Interesting Links 28 February 2011

Lots of interesting posts by computer science teachers last week. And some news from various sources to share. But let’s start with the teacher blog posts.

Kathleen Weaver writes about her experiences with Programming for Windows Phone 7 for teachers and students. Kathleen has a couple of applications in the Windows Phone 7 app store already and is now introducing her students to Windows Phone development. Looks like fun. I can’t wait to see what her students come up with.

Interesting "find the max" project by Ben Chun (@benchun) There is some really good discussion in the comments about objects early or late and teaching the concepts in general.

Rob Miles (@robmiles ) posted an interesting Programming Puzzler. The useful part is the discussion in the comments. And I see that Rob did add more detail to the post itself since I originally read it. It’s a good discussion question.

My manager Bob Familiar helped Andrew Parsons with a multi-day game development camp at Pace University over the weekend. Bob wrote about it at Get your app on! Students learn XNA and Silverlight Gaming at Pace Game Camp They even has a 12 year old student there who was very successful. Seems like game development doesn’t have to start in high school let alone college. In more Windows Phone 7 development news, read about  My School App: A First (Real) Windows Phone 7 App Project for Beginners. Mark Frydenberg of Bentley University has created and posted a fun and easy first Windows Phone 7 app project on the Microsoft Codeplex: http://myschoolapp.codeplex.com/.

The Microsoft Tech Student Twitter account (@MSTechStudent) has a reminder for us Visual Basic people about Visual Basic Windows Phone 7 Series: How to create a microphone application for Windows Phone 7 using Visual Basic.

Speaking of gaming news – did you hear that a Kinect for Windows SDK to Arrive Spring 2011? Designed for educational and research use by the good folks at Microsoft Research. What will your students do with it?

Under the heading of both fun and educational xkcd takes on the problem of address space http://xkcd.com/865/geek humor at its finest. A possible conversation starter as well.

And this video from the UK, Introducing Nellie the School Computer (1969) shows just what operating a school computer was like in the late 1960’s. You’ll like the way they teach how a binary adder works as well. Something to think about today.

In more Microsoft news,  Microsoft now has local tech news sites for Silicon Valley, Boston, Chicago, and LA .

Last but not least, I see there is a Math 4.0 teacher guide out along with a bunch of other guides including one for Movie Maker that looks useful

FizzBuzz–A Programming Question

Projects or exercises that lend themselves to many different “correct” solutions are just about the best sorts of learning experiences I can imagine. They really open the possibilities for discussion and from discussion – questions, answers, explanations – comes real learning. Recently Dennis Shaw, a student at Old Dominion University and a Microsoft Student Partner, told me about the FizzBizz exercise. (see Using FizzBuzz to Find Developers who Grok Coding for where it comes from) This is exactly that sort of multiple solution but not that difficult sort of exercise I love. Briefly stated the exercise is:

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.

So there you have it. It involves using some sort of conditional of course. Nested or unnested? It can be done either way. Which way is best? Do you check for multiples of three first or five? Do you check to see if the number ISN’T one of those cases  first or if it IS one of those cases? Or rather than If statements is there a different way completely? Perhaps a select/case structure? Does creating functions/methods complicate of simplify the result? If students know multiple programming languages is there one that is better for this than another (think especially about functional languages v. procedural languages). Are there special operators (like perhaps the ternary operator in C#, C/C++ and Java) that might make the code “tighter?” Is there a trade off between complication and understanding? Oh and of course, does your solution actually work?

Justify your answers. (Don’t you just just love the teacher-ness of “justify your answer?” )  I can see asking students to write up an explanation of how their solution works and why they did it that way as a means for forcing examination of the solution. And as a side benefit a lot of students can benefit from yet another writing exercise. Code that can’t be explained isn’t properly understood and that causes problems in the long run. A piece of code should not be “magic” to the person who wrote it.

