Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

Friday Game News

OK it is the start of the long weekend – well once my wife gets back from school where she had just a little more to do to be ready for students on Tuesday. So it is time to think about some game news. OK so I’m thinking about more help to create games since I really think that turning consumers into creators should be a goal. So hear now the news.

The Popfly team announces a bunch of new features. The Game Creator has gone from alpha to beta and with this there are badges to earn, new profile pages, and new features that let you include your own images, videos and sounds into Popfly games. And more. Plus for mashups there is a new string formatter and several new blocks including a slide show display block. Read about it here and then try out Popfly.

For all you XNA fans out there, Dan Waters announces a new video in his series on creating GuitarrMatey 3D XNA game that uses the guitar from Garage Band. If you are interested in learning how to make a 3D XNA game from scratch this is a series you want.

Sam Stokes has started on a series on getting started with web and video game design on his blog. Besides XNA I believe he will be doing web games with Silverlight. Should be an interesting series. Sam teaches a college course in game development BTW.

Just to fill out the post and send some link love to some people I like and respect plus as an added bonus link to some career stuff: Randy Guthrie has started a series of blog posts on how to prepare for and get started with careers in the computer/technology field.

And Diane Curtis starts blogging at the Springboard blog started by Hilary Pike. This is the school to career blog which regularly, and probably even more regularly now, posts information for students who are thinking about their careers.

Teacher Favorite Templates: Ms. Stivers for 6th and 7th grade

OK these teacher templates recommendations from LeeAnn Stivers who teaches at the International School in Bellevue, Washington look awesome to me. Grade book, curriculum planners, a seating chart tool using PowerPoint and more. They were all done for and with Office 2003 so if you haven’t upgraded you’ll be happy to know you can use them. You can find many more Microsoft Office resources for teachers here. Check them out!

I have some friends at Microsoft who are looking for more teacher favorite template recommendations who are willing to share with other teachers. If you have one or more recommendations or would like to participate in a program to recommend templatesto other teachers please let me know . I’d really appreciate it.Leave a comment, send email to Alfred.Thompson (at) microsoft.com or Twitter me at http://twitter.com/AlfredTwo

Educational Uses For Collections of Images

My wife does a middle school research project using “landmarks” as a theme. Students research places like the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, and on and on. Obviously images are a part of this project. Students, especially today, are interested in what things look like. The other day I showed my wife Photosynth. While there have been some sample Synths (as the 3D images are called) for a while within the last week Windows Live Labs has opened up the ability for more people to create their own images. And people have! Many of the places my wife has her students research are now viewable in three dimensions and both close up and far away using an interesting and powerful navigation tool.

So what is this about? Imagine taking a wide variety of pictures of something from different angles and different distances. Perhaps several people are taking these pictures. Now plug them into some software that figures out where everything goes and creates a three dimensional model that not only lets you look at the object from different directions but lets you zoom in and out as well. Well that is what Photosynth does. And now people can create their own.

I see a couple of obvious uses. One is the let students explore far away places and objects. Another is to document their own world. Their school for example. Or perhaps a local landmark. Or, well all sorts of things. And yes, its free!

The other tool I have been looking at lately is DeepZoom. Jaime Rodriguez has a good explanation of the history and workings of DeepZoom (especially useful if you want to create your own) but basically this is another stitch the pictures together application. In this care it allows very high resolution viewing of very large images that are created by building up from multiple images. This is 2D though but you can go deep. The two most famous DeepZoom images are probably the Hard Rock Cafe memorabilia demo page and one that was down with 12,000 images by Barack Obama supporters. I can see this tool used for school projects as well. Also free!

Anyone up for creating an online tour of their school, classroom, or local landmark? Late edit: According the the Microsoft UK Higher Education blog the University of Leeds is already using Photosynth to show off their campus.

Microsoft Institute

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

Microsoft Institute Overview

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

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

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

What you’ll learn

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

Who should attend

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

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

Five Minutes is a Long Time

Mark Twain once said “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” If you have any doubts about the truth in that statement try to write a five minute presentation sometime. Last week I did just that – twice.

