN AA Admins Enable Visual Studio 2010 Downloads from ELMS

Interesting Links 12 April 2010

What does this say?

01000010 01100001 01110010
01100010 01101001 01100101

It says “Barbie” in Binary coded ASCII. See Barbie Goes Binary  for more on the display on Computer Engineer Barbie's laptop and the design on her blouse. I wonder how many little girls will notice? Well at least we geeks know it is there.

The nice people at @fuselabs retweeted this link from @planetkodu about an interesting post from the Planet Kodu Blog: 6 surprising ways Kodu can help you. If you have looked at Kodu and wondered what it would do for students that post is a great place to start reading.

The @koduteam twittered about some little-known-facts on Kodu cut-and-paste (keyboard shortcuts work!) By retweeting a link from @scoy6 to his new Kodu tutorial on programming User Interface on the Kodu blog.

Speaking of research projects that are useful for teachers, Microsoft Research just released a new Chemistry add-on for Word.

The Chemistry Add-in for Word makes it easier to insert and modify chemical information, such as labels, formulas, and 2-D depictions, within Microsoft Office Word. Additionally, it enables the creation of inline “chemical zones,” the rendering of print-ready visual depictions of chemical structures, and the ability to store and expose chemical information in a semantically rich manner.

Joe Osborne, one of Microsoft’s Student Insiders (Twitter @joeosborne87) Twittered a link to his interview with Twitter's Raffi Krikorian. One of the things they talked about is geotagging. Information of where people are is becoming quite the issue on the Internet these days.

Last week I started guest blogging at the Educators’ Royal Treatment. I expect to blog there a couple of times a week, usually about general education technology issues rather than computer science specific topics. My first post there is called The Missing Question From Technology Plans I hope you will check it out and comment as appropriate.

Looking for Alice teaching workshops this summer? Good list at http://www.aliceprogramming.net/workshop2010.html (The Alice home page is at Alice.org)

Are you a Moodle user? @mrdatahs wrote a post on ZDNet Education about Microsoft Education Labs integrates Office with Moodle.  This is one of a number of releases by Microsoft Education Labs and it is not the only resource for Moodle users that you will find there.

Are you one of those people who likes to incorporate photos and videos in Office documents? @Officegal twittered about new photo and video tools in Office 2010 on The Microsoft Office Blog.

The Microsoft Jobs Blog interviews Microsoft Games Studio Writer John Sutherland - from Pong to Natal. An interesting story about one man reinventing himself and moving into new career options. Worth a look and not just if you are interested in game development.

Interesting Links 29 March 2010

In yet another example of how poorly I do at predicting what is going to be interesting and/or controversial almost no one read and absolutely no one commented on my post about companies getting involved in curriculum writing last week (Curriculum, Companies, Cooperation and Conflict). My asking of the question Where does Computer Science Belong? did a little better with some interesting comments. I recommend the comments at least.

Related to that last post and question, Cameron Wilson of ACM wrote a post called Computing and the Common Core that you should read. The most important part of it is his call to action.

Now the community can support this breakthrough by sending letters for support for the inclusion of computer science in the final document. The initiative is taking comments on the draft until April 2. There are two ways to comment. The first is by taking the survey, which as an additional comment area where you can express support for computer science. (Follow this link  and click on the "submit feedback" to get to the survey.) The second is by sending letters to commonstandards@ccsso.org.

Interested is seeing some good college/university projects? The US Imagine Cup finals have opened up their People's Choice – Video Gallery. Watch the videos and vote for your favorite team. Send your friends and students over as well. This will give you a good idea of what the Imagine Cup is all about. And perhaps inspire some students to enter this global competition going forward. It’s amazing.

Concerned about accessibility and how it relates to educating your students? From the UK Higher Education blog:

We’ve just issued the third edition of our accessibility guide for education, and it’s available as a download from our accessibility site. The site also includes a number of accessibility video case studies.

The Accessibility: A Guide for Educators has been updated to include information on Windows 7 accessibility features, and current assistive technology product recommendations.

Rob Miles (@robmiles) has posted some XNA videos at http://verysillygames.com/Screencasts Rob also has a blog post on Windows Phone Accelerometer Support in XNA that you may be interested in.

Are you planning for Office 2010? Have you downloaded the free beta? There is not a free e-book available called First Look at Office 2010. Get yours now?