There are many solutions on the Internet to the FizzBuzz question. So yes, some student might go searching for one and even try to use it. The “justify your solution” question means that they still have to understand and explain how it works and why they like it. I can’t see a student saying “I like this solution because I found it on the Internet and it works.” Well, I hope they wouldn’t try that. But if they do, grade them on how well they explain the benefits of using borrowed code and if they credited the original source properly. And of course they should also be able to explain why this solution is better than others they might have found. Surely they were not so lazy and to hand in the first solution they found?

BTW a couple of related posts of mine are Teaching, Learning and the Job Interview and Characteristics of a Good Programming Project

Triangle Shooter–An XNA Windows Phone Game By Kenny Spade

Kenny Spade is a Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist out in California who has been writing a series of blog posts that help one learn how to write a Windows Phone game using XNA. There is code, pictures, explanations of what is going on and lots of good information here. It doesn’t seem to be getting the attention it deserves so I thought I would pass a long some link love. The series so far is:

• Introduction to XNA–What you get with File –> New Project (TriangleShooter)
• Using Multi-Touch for Movement (TriangleShooter)
• Advanced Movement with Multi-Touch (TriangleShooter)
• Basic Collision (TriangleShooter)
• Breaking the Player and Enemy out into Classes (TriangleShooter)
• Adding Multiple Enemies with AI (TriangleShooter)
• Spawning More Enemies (TriangleShooter)
• Adding Shooting (TriangleShooter)
• Refactoring and Death Behavior (TriangleShooter)
• Scoring (TriangleShooter)
• Persisting the High Score Between Games (TriangleShooter)

If you are interested in games for the Windows Phone, other XNA development for the Windows Phone or XNA in general give Kenny’s blog a look.

Making the Case for Becoming a Computer Science Teacher

Mark Guzdial asks the question What’s the argument for becoming a computer science teacher? on his blog. It’s a good question. While as a former computer science teacher I may appear to be a strange one to make the case but I’m going to try. Being a computer science teacher is a great job. Really being a teacher in any subject is a great job and a lot of the reasons for teaching other subjects are part of teaching computer science. The student interaction, seeing students learn new and exciting things, and generally making a difference for good in the world. But there are of course some special things about teaching computer science that complicate the picture somewhat.

One is that if you are really qualified to teach computer science you are probably qualified to get a much better paying job in industry. If this is true, and generally it is, why take the lower paying teaching job?

Well besides the teacher benefits there is a certain amount of freedom to learn new things that one doesn’t always have in industry. In industry your learning can be channeled in certain directions by management. And with work hours in the computer industry often being as time consuming as those in teaching (trust me – I’ve done both) one doesn’t always have the time to learn about ones own interests. Computer science education is somewhat directed by the AP CS exam but that is only for one course. And while some teachers, by desire or necessity, focus all their courses around that one course many find the time and incentives to learn things in other directions. Game development for example using C# and XNA. Or more web development (perhaps using Expression Web with some free curriculum) In all of this, because of the nature of teaching, one can often focus on breath over depth. So rather than being confined to digging deeply into one of two technologies teachers can often dig lightly into a wide variety of technologies.

Of course this brings up the fact that some people are not excited about learning a lot of new technologies and having the curriculum change on a regular basis. I have no doubt at all that this is true. I have met teachers who are totally resistant to change and want to do the same thing year after year. To that I ask, do we really want people like that teaching (period – let alone computer science)?

The biggest problem is the law of supply and demand. There is not enough of a demand. Yes, NSF has a 10,000 computer science teacher effort but I don’t see much of a sign that the states or even school districts are buying this. If there were lots of advertisements for full-time computer science teachers we’d probably see more people looking at doing it. Many people don’t want to teach several sections of Math or history or English that they can teach one or two sections of computer science. This is widely true I think. We don’t make the jobs common enough or interesting enough (and by interesting I am not talking about money) for excited young people to move into the field of CS education.