Last Thursday and Friday I took part in a presentation skills workshop. This was the third presentation workshop I have taken part in during the last five years. That’s at least two more such training than I took part in during nine years of classroom teaching BTW. Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Anyway, during the two days each of 14 people gave two 5-minute presentations. All of these people give presentations, often to skeptical or even unfriendly audiences as well as friendly ones of course, as part of their job. Many of them have been doing this for years. Several have been university or high school faculty. All are comfortable in front of all sorts of audiences. In short, this was not amateur hour. But for everyone preparing a five minute presentation was a lot of work.

I spent at least two hours on each of my presentations and that was using and modifying an existing presentation. In one case I had previously taken a 40 minute talk and pared it down to 20 minutes. Now I had to pair it down to five minutes. What do you take out? What do you keep? And how do you keep the audience awake and interested when you are one of 14 people giving a talk based on the same original presentation? I’d love to report that mine was the best – but it wasn’t. I put myself in the middle. It was a great learning and somewhat humbling experience. It caused me to completely rethink how I use PowerPoint BTW. Some of my team is just amazing at putting together visual interesting slides that augment rather than distract from a talk. Now I am going to re-do all of my slide decks.

One of the big things that I learned  from this experience is that one can really pass on a lot of information in a five minute talk. Obviously you can cover a lot more with more time but I think that all too often speakers add a lot of filler in order to fill the time they have available. By forcing oneself to think about the five minute time limit one really gets to the heart of what they are trying to say.  I wonder if a five minute talk would be a good way to introduce or perhaps review a topic for students? I’m pretty sure that asking students to cover a topic in a five minute talk would be a good exercise though.

I can see a bunch of students thinking “ha, five minutes. I can do five minutes in my sleep.” But I’ll bet that many will go too long and others will fit their talk in the required time only by leaving things they know are important out. They’d learn something though. Do this often enough and they’ll get good at it though. I really think this is a valuable skill. Some of them will eventually want to work on the 30-60 second “elevator pitch” and this will get them going in the right direction. Others will find themselves with only a few minutes to explain an idea or a project or a product to a senior manager some day. All of them will have to think very hard about what is and is not important in a topic and that is a valuable skill in itself. This is as import in computer science as it is in any other field.

Sorry this is so long. I really didn’t have time to shorten it. :-)

Reality Check: Laws of Identity

Kim Cameron is one of the top experts on identity and personal information management in the world. He may be best known for his Laws of Identity. Over at the Identity Blog he has listed these laws in easy to understand English. They are also listed below:

• People using computers should be in control of giving out information about themselves, just as they are in the physical world.

• The minimum information needed for the purpose at hand should be released, and only to those who need it. Details should be retained no longer than necesary.

• It should NOT be possible to automatically link up everything we do in all aspects of how we use the Internet. A single identifier that stitches everything up would have many unintended consequences.

• We need choice in terms of who provides our identity information in different contexts.

• The system must be built so we can understand how it works, make rational decisions and protect ourselves.

• Devices through which we employ identity should offer people the same kinds of identity controls - just as car makers offer similar controls so we can all drive safely..

It seems to me that the start of the school year is a great time to have a classroom discussion about privacy and identity and what they mean in today’s connected world. This is a topic that we all need to think about. And of course companies need to think about being good citizens of cyberspace and taking good care of the information they acquire. Bring it up with your students and if you have opinions (one way or another) or ways to make this list more understandable let Kim know about it. This is something we need some consensus on and Kim is a good listener.

Kick Off Meetings

My wife is in new teacher orientation this week. She’s helping teachers new to the district understand how things work there. Next week all the teachers will be in for meetings. This is a typical way for the school year to start. I’ve been seeing Twitter messages from teachers all over the country who are going through these meetings for the last couple of weeks. Some of these events are helpful and interesting. Some of them are, well let’s just say not so interesting. None the less these meetings are important.