Speaking of Office there are some interesting downloads that will be interesting to many teachers. There is a brand new Chemistry add-in for Microsoft Word at http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/ChemistryAdd-in/Pages/default.aspx There is also a math add-on for Word at the download center and math worksheet generator at Microsoft Education Labs.

Over at ZDnet Mary Jo Foley (@maryjofoley) kicked off a new blog post series last week - Microsoft Women Worth Watching. Day 1: Julie Larson-Green. Day 2 was Betsy Aoki: Microsoft Women Worth Watching.

Intel has some videos about intelligent devices - with Intel chips inside of course :-)

Rob Bayuk (@TeachTec) has been blogging and Twittering Office how-to tips including - Add sounds, movies, and animated pictures to your PowerPoint presentations. For more like that follow the Teacher Tech blog.

From the ACM SIGCSE mailing list (I think) I found this great collection of programming assignments in Python. I can see these easily adapted to other programming languages though.

Playing Video Games Will Not Get You a Job But Creating One Might

Last week I had a chance to hear Larry Hryb (AKA Major Nelson) of the Xbox Live team talk to a group of college students at Microsoft’s Cambridge (MA) facility. The audience was made up mostly of students with aspirations of making it in the gaming industry. Game programmers, graphic designers, game developers, game audio enthusiasts, and more. Larry talked about Xbox Live and Xbox specific topics for a while and then joined a panel of people in the game industry that included someone from Linden Labs (Second Life) and some independent game companies. They talked about careers in the industry. Obviously one of the things students wanted to know was what they need to do to get into the industry. One of Larry’s kick off comments was most interesting. Basically he said (I’m paraphrasing) was “I don’t care what games you play, how much you plan, or how good you play. I hear that all the time. Tell me what you have created.”

There is a huge difference between being a consumer and being a creator. Being good at one does not mean you will be good at the other. A video game company and in fact any software company is looking for people who can create. Several people on the game industry panel said they wanted to see code from potential developers. Art from potential game graphic artists. Potential game designers who are not also programmers (and there are places for those people) can create board games to show off their talents and imagination. The important thing is to show of what you can create. It doesn’t matter where you get or create your portfolio but that you have one. One independent game developer whose games are making him money on Xbox Market said to get a hold of XNA and create a game to demo. Maybe even get it on Xbox Market and have some evidence that you can create marketable products.

This idea of having a creation to show goes beyond just games though. An interview for just about any entry level software job is going to cover what you do beyond your course work. Everyone expects you to do well in your course work and to get good grades but what they want to know is what you do outside of class. Do you create interesting projects? Do you take your own ideas and express them in code? You may talk about wanting to change the world but what steps are you doing to actually make a difference?

Yes internships can help with this. But not everyone can get a great internship. Everyone can get development software and create software that can make a difference for themselves and perhaps even the world. Microsoft has programs like MSDN Academic Alliance (your school may already be a member) and DreamSpark that gives departments and students professional software for their use. Dreamspark is completely free for students as well!

There are competitions like the Imagine Cup where students create teams and compete internationally. Over the past few years many students have used their projects as portfolio projects or even to launch their own businesses. You can see what some of this year’s projects look like and vote for your favorite at the US Imagine Cup People’s Choice Video Gallery. Oh and there are several types of competitions in the Imagine Cup including a Game Design competition. If you don’t think that winning a major international development competition impresses prospective employers think again. Be thinking about entering next year!

Windows Phone 7 Series Programming

Programming phones seems to be the hot new thing these days. Yesterday Microsoft announced the availability of free programming tools for the new Windows Phone 7 Series of devices. Start with Visual Studio 2010 Express for Phone beta.

Windows Phone Developer Tools includes:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
• Windows Phone Emulator
• Silverlight for Windows Phone
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP

I’ve got the complete set and am installing it today. With the Windows Phone Emulator I can get some code developed even before the phones themselves become available. I’m just trying to figure out want to create.

Need some documentation? Charles Petzold's preview ebook Programming Windows  Phone 7 Series is now available online at http://charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html.

How about Code Samples for Windows Phone? There are some of those as well. And don’t miss out on the Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Training Kit!

NASA Be A Martian Pathfinder Innovation Challenge

Back last November I posted a short link to NASA’s Be A Martian program page. I guess I didn’t realize at the time that there was a programming competition called the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge as part of that. Not strictly a student competition but many may be interested in it. Here is the reminder announcement I received in my email today.