When done correctly, allowing some teacher freedom to develop new curriculum for new technologies, availability of in-service training,  providing support in both facilities and recruiting help (not hindrance) from guidance, teaching computer science to high school students is a really great job. It is a chance to start the next generation of world changing computer/computing scientists and industry professions with a solid base. It is a chance to work with smart kids who have a real passion for the subject. Why become a computer science teacher? It’s a fun job and a world changing job. If you love computer science it is even more fun than any other teaching job you can have.

Note: Take a look at Computing in the Core which is an effort to help get computer science adopted into the core curriculum in schools.

Ed Donahue Joins the Microsoft Academic Team

Ed Donahue (her real name is Erin but she goes by Ed – go figure) has joined the Microsoft academic team as an academic developer evangelist  for the Washington DC area. This apparently includes Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. She’s a great person I first met through her involvement with the Imagine Cup. She and her team were twice US finalists in the software design competition.

Ed has a blog at Creepy Ed on MSDN – drop by and read what she has to say. She is also part of Ed and Ashley's 5 Minute Show which is a wonderful video blog with a lot of good interviews. She is on Twitter at @CreepyEd

My Most Read Posts of 2010

For the most part I want to focus on the future and not the past. But I did want to take one look back at traffic to my computer science teacher blog over the course of 2010. I have rough metrics for both web traffic and RSS/subscriber traffic. I hope you will subscribe if you read blogs via RSS BTW. To subscribe to my blog please use http://feeds.feedburner.com/ComputerScienceTeacher as the RSS feed source. Subscribe now so you don’t miss any of the wheat among the chaff.

Controversy ruled and point of view posts with opinions topped the list of most read blog posts of 2010 based on Web-based traffic. Although my reviews of visual programming languages and discussion of Kodu (graphical programming for very young students) were also big hits. Confirming that both lists and free items are traffic draws my recent list of free ebook from Microsoft also made the list. Most of the top posts were from the last couple of months but one of them, a discussion of computer engineer Barbie was from last January.

1. Should Johnny Learn To Program?
2. Four Key Concepts of Computer Programming
3. Artificial Intelligence and Game Programming
4. How Not To Teach Programming
5. Teaching Real World Programming
6. Computer Engineer Barbie
7. Free eBooks From Microsoft
8. Kodu Programming for Kids
9. Does Learning Computer Programming Help Anything Else?
10. Visual Programming Languages

The list of most read via RSS reader was almost completely different though. Here information and more pedagogical discussions  ruled with a weekly interesting links post (Interesting Links 29 March 2010) toping the list. That was a surprise!

1. Interesting Links 29 March 2010 Some good links but I’m not sure what made it so widely read. I really do try to have good links in all of those weekly links posts though.
2. NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing  This is a great program from NCWIT to recognize and support young women interested in computing careers. Looks like another site did help me get traffic here and for that I thank them.
3. Web Development or Computer Science  What sorts of courses are schools calling computer science and is it helpful?
4. What are you using? Where I asked people which of the resources I blogged about they were using. http://www.jayscustomcomputers.com/ also sent RSS traffic here.
5. Playing Video Games Will Not Get You a Job But creating games might!
6. Cheating In Computer Science Classes How common is it? Is it worse than in other subjects?
7. Programming Contests – for good or for bad Everyone has an opinion. Do you use them?
8. Web 2.0 and Other Educational Resources From Microsoft
9. Rethinking Hello World One of my favorite posts of the year. I think we really do need to rethink the projects we assign. Closely related to this post was Projects that Mean Something and Characteristics of a Good Programming Project.
10. Starter Resources for Robotics Learning

I’m not sure what it means that the two lists are so very different. I know that the most web read post are largely because external sites with huge readerships linked to them. So I probably see a lot of one time traffic from people who are not in education. So while that is nice and it is exciting to have a post read by thousands of people from time to time my goal is to be helpful to computer science educators. That is not a goal that can be measured by readership numbers. Comments, either on a post or via email (alfredth@microsoft.com)  or Twitter (@AlfredTwo) are always welcome to help me gauge that sort of success.