Kickoff meetings at schools set part of the tone for the year. This is when teachers learn about changes in policies and procedures that have been developed over the summer. Pity the poor administrators who work through the summer on trying to improve things and get things approved by school boards. Goals for the year are outlined and discussed – sometimes vociferously. And there is often training. Teachers are trained in techniques, technology integration, new curriculum and teaching methodology, classroom management plans and all sorts of other things.

This week I am in a week of meetings to kick off the school and fiscal year for my team. It’s a little like the school kickoff meetings in some ways. There is some training. There is some discussion of new processes, plans, programs and goals for the new year. There are even some vociferous conversations. :-) One thing that is different though is that we are also having team social events. There are about 20 people in these meetings and we work all over the country. This is one of the few times in the year when we are all in the same place. Most of the rest of the year our meetings will be virtual – conference calls and Internet conversations (email, Instant Messages, etc). So we use these meetings to really get to know each other. There are a couple of new people who I have never met in person before. Others I only see at these meetings and the occasional national conference.

In many ways the social events – the chance to meet in an informal way – is probably the best part of these meetings. There is some of this in school start up events as well but its not as key a part of the schedule. There is usually breakfast and lunch at school kickoff days and there is a lot of re-connecting at these times. And of course during the days when there are classroom setup a lot of people spend time chatting on things that may not have to do with school. I did go on a state-wide event for teachers in Catholic schools in New Hampshire once though. This was actually a dinner cruise which included no more than a perfunctory kick off speech or two by administrators. Mostly is was social networking. I really appreciated that as a new teacher.

Schools are social organizations and the opportunity to bound with other teachers is, I think, an important and valuable part of the required meetings for teachers before the students show up. I don’t think we always appreciate that aspect of the meetings but I’ll bet people would notice the effect if these meetings didn’t happen.

OneNote Videos on TeacherTube

Mike Tholfsen, the OneNote Ninja, found some time to record and upload a bunch of videos about OneNote to Teacher Tube. The video he did on the OneNote 2007 Toolkit for Teachers is included in the collection. Mike is promising a bunch more that are specifically targeted at education users including teachers and students.

New Web Design Curriculum Released

Are you looking for ways to engage your students in 21^st century learning? Would you like to generate enthusiasm and excitement about using technology in your classroom on a daily basis? Are your students interested in developing skills they can employ immediately for fun and for profit? Would you like to provide your students with opportunities to work on complex projects in teams? After teaching computer science for more than twenty years, I am pleased to be a guest writer on Alfred Thompson’s blog. He is a knowledgeable, dedicated and insightful colleague. My goal for this blog today is to inform you about new teaching and learning materials that are now available (in beta form) at no charge.

I am excited to announce the creation of Introduction to Web Design Using Microsoft Expression, a one semester curriculum unit, released just in time for the start of the new school year. The curriculum, written by a team of eight outstanding classroom teachers from across the country, provides an extensive collection of unique teaching materials that thoroughly span Web Design knowledge and skills and promote meaningful, real-world learning experiences. Students will engage in authentic learning experiences and design modern Web sites with the same tools that professional Web designers currently use. I can guarantee that this curriculum is unique because it represents the best thinking of a team of talented educators – all of whom have taught multiple subjects for many years. We have synthesized the creativity of web design, computer science, media arts, math, fine arts, science, business education and home economics teachers.

By providing students with opportunities to be creators, rather than only consumers, of technology, Microsoft aims to motivate the next generation to explore and develop their talents. Many students who would be intimidated by a programming class enter the technology pipeline via web design, gaming or robotics. The content in this web design curriculum is appropriate for secondary students and non-technical community college and university students. In order to make your life as a busy educator a little easier, we have based the detailed lesson plans, tutorials, presentations, student projects, and assessment rubrics upon the ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) and 21st Century Skills.

The first 4 of the 8 learning modules are available for you to download right now at Microsoft’s Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection. The remaining 4 modules will be available September 15.