NASA has hundreds of thousands of images from their missions to Mars. With the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge, they want to enlist your coding skills to help them classify them. This is a unique opportunity where you can help NASA and win some great prizes by utilizing your existing .NET skills.

The Pathfinder Innovation Challenge consists of four different “leagues”.  In the Global Cooperation League, you’ll build casual games that will allow every day citizens to help classify images in a game environment (similar to the counting craters application that can be found online here – http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom) and do so using Silverlight and NASAs Azure-hosted APIs in codename Dallas.  In the Intelligence League, you’ll use the power of the Azure cloud to attempt to solve the same problem by programmatically examining and classifying the images.

Full details for the competition can be found on their website at http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/pic  .  Details specific to the Global Cooperation League at http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/pic/coop-league  and details for the Intelligence League can be found at http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/pic/intelligence-league . Also be sure to check out the intelligence league site for a series of “How Do I?”  videos that show how to sign up for an use the Codename Dallas API.

In addition to helping mankind and being able to brag that your code was helping NASA, PIC winners will also win amazing prizes ranging from NASA swag, to ZuneHDs, to trips to see the launch of the next Mars Rover.

Students to Business Career Streams

Microsoft is doing a number of things to help people enter and grow in technology careers. Yesterday there was a post on Microsoft On The Issues called Microsoft Bolsters Efforts to Create More Opportunity for College Grads about some of those things. But there is also a program called Students 2 Business that I would like to highlight today. Specifically the new Career Streams site.

Do you know there are great technical careers out there waiting for you? Have you ever wondered…

• What do people in these careers do?
• What skills are needed to get started?
• How do you get experience?
• Are there jobs if you have the skills?

Learn about the skills that employers seek and relevant experience to land the job through Microsoft S2B Career Streams. Career Streams will introduce you to a variety of technical careers that are in demand today and tomorrow in the Microsoft community. It will help you learn the skills needed to get started in a technical career and offer opportunities to gain that vital first work experience. Career Streams guide you through three stages of training:

1. Learn – about technical careers including a video of a professional in the field and an overview of the Microsoft tools and technologies necessary to enter the field.
2. Skill – complete introductory training to develop skills via webcasts and online resources.
3. Do – Practice the skills learned to create some “refrigerator art” and develop portfolio assets

Once you complete a career stream, employers can find you through Students to Business as the career stream will automatically populate your online portfolio – searchable by employers. Career Streams available today include: Web Developer, Web Designer, IT Security Specialist, Server Administrator, Network Specialist.

Register Today. Microsoft S2B Career Streams are FREE for students. All you need to do is register at http://s2b.experience.com/alumnus/career_streams and to begin your career!

Small Basic is Moving And Other Resources

Small Basic is not part of the Beginning Developer Learning Center. Looks like the whole landing page for the BDLC has been updated as well. Check out the Kids’s Corner for links for:

• Small Basic for Small Wonders
• Robotics with LEGO Mindstorms
• C# For Sharp Kids
• VB For Very Bright Kids
• Imagine, Program, Share: Join Scratch!
• Beginning Web Development
• Beginning Windows Development

New Small Basic Links:

· Links page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/cc979165.aspx

· New Small Basic home page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/ff384126.aspx

· New Small Basic FAQ page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/ff384239.aspx

· New Small Basic International Links page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/ff423682.aspx

Interesting Links 8 February 2010

Well did you watch the Super Bowl? I confess that I did not. I’m just not that into football. Still I had a good weekend and as usual I have spent some time looking though my Twitter feed of the last week for interesting things to share. I hope some of you are finding this useful or interesting. It’s serving as a good way for me to track things and record useful (to me) information. And now this weeks list.

Details for this year’s CSIT Symposium details have been released. I’ll be in California this Saturday meeting with the rest of the planning committee as we work out still more details but you can register now. I hope you’ll come. It will be at Google HQ. I think they are an Internet advertising company of some sorts. Doug Peterson (@DougPete) who is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter is also on the planning committee BTW. So Canada is represented. :-)

@TeachTec sent out this link to a Project Natal video that explains how yesterday’s STEM students are today’s creative wizards. It was created as part of the Connect A Million Minds project which is a Time Warner Cable effort in conjunction with FIRST Robotics and CSAS - The Coalition for Science After School.

Also from @TeachTec - Getting kids to tell their stories and the free teacher's guide to digital storytelling. Share this with a lot of other teachers you know. English/language arts, social studies, you name it.