Microsoft bliink…a web design competition for high school students

I’ve talked about Bliink in the past. (See bliink) Over the last couple of years Microsoft has run this web development competition in schools across the county. It’s been limited to individual states, state-wide organizations, or large school districts so far. This year we are going wider – national (US) in scope. My friend Gautam is running the program and blogged about it at his web site - Microsoft bliink…a web design competition for high school students

The goal of the Microsoft bliink contest is to build the student interest in technology and increasing the STEM pursuits in education and careers in the US. high school students with a positive experience with being creative with technology are more likely to pursue STEM studies and careers.  We make this possible by providing high school students with the software tools, training and experiences through the Microsoft bliink contest.

Microsoft bliink contest 2011 will launch January 5th, 2011, with the registration window being open until February 28th, 2011. Website submissions (using Expression Studio software) are due March 1st, 2011 for fabulous prizes of XBox360 consoles, the new Kinect and XBox360 games. Any US high school student between 13 and 19 years of age is eligible to register and submit their websites to the  Microsoft bliink 2011 contest, participating in teams of 2 – 4 students.

So visit Gautam’s blog for the full scoop and if you know students who are ready to show off what they know tell them to keep an eye out for the official January 5th 2011 launch.

Interesting Links Post December 6th 2010

Well it is Computer Science Education week. Are you doing anything at your school for it this week? I attended three different CSTA chapter meetings in the last couple of weeks (northern New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire) and there was a lot of talk about CS Ed week at all three meetings. Check out the CSEdWeek web page to see what is going on around the country. And now a few other interesting links.

The XNA Game Studio team announced Dream.Build.Play for 2011. While students should absolutely be entering the game division of the Imagine Cup Dream Build Play is open to everyone including people who develop software for a living. So you pros out there looking to make a name for yourself in game development this is the one for you.

Are you ready to compete? Dream.Build.Play is a competition where you can create and submit your XNA Game Studio 4.0 game for Xbox 360 to win prizes, including the chance to have your game featured on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Registration will open in late February 2011.

Speaking of the Imagine Cup, Andrew Parsons, recently relocated to New York City from Australian, makes the case Why [students] should make a game for Imagine Cup 2011 

A thought provoking post on the CSTA blog Maybe Course Proliferation Is a Bad Idea? Could we possibly have too many computer science courses? Types of courses that is – not too many courses in too many schools. Check out the post and leave your thoughts over there.

Did you know that Microsoft has been ranked as one of the top corporate citizens. One of the reasons I am proud to work here. A lot of people seem surprised by this which tells me that Microsoft is not the company some people think they are. The article makes for an interesting read.

Are you using Visual Basic and thinking that the C# people are having all the fun with Smart Phone programming? Well, good news, Visual Basic Windows Phone 7 Developer tools is now available!

Computer Science Teacher Blog posts for November 2010

My main blog is elsewhere so I thought I might try something new this month. What follows is an index to the blog posts I wrote during November at my primary blog. This way if you wind up here from a comment I have let you can see what I am really up to.

• Artificial Intelligence and Game Programming
• Interesting Links 29 November 2010
• Does Learning Computer Science help anything else?
• Imagine Cup Insider–Announcing IC Solve This
• Student Access to the AppHub for Windows Phone 7
• Interesting Links 22 November 2010
• Wisdom in Lists–Really?
• Pledge to Participate in and be a Supporter of Computer Science Education Week!
• Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners
• Interesting Links 15 November 2010
• EduBlogger Nominations 2010
• Lines Can Be Fun
• XNA and Game Development and Expression Web and Web Design Talks
• Microsoft Technology Associate Certifications Revisited
• How Does Kinect Work?
• Interesting Links 8 November 2010
• Three New Chances to Get Involved in the Imagine Cup
• Teaching real-world programming
• Interesting Links 1 November 2010

Pledge to Participate in and be a Supporter of Computer Science Education Week!