• Module 1: HTML Basics 2 weeks

Module 1 introduces basic HTML tags and cascading style sheets (CSS) through projects designed to experiment with page design and introduces the concepts of Web standards and accessibility.

• Module 2: The History and the Future of the Web 1 week

Module 2 explores the past and future of Web technologies and the structure of the Web. The rights and responsibilities surrounding intellectual property rights in an electronic world are emphasized.

• Module 3: Designing for Communication 2 weeks

Module 3 explores human communication and the unique challenges that electronic modes of communication present for effective transmission of ideas.

• Module 4: Working with Images 3 weeks

Module 4 uses Microsoft Expression Design to create images. Image concepts related to scanning, digital photography, and image manipulation techniques are included.

• Module 5: Beyond the Basics with Expression Web 2 weeks

Module 5 introduces the Expression Web environment and provides tutorials to guide them in creating a Web site.

• Module 6: The Design Process 3 weeks

Module 6 explores Web technology careers and simulates the design planning process of Web design professionals. Team collaboration and customer interactions are emphasized.

• Module 7 The Production Process 3 weeks

Module 7 guides students in the production of the Web site that was planned and designed in Module 6.

• Module 8 Web Publishing and Maintenance 2 weeks

Module 8 establishes processes and techniques for selecting hosting services, evaluating the effectiveness and usability of Web sites, and providing maintenance over time.

This curriculum project represents an expansion of a short Expression Web curriculum unit and tutorial that we developed for United States high schools in the fall of 2007. The need for additional and more extensive web design teaching/learning materials was identified by feedback we received from teachers who participated in our 2 pilot projects in the fall of 2007 and spring of 2008. The following information may be of interest to you and your students:

• 75% of for United States high schools offer a Web Design/Development class (2007)
• 71% of the educators involved in the Expression Web tutorial pilot reported that it was a valuable teaching tool and they would use it again. The remaining 29% strongly agreed with that statement, yielding a full 100% accord amongst pilot educators that the Expression Web tutorial was a valuable and useful teaching resource.
• 64% of students reported that, after participating in the Expression Web tutorial, they would like to build another Web site.
• 57% of US teens report that they create content for the Internet

The curriculum is currently in beta version and is being taught by educators in the US and several countries through a pilot program. Schools participating in the pilot program receive a free subscription to MSDN AA for High School that provides the Expression software needed to teach the curriculum.

Expression Web is Microsoft’s most recent Web design and development software. It replaces FrontPage and gives your students the tools they need to create high quality, standards-based web sites that meet today’s standards with sophisticated CSS-based layout and formatting. There are many additional resources for learning Expression Web and Design. Learn Microsoft Expression offers training for both Expression Web and Expression Design with tutorials, videos and quick start guides. These are great for teacher preparations as well as valuable tools for teaching in the classroom.

We hope you and your students will enjoy this new set of teaching and learning materials! The 30 high school girls that participated in Microsoft’s “Digigirlz” technology camp last week at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington were able to learn how to use the software and build simple web sites in less than four hours. The girls voted to have a web site design competition and created some truly amazing sites. Students who have a “service learning” or “community service” requirement at their high school have reported that they completed this assignment by building a web site for a local non-profit organization in their community. We trust this curriculum will help you provide students with useful opportunities to engage in creating in and out of classroom experiences that you want.

We would love to hear from you! If you are interested in learning more about joining our team of teachers who are piloting the curriculum or want to let us know about interesting projects your students are working on, please contact me.

Pat Phillips, Director
Web Design Pilot Programs

v-paphil@microsoft.com

Challenge and Success – Behind the Code with Rebecca Norlander

The latest “Behind the Code” interview at Channel 9 is with Rebecca Norlander who is an executive with Microsoft. She started as a software developer and moved up and up in the company into a very senior role. So if you are looking for another example of the field not being all male this is it.

In the often male-dominated world of computers, Rebecca Norlander has made a name for herself by taking on big challenges and proving that she has what it takes to deliver results. Learn how Rebecca got her start at Microsoft, advancing through roles where she had tremendous impact on Excel, Internet Explorer, Windows XP SP2, and Windows Vista Security, and now as technical strategist to Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie.