The  @innovativeteach Twitter account linked to a blog post on their site called AutoCollage - a simple workshop Included in the post is information on how teachers can get AutoCollage for free.

The CSTA Blog had an interesting post called Getting Students to Test Their Programs This seems to be a big problem with some students. They are either unwilling or find themselves unable to really test their programs. Do you see this problem? How do you deal with it?

The CACM blog also has some interesting posts last week. One in particular got to me School pupils' attitudes to programming: "what's that?" How many students stay away from programming because they don’t know what it is? How about students who decide to major in computer science while being clueless about programming? How can we fix that?

Alerted by @blogCACM on Twitter I found this  Bruce Schneier & Marcus Ranum point/counterpoint: "Should we ban anonymity on the Internet?" They spent a little more time just debating if banning anonymity on the Internet is possible than on if it is the right thing to do. But both make interesting discussion topics. Dealing with ethics in computer science in your classroom? If so this may make a great item to talk about.

The @iRobotSPARK account alerted me to both the @roboweek account and to the First annual National Robotics Week which has been announced 4/10-4/18 Besides that article which lists some events already scheduled look up the National Robotics Week home page.

New Learning Resources on the Visual Basic Developer Center (thanks to Beth Massi on the Visual Basic Team Blog)

Today we revamped some of the Visual Basic Developer Center Learn pages with more content that allows you to pivot on more fine-grained topics and tasks related to Visual Basic programming. We’ve started with the Introductory Topics and Language Syntax pages. To get there, head to http://msdn.com/vbasic and then click the Learn tab. There you will see a set of general topic areas to explore.

The US Imagine Cup Twitter @imaginecupus retweeted a message by @LouisIngenthron with a link to a post that shows you how to create a simple endless ocean for an XNA C# game. Just one of the latest posts at Coding 4 Fun.

 

Bliink Web Design Competition for Texas High School Students

The Microsoft Corporation, NASA, the Texas Business & Education Coalition, and the State of Texas would like to invite you and your students to participate in the bliink web design competition exclusively for Texas High School students. Information at ww.bliinkcontest.com

· Participants must register by 11:59 pm February 24, 2010 and use the referral code TexasNASA.

· Every team member must register individually. Students who register are not obligated to submit a Web site; however, students who do not register by the above date cannot submit a Web site entry.

· Final submissions must be received by 11:59 pm PT on March 25, 2010.

Will you be at TCEA? Microsoft will be running an Expression Web Introduction session at 11 AM on Wednesday February 10th in  Room 410 at the Hilton – The same Hilton as a lot of other TCEA sessions will be held.

You may also join us at TCEA for a three-hour hands-on workshop on Friday, February 12 from 8:00am until 11:00am

Registration required http://www.tcea.org/convention/2010 (This web site is down as I write this but should be up Monday the 8th once the TCEA server move is completed.)

SEE A DEMO AND ASK QUESTIONS about blink or Expression Web.

Get Expression Studio free-of-charge for your school in our live webcasts. Check the schedule at Http://expression.microsoft.com/education

For more information about Microsoft at TCEA please see my previous post Microsoft at TCEA. I really hope to see a lot of my Texas readers at TCEA. Please at least stop by and say hi. Or is that howdy?

What Programming Language to Teach First?

Have you ever been asked a question that you have been asked time and again but suddenly decided you have a different answer for? One of the questions I hear a lot is what programming language should be taught first and this question was asked of a panel I say on last week. Except for me it was an impressive panel. Don Slater of Carnegie Mellon and the Alice Project, Michael Kolling, University of Kent and creator of Greenfoot for teaching Java, and David Klappholz from Stevens Institute of Technology who got his PhD while I was still picking a major in college. So of course I asked to answer first because that was the only way I had a chance of adding value. Plus I had suddenly realized that I had a new answer – one that I had not tried out in public before. And I wanted to give it a go.