Computer Science Education week is December 5-11, 2010 this year. ACM and the chair of CSed Week steering committer are asking people to sign up and pledge to support CSed Week. I understand that a new CSed Week web site “will be rolling out on November 29, and will encourage students, teachers, industry, and university folks to pledge to engage in some activity to promote computer science education.”

Join with teachers, students, parents and others who are participating in CSEdWeek activities and events. Sign the pledge now to support CSEdWeek activates and events.

Pledge here: <www.computinginthecore.org> and list what you are doing to participate in Computer Science Education Week.

Wisdom in Lists–Really?

Like a lot of people I have an affection for lists that condense a lot of wisdom into a brief set of statements or items. Some time ago I wrote a series of posts on Programming Proverbs for example. That list (reproduced at the bottom of this post) came from a book that was every influential to me, especially early in my career. Each proverb by it self said a lot but mostly to someone who all ready know something about the topic. The original book had a sort of chapter on each proverb and did a wonderful job of elaboration and explanation. My series of blog posts was a couple of paragraphs on each from my own experience. Why do I bring tis up now? Well I found a couple of other posts of somewhat similar “proverbs” if you will. I thought I would share them with you and perhaps suggest a look at my own series in case you missed it the first time around.

The first is “The Two Things about Computer Programming” a couple of years old but still quite relevant. Plus it is new to me so maybe it is new to you as well. Read the whole post for the explanation of “Two Things” but the Two Things about Computer Science and the Two Things about Software Engineering given are:

Computer Programming:

1. Every problem can be solved by breaking it up into a series of smaller problems.
2. The computer will always do exactly what you tell it to.

Software Engineering:

1. Writing the code is the easy part. Writing it so someone else can understand it later is the important part.
2. Make it work, then make it elegant, then make it fast.

I’m not sure these are the end all and be all and I have a mind to explore them at some length one of these days. But I thought they were worth sharing in “raw form” to see if I can get some conversation going. Are these right? Are there two more important things? Is it even helpful to have the computer programming and software engineering divide?

The other post is 20/20: Top 20 Programming Lessons I've Learned in 20 Years subtitled “This post could be viewed as hard lessons learned for newly graduated college students, entry-level programmers, or advanced developers who just want a chuckle.” Also not a new post but I just discovered it. There are some 60+ comments which may add value as well. I like this list although, as with many such lists, I’m not sure all of them would be on my top 20. But then each individual has a different experience and a different idea of what key learning's are.

The Programming Proverbs I wrote about with a link to each post is here:

1. Define the problem completely
2. Think first, Program later
3. Use the top-down approach
4. Beware other approaches
5. Construct the program in logical units
6. Use procedures {methods}
7. Avoid unnecessary GOTO's
8. Avoid side effects
9. Get the syntax correct now, not later
10. Use good mnemonic names
11. Use intermediate variables properly
12. Leave loop variables alone
13. Do not recompute constants within a loop
14. Avoid implementation-dependent features
15. Avoid tricks
16. Build in debugging techniques
17. Never assume the computer assumes anything
18. Use comments
19. Prettyprint - format your code so that it looks nice
20. Provide good documentation
21. Hand-check the program before running it
22. Get the program correct before trying to provide good output
23. When the program is correct, produce good output
24. Re-read the manual
25. Consider another language
26. Don't be afraid to start over

Welcoming Andrew Parsons to the US Academic Team

The latest person to join the US Academic Developer Evangelist team is Andrew Parsons. Andrew is moving from the other side of the world (Australia) to work with colleges and universities around the New York City area. He’s been doing that sort of thin Down Under for several years and we’re all pretty excited to have him join the US team.

Andrew talks about the move on his blog at - NYC, here I come!

He also talks about his first big New York City event - NYC Imagine Cup Kick off - Inspiring students to change the world for the better - If you are a college/university student in the NYC area I hope you’ll sign up for Andrew’s event, learn about the Imagine Cup, and welcome him to the States. BTW Andrew is and has been one of the “captains” of the Imagine Cup Game competition so knows a ton about XNA and game development. And of course about the Imagine Cup!