Rebecca shares her insights around the obstacles she has overcome, the lessons she has learned, and how she became a strong advocate for customers while working on a variety of high-profile projects.

Behind the Code with Rebecca Norlander is available on Channel 9.

Also take a look at the Women in Microsoft series at Channel 9 for more interesting women who are making a difference. One interesting interview is titled Jillian Venters - A Goth inside the Deathstar OH yes, Goths at Microsoft - who knew?

Typing Tutor Online

Thanks to a post by Christopher Dawson I found this typing tutor program for younger children at the BBC web site. It looks like something students would have some fun with. Few schools seem to teach touch typing anymore. When I was a student it was mostly a high school course but my Dad sent my brother and I to secretarial school while we were still in middle school. Dad thought that typing was an essential skill for students and while he was (and is) a pretty quick hunt and peck typeset he wanted us to have an advantage in speed and accuracy. So for a month we two little middle school boys were in a class with a bunch of “older women” who were probably no more than 19-20 but were intimidating to us. :-) But I have to say that time paid off in spades for both of us. We’ve used that skill though school up through the graduate level and in work far more than we ever anticipated back in the late 1960s.

Clearly typing is an important skill in today’s world. It’s important in work and important in school. Since we expect students to use computers more and more at younger and younger ages it makes sense for them to learn to touch type early. I’ve read several articles that say that third grade is about the youngest for touch typing though. Before that hands are just too small and bad habits will be learned to adapt for that. But I have seen third and fourth graders (and up) really have a good time learning to touch type in the right environments. Making it a game and using cute, colorful characters as this tutorial does seems like the way to go. There is no reason in the world that learning shouldn’t also be fun.

BTW the BBC site also has some worksheets and the like that can be printed out and used offline.

[Edit: Late breaking news. Hilary has an example of a Popfly typing game called Type Type Revolution on her blog. ]

Fall Is Education’s Spring

I have a guest post up at the CSTA blog today. The CSTA blog is running a series of posts about people’s first day of school. That means different things to different people and I give my take at it there. I see fall as a sort of spring for education. Fall is when the work starts and seeds are planted. All during the year (or semester) teachers work hard to cultivate their students – to help them grow in knowledge and wisdom. In the spring (end of the school year) we see what has grown up. The first day of school is the key preparation day.

One of the things I mention in that post is that I really want to visit more classrooms this year. I want to see what teachers are doing, learn what students are motivated by and when ever possible help to support the work that teachers are doing in their own schools.

One of the things I have learned over the years is that people with industry jobs can provide some very real support for teachers by what a salesman I worked with many years ago called a “swears by it.” Students listen to teachers but are often skeptical that what they are learning is really valid or relevant to industry or even to further academic endeavors. When someone from industry comes into a classroom and reinforces what the classroom teacher is teaching (or swears by it :-) ) the students tend to believe it more. The industry person validates what is going on in class. It’s a shame that it takes this and in some societies, where teachers are properly valued, its not necessary but for now all to often this is a surprisingly valuable assist. Plus for me it is a real treat to talk to students so I see this as win-win-win.

If you are a teacher within driving distance (say two hours or so) from Southern New Hampshire and would like a guest speaker let me know (AlfredTh (at) Microsoft.com) and maybe we can work something out.

Yes, I’d like to visit schools outside the area and when travel permits I will. But believe it or not I have a limited budget for travel. In some cases I may be able to arrange for other people in the education team to make some visits. Most of them are better looking than I am and (don’t tell them I said this) smarter than I am as well.

Tutorial: 2D Game Development in Silverlight

Now this looks interesting – a tutorial to create a game using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. The article describes how to implement a game loop, render images and shapes, the handling of keyboard events, and how to do some simple collision detection. I really like the ML diagrams that show the classes, they properties and methods.

Joe Stagner has a set of links on his blog to 44 different videos on parts of Silverlight BTW. So if you are looking to learn this hot net technology there are resources.