Normally of course I would have launched into a great explanation of why Visual Basic was the best and language wars would likely have erupted. But that just did not feel right. So I answered that it depended on a number of things such as the goals of  the course, the type of student but most importantly it depended on what language the teacher was most comfortable with and had the most passion for. The first programming course is hugely important. It is during this course that many students will either be turned on to computer science or turned away from it. This is the first impression and it needs to be a good one. If the teacher knows the language, is comfortable with the language, can have fun with the language and really enjoys the language the students will have a better experience. Everyone wins

I remember teaching Java for the first time. It was not a good experience for me (I was not ready for it) and I am sure it was not a good experience for many of the students. I did then a disservice. In hind sight I should not have agreed to teach the course. But I did and I tried my best but it was not ideal. Teachers easily, and without thinking about it, transfer their feelings about material to their students. Recent reports say this is true of math for example. (Study finds female teachers' fear of math can be catching) I doubt the same is any less true for computer science education. This is why we need well trained and confident computer science teachers in our schools.

There are other considerations BTW. Michael Kolling pointed out that supporting tools are very important. Greenfoot and/or Alice for Java for example. I personally think the Visual Studio IDE makes learning Visual Basic and C# much easier than they would be using a command line and text editor. Plus the drag and drop editing of graphical user interfaces make creating real looking Windows program easy and fun. There are also curriculum materials available for some of the better tools. The Greenfoot site has some for that tool. Alice.org has some for Alice. The Scratch web site has many resources as well. The Microsoft Faculty Connection has curriculum resources for VB and C#. And there is the newly revamped beginning developer learning center. Python which is a language that has a lot of proponents  (I like that it is dynamic) but not as much in the way of a support environment for teaching. Yet.

I know that a lot of curriculum is slaved to the AP CS curriculum these days but I really strongly believe that APCS is too much for a first course. Students need a gate way course that will introduce them to programming in a fun, exciting, dynamic and enthusiastic way. For that course it is best if the teacher uses a language and a platform that they love. Communicate the love not fear, the enthusiasm not the necessity of a specific language, and share passion not pain.

Interesting Links 1 February 2010

All sorts of good things last week. Tops among them was a visit to Stevens Institute of Technology for a workshop with a great group of high school computer science teachers. You’ll see more posts on the things I learned there during the course of the week. But here now some links that I hope you will find useful and interesting.

Tom Ziegmann (on twitter at @tomontech blogging at Tom On Tech) was a visitor to Microsoft’s Redmond HQ last week. While he was there he had a chance to interview members of the Microsoft Surface team. His video is posted at Microsoft Surface – What is it and how does it work?

Texas people heading to TCEA Please sign up for some of the Microsoft workshops Pretty please. They'll be good I promise.

The US Imagine Cup Twitter account (@imaginecupus) sent out a link to an article about learning the basic techniques for XNA 2D Basic Collision Detection. In to game development check this article out and let me know what you think. BTW if you are wondering about the educational value of having students create games this article on Science Daily (Learning the Art of Creating Computer Games Can Boot Student Skills) might be interesting to you. Apparently there are good things happening for students who create there own games.

Speaking of gaming the people behind the conference have a proposal  to create an ACM special interest group called SIGGAME. If you’re a member of the ACM you may want to take a look and sign on your support if you think it is worthwhile.

Key Royal (@kenroyal) posted a link to National Science Competition Searches for America's Top Young Scientist for all your science geek students.

Clint Rutkas (on Twitter at @ClintRutkas) was a member of the academic team that I am on but has started doing some new and interesting things at Microsoft. His profile is now on Microspotting! - http://microsoftjobsblog.com/blog/clint-rutkas-microspotting/ Take a look and see what sort of interesting things are going on.

From the @iRobotSPARK Twitter account that is sponsored by iRobot I saw that Hawaii Gov. Lingle announced $2.8M for Robotics education.

Governor Linda Lingle announced today in her State of the State Address that she has authorized the use of $2,805,200 in federal stimulus funds to enhance robotics education programs in Hawai‘i’s schools.

That is serious money in a state the size of Hawai’i. I’ve seen a lot of good things come from robotics education programs so I think this sounds like a great idea. It gets kids creating things, getting creative, and learning all sorts of skills. Good for Hawai’i.

Can Movie Computer Screens Help Us Design Better

NPR did a story recently on the computer screens that we see in the movies. You know the ones with big read “Access Denied” messages that look nothing like anything you have ever seen in real life. The story was called Hollywood's Computers: Telling A Story In A Flash and it got me thinking. My first thought was that students would love creating that sort of thing. But of course many teachers believe, too often correctly, that students spend too much time creating graphical user interfaces and not enough time creating code as it is. On the other hand I wonder if we teach enough about good user interface. Perhaps we can (or should) avoid the effort on creating UIs during the first course but shouldn’t we start somewhere?