Introducing the Microsoft US Academic Bloggers

I'm part of a group of people at Microsoft who work with academics all across the country. A number of them have active blogs and I thought this might be a good time to introduce them to others. For each blogger I have their name which is hot linked to their blog, a picture, and a link or three to recent posts that I think people will be interested in. I hope you will visit some of these blogs, subscribe to any that look interesting and get some real value from them.

• Bob Familiar is the Director of Academic Evangelism, DPE East Region.

  • Ideas for Citizen-facing Phone Apps
  • Why Windows Phone 7 Makes Sense for MIS Programs
  • Top Curriculum Downloads from Microsoft Faculty Connection

• Tara Walker is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [South East]

  • The Cloud is Open: Windows Azure support for PHP Developer
  • Windows Phone 7 Officially is Here: Ready, Set, Code!

• Lindsay Lindstrom is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [Mid Atlantic]

  • Why Choose Computer Science?

• Edwin Guarin is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [New England]

  • Windows Phone 7 developer resources from the Boston Developer Launch – start building cool apps now!
  • Future Imagine Cup Winners? Fall Tour Part 1

• Alfred Thompson is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [K-12 computer science US-wide]

  • Kodu Programming For Kids
  • Small Basic Curriculum
  • What does your school need?
• Randy Guthrie is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [US-West] 
  • Using Self-Marketing to Maximize Out-of-Class Project Impact on your Resume
  • Halo Reach Launch Party: Lone Tree, CO Microsoft Store
• Sam Stokes is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [Southern California] 
  • Cloud technology is boring? Not if you are into BioInformatics
  • This is a really cool panoramic stitching tool!
• Dan Waters is the Microsoft Academic Developer Evangelist [Pacific Northwest] 
  • The benefit of student software competitions
  • 3D Level Editing for Windows Phone 7 Games (#XNA)
• Gautam Reddy is a senior Academic Marketing Manager based in Redmond WA.
  • How can High School Teachers provide students with DreamSpark Software
  • Setting up XNA 3.1 Game Studio and Creator’s Club Academic Memberships from DreamSpark and MSDNAA
  • Imagine Cup IT Challenge Quiz puts you on path to success in 60 minutes

Edwin Guarin Now Blogging

My great friend Edwin Guarin  (aka the Edvandelist) is now blogging at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/edvangelist/. Drop by and wish him well.

Interesting Links 27 September 2010

Last week I wrote a post about the Imagine Cup. (Imagine Cup–Solving the Worlds Problems Through Software) A couple of things I should have mentioned about it though. One is there is a chance for students who enter to win an Xbox 360 console with the new Kinect each week to one random Imagine Cup registrant .Read the full rules at Imagine Cup Rules. The other thing I should have emphasized is that the Round 1 quizzes for the Information Technology (IT) Challenge have started. You can get the full schedule at IT Challenge web site. It’s not to early to work at qualifying for Round 2.

Brandon Watson @BrandonWatson announced that Visual Basic is now available to support Silverlight development for the  WindowsPhone7. Visual Basic Comes to Windows Phone 7 As a big VB fan boy from way back this is pretty exciting to me.

The World Wide Innovative Forum is coming up this week in South Africa. Leading up to it Tony Franklin has been posting some guest posts from the US teachers who are going.

• Gamer Girlz by Pat Yongpradit
• Innovative Education Forum A Celebration of Learning and Culture by Cheryl Arnett and Rawya Shatila

@weemooseus Twittered a link to a post by a student who wrote up his list if the Top 5 AP Computer Science Tips. It’s an interesting list with some good suggestions.

What does your school need? The team at Bing is running a contest to provide money to schools. Check the program out here. Learn more about Bing programs for educators, visit bing.com/education

In other links, Ken Royal @kenroyal had an interesting article on  Top 25 Ed Tech Trends. Well worth the read.