Note that Silverlight is also the technology behind the video experience at nbcOlympics.com that I’ve been using to watch a lot of the events that don’t normally make it to TV. It's also an important part of Popfly.

Also on a related (to Silverlight) note is this interesting interview with Miguel de Icaza of Mono fame who talks about the why of an open source version of Silverlight for LINUX.

Teaching the Computer Science Teacher

Garth left a comment on an earlier post of mine that I really think deserves more visibility and discussion. I’ve copied it below (and added some paragraphing):

This thread brings up a whole new topic; teacher training.  I have a fairly broad based university in my town, the University of Montana.  It prides itself on its Dept of Education.  It is possible to get a Doctorate in Ed Tech from UofM.  After having looked at the curriculum and talked to the guy in charge of the program (he is an old friend) the program is for business teachers and teachers that have an unlimited budget to buy all the cool technology toys (he is into iPods, blogs and webpages). 

The curriculum for Ed Tech has no programming, no computer hardware/how to fix the @#$% things (one of my main jobs as a school IT guy), and no networking.  The Computer Science dept at UofM has awarded two Computers in Education minors.  Another teacher and I wrote our own curriculum and did all the course work independently. 

Certified teachers qualified to teach high school programming, basic networking, trouble shooting of hardware, computer purchasing and the other basic skills that a high school CS teacher should be able to present to a class of HS students do not appear to coming out of my local University.  Is this the same nation wide? 

During the school year I have a monthly meeting (BS session) with most of the local techs from the other local schools (5 to 10 people), they all learned their skills on-the-job.  The programming teachers I know have taken one or two college level programming courses then had to write their own curriculum for their kids. 

The way programming is taught at the University has nothing to do with the way it is taught at the high school.  University education departments (at least UofM) do not seem to be looking at what is being taught in the high schools and junior highs today.  Is this typical for state Universities?  I would like to improve my ability to teach programming and the other basic HS CS curriculum elements but without traveling around the nation it does not seem possible.

There are degrees in teaching math, in teaching reading, in teaching all sorts of things but I don’t hear much about a degree in teaching computer science. Like Garth most of the Ed Tech programs I have found are about everything but computer science. I’ve actually seen search engine traffic to this blog from the search string “how to teach computer science in high school” so I know there are people looking to learn.

I’ve done some workshops at Southern New Hampshire University to participants in their teacher training program so I know they are interested and at least including some courses in the right direction. Kennesaw State University is, I believe, developing a CS teacher education program to align with a proposed certification program in Georgia. Certification is of course a whole other problem.

I think that a big part of the problem is that there isn’t enough solid research on what it takes to teach computer science at the high school (and lower) level. Of sure a lot of people are doing interesting things (Alice, Scratch, TeachScheme, and on and on) but there hasn’t been enough research to know what works best. [Yes there has been some research with Alice especially Storytelling Alice and also some on Scheme but I maintain that there hasn’t been enough and there hasn’t been enough to compare it to other innovative programs.

And then it comes back to the lack of reasonable high school computer science teaching certifications at the state level. CSTA is working on this and if you are a high school computer science teacher you really should join CSTA. But we have a ways to go.

[EDIT} Interesting reading on the shortage of computer science teachers. There are some quotes by Chris Stephenson the Executive Director of the CSTA there.

Microsoft Visual Studio Tips Book Helps Hurricane Katrina Survivors Rebuild Lives

The incomparable Sara Ford is coming out with a book collecting the best 251 tips of the day for Visual Studio. Sara’s tips of the day blog posts have taught me quite a bit. So I’m pleased to see that they are coming together in a book form – yes I’m an old-fashioned paper book sort of guy. The fact that Sara’s royalties are going into a scholarship fund make it even more rewarding for me to promote. Visit her blog to find out how Sara is working to support her home town which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

And if you use Visual Studio 2008 for work, for fun, or as an IDE in a classroom situation you may want to pick up a copy of this book as a reference. Help yourself and others at the same time.