I was speaking to students recently and asked them “How many of you have used a computer program that your parents could never figure out how to use?” Lots of hands went up. (Note students will never admit in front of their peers that they can’t use some program.) My reply to the students was that we need to fix that problem and maybe they will be the ones to do it. Well I can hope but can they really if they don’t learn about user interface design? Which actually brings me back to the movie mock ups.

One of the comments on the NPR article by a designer is that the screens have to tell a story. That makes perfect sense in the context of a movie doesn’t it? But what about in working applications? The book “Made To Stick” talks about telling stories as a way to make ideas stick in people’s minds. Good teachers tell stories all the time and we know it works. So could our computer user interfaces tell a story? And if they did would they be easier to use? It’s an interesting idea I think.

So I wonder if students could spend some time creating mock up user interfaces and seeing if they can do a bit of creative story telling. I’m not exactly sure how it would work but Visual Studio and languages like Visual Basic and C# make it pretty easy to do. (You can use the free Visual Studio Express Editions, inexpensive MSDN AA membership or DreamSpark for students to get it) Could we challenge students to make user interfaces that are easy to use, that are expressive, and that just plain communicate better with users. We can follow it (or lead into it) with discussions about UIs that work well or work poorly, that are confusing or simple, that are easy or hard to remember. Can we take lessons from the movie mock ups to create user interfaces that work? Any one know if there is research on this? Does it sound logical to you? Talk it up with students, peers, and others and leave a comment or two here. I’d love to know what others think about this idea.

DigiGirlz Days Spring Schedule

Well the latest batch of DigiGirlz Days are starting to get scheduled. What are DigiGirlz Days? They are fun, interesting and educational events, sort of like a cool field trip, that show girls what technology and technology careers are about. From the web site:

This one-day event, held at multiple Microsoft locations worldwide, is designed to provide high school girls with a better understanding of what a career in technology is all about.

During the event, students interact with Microsoft employees and managers to gain exposure to careers in business and technology and to get an inside look at what it's like to work at Microsoft. This exciting event provides girls with career planning assistance, information about technology and business roles, thought-provoking exercises, and interesting Microsoft product demonstrations. By participating in the Microsoft DigiGirlz Day, young women can find out about the variety of opportunities available in the high-tech industry and can explore future career paths.

I’ve helped out and one of these events and while men are there they generally have a supporting role rather than a leading role. There are some great women role models out there and Microsoft employees a lot of them. They and other women in professional technical roles really let girls see themselves in the field. Check out the DigiGirlz Day home page to find dates and locations near you. I suspect that more events will be showing up but I want to make sure you know about these early and often as they say. So if you don’t see something near you check back in a week or three and see if new ones have been added.

And if you can’t make it to a DigiGirlz Day there are also some online DigiGirlz Classes.

Experience a new world of fun by exploring our on-line DigiGirlz courses! These classes have been developed with you in mind and will expose you to some of the content that is taught during our DigiGirlz program. Have fun and show your friends and family how creative and innovative you can be.

Interesting links 25 January 2010

Last week’s big news on Twitter? Bill Gates is now using it. Yes, @BillGates is now on Twitter. And he has a new website at www.thegatesnotes.com where he intends to highlight the things he is going and learning. Looks like it will be interesting. And there is lots more interesting links below. Please check them out!

Congratulations Patrick Godwin who has just been named a Microsoft Student Insider. He’s on Twitter  @ximplosionx and blogged about his new role on his blog at Microsoft Student Insider - Programming He’s heading to Redmond next weekend. Hopefully he’ll blog about that trip. (Hint: Patrick if you are reading this. :-) )

Free books! Games! Programming! Fun! Interested in a free e-book about game programming with XNA? Go get yours!

Speaking of fun. Kodu community-based user blog and forums at www.kodux.com Do you Kodu?

On the security front, @JimMacMillan twittered “Hacked-passwords analysis: Most common was “123456,” followed by “12345,” “123456789" and “Password,” in that order.” Interesting and somewhat scary look at what people are using for passwords.

And @Safer_Online twittered a link to some great tips for managing your online reputation. And did you know that this Thursday, 1/28 is Data Privacy Day—observed in the U.S. & 28 other countries. Its aim—to raise awareness about data privacy protection.

Now personally I’m a huge fan of the web design course that Microsoft has made available for free using Microsoft Expression Web tools. But here is an interesting HS web design course using raw html. It may be worth looking at for supplemental resources as well as for itself.