Most Popular Posts From August

It turns out the be complicated to figure out what the most popular blog posts are for a particular month. There are two sets of data I look through. One set, from Feedburner, shows (in theory) the top number of posts read by subscribers to this blog. The second set of numbers, from the hosting service, shows (again in theory) the top posts as read by web browsers. There is a lot of similarity in the two lists but it is not exact. For one thing the web traffic comes in large part from search engines. It looks like a lot of people in August were searching for things related to “What do you do on the first day of class” which led them to a post from September 2007! My posts from July of this year on Visual Programming languages and the new Microsoft Technology Associate certifications also received a lot of web traffic in August. The top 5 based on being on both lists is below though.

1. Non-Myths About Programming
2. Computer Science is NOT Boring!
3. Free Microsoft Office Add-ins for Education
4. Windows Phone 7 Sample applications
5. Girls, Games and Software Development
   

I hope you’ll read through these if you missed them. Many of them have some comments which are often well worth the read. I encourage you to add your opinions to those and any other recent posts. And of course any I post in the future. Comments make it all much better for everyone. Are any of your favorite posts from August not on this list? Or any you think were worthless? I could always make a least popular list but somehow I think I would find that less personally satisfying.

Interesting Posts 30 August 2010

One of the things I tell people when they ask me about why I came to work for Microsoft is that the company has grown up in many ways over the years. One of those ways is in giving back to the community both in general and education in specific. For example, last week it was announced that Microsoft  Is Helping to Launch National Day of GiveCamp. What is Give Camp?

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend.

(Note you can follow Give Camp on Twitter @GiveCamp)

An education specific effort from Microsoft is called EduConnect. @Microsoft_EDU blogged about EduConnect on a blog post titled  Microsoft giving back to schools via EduConnect. This is a program Microsoft has been building to help employees volunteer in and give aid to their own local schools. It’s been growing by leaps and bounds because a lot of Microsoft employees really want to help make education better were they life – and else where.

A Computer World article called 5 indispensable IT skills of the future has caused a lot of discussion among both educators and professional developers. Are these the right skills and what is the right way for students to get them to prepare for careers. And what does everyone not an IT professional need to know about IT skills?

Like Puzzles? Check out this new project from Microsoft’s @FUSELabs team http://www.teamcrossword.com/ Short version of what it  is – a chance to work on a crossword puzzle with your friends no matter where in the world they are. Very cool. Also a great example of what cloud applications may look like in the future

NASA Announces High School Competition for Future Engineers: Design Software for Small Satellites on the Space Station. If you or students you know are interested in space based projects check this out. But do it soon as signups close in a couple of weeks. I have to hand it to NASA as they are really invested in educational programs.

The Microsoft Kodu team ran Kodu Kamp at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond WA recently. There is a new blog post with lessons and pictures from the events.  By all reports a great time was had by all. besides young students the event included some hands on time for teachers to learn about Kodu and its potential in the classroom.

My manager, Bob Familiar aka @bobfamiliar on twitter, blogged about Bullet Asylum - Missile Command on steroids for Windows Phone 7. The post includes a video trailer.

Microsoft Surface meets Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio at U. Mass Lowell. In a nice synergy of Microsoft tools the robotics program at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell uses hand gestures on a Surface device to control the operation of robots. (hat tip Microsoft Robotics Studio blog)

You can watch the video to see how smoothly it works. Visit the Robotics Lab web site for more information on work in progress.

Last week I wrote a post for the Educators’ Royal Treatment titled "Do We Need To Teach English In School?" In the article I posit that the arguments that we don’t need to teach computer science in schools to “Digital natives” apply just as well to teaching English to native English language speakers. Comments welcome and encouraged.

One final reminder, if you are using Twitter I hope you will follow me, Alfred Thompson at @AlfredTwo. I’d love to follow you back so send a tweet my way. Thanks.

Interesting Links Post 23 August 2010

Happy Monday! Are you back to school yet? A lot of teachers are. If you are back I hope it is going well. If not yet, are you working out to get into “teaching shape?” The Principal’s Page had a post about that last week - Teacher Tired. Well in my attempt to be useful here is my weekly round up of interesting links I have found over the last week or so. I hope you find something helpful and/or interesting. I think this week’s selections are better than average.

Back to School: Making Sure Students with Disabilities Can See, Hear, and Use their PC Find out about a free guide that helps ensure that all students have equal access to learning with technology. Microsoft’s new Accessibility: A Guide for Educators

Some interesting things on Scratch this week. Hélène Martin (on Twitter @purplespatula) wrote a post about Scratch BYOB which lets you create higher order functions in a drag and drop environment. Why Build Your Own Blocks? Worth a read. Stacey Armstrong asks and answers Can Scratch be used to teach AP Computer Science topics? Stacey knows quite a bit about the APCS exam so I pay attention to what he says. Scratch and several other tools are highlighted in a post on the ReadWriteWeb called 4 Tools for Teaching Kids to Code. There are some quotes from me about why teaching computer science to K-12 students is important as well.

Students will be interested in the new Microsoft Facebook page for Technology students - http://www.facebook.com/MicrosoftTechStudent

Lindsay Lindstrom (@LindsayInPhilly) asks and answers  Why choose computer science on a blog post.

Garth asks if we’re asking to few tech teachers to do too much? I think we probably  are. Read CS and Teacher Education for more.

There is an official Small Basic Enthusiasts page on Facebook. Join today! Some interesting looking Small Basic tutorials at http://computerscienceforkids.com.  Also Lynn Langit has been recording companion videos for here Small Basic Recipes at the Small Basic wiki.

Ready to start programming for Windows Phone 7? You can find the keyboard mappings for the Windows Phone 7 emulator at Keyboard Mapping for Windows Phone Emulator. You can also check out 12 hours of free video training on Windows Phone 7 development. Short on time? Take a look at Windows Phone 7 in 7 Minutes.

Microsoft Research Interns range from High School students to PhD candidates - Interns Bring Fresh Perspectives

Interesting Links 9 August 2010

What a week. My son was married a week ago. I picked him and his bride up from their honeymoon last night. In between I took a trip to Texas for a Microsoft conference and celebrated my birthday while away. At least my bride was with me and I was able to meet up with my brother and sister in law who live in Texas. But a crazy week. I still managed to collect a few good links though. And if you didn’t see it I listed my 10 Most Popular Posts June and July 2010.

From Jean-Luc David (@jldavid) and others I found links to Bill Gates - In 5 Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web. I’m skeptical. There are too many people problems to work out. Plus I think that a lot of the best learning comes from people actually being together.

The Microsoft Accessibility web site has been rebuilt and reopened.  They want everyone to know that accessible design can be beautiful. This is the first stop you should make if you have differently able students you want to help or if you want to teach students about accessible design.

Speaking of differently able people, @iRobotSPARK, lead me to this article called Robot Speaks the Language of Kids. Robots are being built and programmed to work with autistics students. Yet another example of computer science and engineering making a difference in the world.

From @MSTechStudent (follow them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft)  If you need assistance in creating amazing games, here’s a XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP & Education Roadmap.

Cy Khormaee recently blogged about high school computer science teacher Pat Yongpradit being selected to participate in the 2010 Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Education Forum in South Africa!

Related to that my new manager, Bob Familiar (@bobfamiliar) wrote about the Innovative Education program in the US at a post titled Exceptional Teachers Recognized at the Microsoft 2010 U.S. Innovative Education Forum

If you are interested in conferences at all, I made some random conference observations in a recent blog post on another blog.

Oh and Tara Walker from the US Academic team has started blogging again. Drop by Tara’s blog and see what she is sharing.

CyKho is back

CyKho is back! Cy Khormaee has reopened his blog at  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cykho/ You can also follow Cy on twitter  @CyKho though we need to get him twittering more.