Looking for the latest work on various Microsoft products? This list of Official Microsoft Team & Product blogs may be just the resource you are looking for.

The always interesting Mark Guzdial had an interesting observation last week (@guzdial)  “Open Source Development is actually Country Club Development: Hard to get into, mostly white guys.” That was on top of his blog post Open source development needs to grow-up and become education-friendly. Regardless of your feelings about open source there is some interesting opinions and information to start a conversation on the subject there. Check it out.

Will you be at TCEA? HP, Intel and Microsoft will be offering a free teacher Digital Learning Event at TCEA (Austin). You can learn more about it and register here.

These unique interactive forums are one-day events held throughout the United States. Each Digital Learning Event is an immersive experience that provides K-12 decision-makers with state-of-the-art technology solutions delivered in hands-on learning environments.

More of these coming up - Las Vegas: Thursday, 2/25/10 ~ San Diego: Thursday, 3/11/10 ~ Atlanta: Friday, 3/19/10
Boston: Thursday, 4/8/10 ~ Washington, D.C.: Wednesday, 4/14/10 ~ Indianapolis: Tuesday, 4/20/10 ~ Denver: Thursday, 4/29/10 Minneapolis: Wednesday, 5/5/10 ~ Raleigh-Durham: Tuesday, 5/11/10

Are your students interested in getting some Microsoft certifications? Students can get a free second chance at Microsoft Certification exams.

Great post by @kenroyal about FETC, meeting people, etc. And bonus a picture of the two of us together. :-)

So are there or are their not jobs in CS and IT

The other day in my interesting links post I included links to several articles/blog posts. One article was titled - IT hiring increases last month despite broader jobs decline and the other was DARPA feels that the geek shortage is a national security risk. It seems like I see those sorts of articles regularly. In the comments for those articles I usually see stories about IT professionals who are laid off and can’t find jobs. I hear them from friends as well. I also hear stories of college computer science professors who are getting lots of calls from companies who want to hire their graduates.

Mark Guzdial (from Georgia Tech) asks about The disconnect between the Geek shortage and the Geek layoffs on his blog. It’s a question that comes up often. Neither the statistics or the stories from out of work IT people tell the whole story. I wrote some comments as a reply to Mark’s blog but I wanted to expand on them a bit. First a story.

A little over 15 years ago I was laid off from my job in software development. I looked around and realized that the skills/knowledge that I had used to the previous 18 years were pretty much unnecessary. The world had moved from mini computers (my area) to PCs and had done so without out me. So I started rebuilding. I took a large step sideways (into teaching) and taught myself about PCs, new programming languages, and developed other skills. When I was ready for industry I found that industry was ready for me. I know other people who kept looking for the same types of jobs they had been doing for years. Some of them have spent a lot of time out of work. The people who are looking for continuing jobs as mainframe operators struggle – a lot. Those who went back to "school" figuratively if not literally have mostly had steady work.

Not all companies will retrain workers. Companies have a short term attitude and will train people only for short term needs. In computer fields it is largely up to the individual to retrain themselves. Right or wrong that is a fact of life. These days I keep more on top of things and do a much better job of staying current. It is not always easy and I suspect the young people in their 20s are having an easier time of it than I am. But I see not point in blaming them, the companies, or the job market for any of it.

In the long term I think that a formal education in computer science is a huge benefit. I can’t imagine the learning curve I would have had without my schooling. I had a deep base that I could draw upon. had I been completely self-taught I’m not sure I could have caught up with things. Oh some might but that does not strike me as the way to bet.

I do know self-taught people who have never been out of work. They keep teaching themselves new things. They use the same learning skills that got them started to keep themselves going. Other people seem to jump into the job market too quickly. They learn enough to get their first job and for a while they do very well. Then the needs of the job change and they lack the base of knowledge or the learning skills to keep up. They assume that they are so smart and so good at what they do that they will always be in demand. All too often they are wrong.

One of the things I tell students when I do career talks is that if they want a career where they can do the same thing for 30 years and then retire computer science and information technology are not for them. This is a career that requires life long  learning as much as any field I can think of. While at times you may feel like you have to run as fast as you can to keep up you will also seldom be bored. After 34+ years in the field I keep learning new things, doing new things, and growing as a person. If that is what you want this is the field you want. Just my  opinion.