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January 2006 - Posts

Tuesday, January 31, 2006 6:25 AM

Serial Killer or Programming Language Inventor

OK this is a little off topic perhaps but it does show that you can't judge a book my its cover. Or a progamming language inventor by the way they look. Take the quiz here .
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, January 30, 2006 7:10 AM

Team work and problem solving - the why of group projects

I spent Friday and Saturday being part of a panel convened for the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB). They run the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which is also known as “the Nation’s Report Card.” This was a 15 member panel
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, January 29, 2006 7:40 PM

Free Microsoft Resources for Students, Teachers, Administrators & Parents

Blake Handler has put together a great list of Free Microsoft Resoutces for students, teachers, administrators and parents. There sure are a lot of links there. I had no idea there were quite so many good things out there for free. Blake has a sister
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 27, 2006 5:52 AM

What are assignments all about?

I ran into an interesting blog entry yesterday by a university student. In it he bemoans the attitude of some of his peers regarding assignments that are too complex. This student has, I think, the right idea. For me, I personally feel that Assignments/Projects
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, January 26, 2006 6:49 AM

Booth babes and the role of women in computer science

Thirty some years ago I went to a large computer show on a field trip of sorts from college. At the end of the first day we were comparing notes and someone said “what I learned today was that the women working the booths don’t know anything.” This was
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:31 AM

Job Statistics

One of my co-workers, Sam Stokes , put together a list of statistics about job projections in the US IT industry. I've copied a bunch of them here. Links to the origional data is supplied so you can see the details for yourself. Computer software engineers,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 7 Comments
Tuesday, January 24, 2006 4:22 AM

IT Worker Shortage Feared in Canada

The Toronto (ON, CA) Star had an interesting article last week on worries about a shortage of Information Technology workers in Canada. A sample quote is below: The Canadian high-tech sector may be in full recovery, but a serious skills crisis looms unless
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, January 23, 2006 4:13 AM

Computer Science as Basic Science

Thanks to an ACM mailing list I found an interesting column by an Indian academic from IIT, Bangalore, that talks about Computer Science becoming a very basic and important science. One interesting quote is below: We do need good physicists, chemists,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Sunday, January 22, 2006 5:07 AM

Teaching Binary to Small Children

One of my readers (thanks Blake ) sent me a link to an interesting web page that uses the Socratic method (asking questions) to teach binary numbers to very small children. It is amazing how simple it all seems in the context of that example. I remember
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Saturday, January 21, 2006 10:41 AM

Where to go for more on Project Hoshimi

Daryll McDade who runs the Project Hoshimi Programming Challange has a ton of good links about the contest at his blog. Especially useful is the link to the Teacher's Guide with its links to a video on the contest and teaching objects that include background
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 20, 2006 1:24 PM

Project Hoshimi - A competition for US high school students

Microsoft US is sponsoring a competition for US high school students. It is called the Project Hoshimi Programming Battle . From the introduction at the MainFunction web site : Your students will be immersed in an imaginary world where they are the only
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Thursday, January 19, 2006 10:53 AM

Rick Rashid: Star Trek fan, Researcher, Game Developer

Business Week has an interesting article on Rick Rashid who runs Microsoft's Research division . I think it is interesting to see that there is a path for people who want to do research but who also want to make a difference in products that everyday
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 18, 2006 1:45 AM

Blogging About Teaching

One of the blogs I enjoy is See Jane Compute which is written by a professor of Computer Science using the name pen name Jane. Recently she started a series specifically about the way she teaches computer science/programming courses. In the first of the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Tuesday, January 17, 2006 7:50 AM

Cartoons as inspiration for projects

I saw this cartoon the other day. It's fairly funny but there is more to it than meets the eye of ordinary people. The binary actually represents a message for the true computer person. When you saw it (if you haven't yet go ahead I'll wait) did you decode
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Monday, January 16, 2006 7:40 AM

Computer History Brought Back to Life

I found this article this morning. It is about Paul Allan's collecting a couple of old Digital Equipment PDP-10s and a PDP clone. The systems run a pair of operating systems called TOPS-10 and TOPS-20. For those of you who don't know, Paul Allan and Bill
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, January 15, 2006 11:17 AM

Teacher Certification – Jumping through hoops or really helpful?

OK it is now official – that state of teacher certification in the US is officially (or as officially as I can make it) a mess. I read this entry in the CSTA blog yesterday. I know of at least one other teacher at a private school who is fighting a difficult
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 13, 2006 4:55 AM

Visual Basic and Voice Recognition - talk to me

Did you ever want to have your program respond to voice commands? I found this article on how to write a Visual Basic program to understand you when you talk to it. Looks interesting. Now all I have to do is find time to try it out. On the other hand
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, January 12, 2006 6:43 AM

Using the My Namespace to Play Sounds in VB 2005

Recently I was asked about some features in Visual Basic 2005, specifically around the My namespace . One of the things I did in reply was to write a short article on using the My namespace to add sounds to a Visual Basic program. You can find the article
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 7:10 AM

Interview with a game user research engineer

Pat Phillips introduces Melissa Federoff on her blog. Melissa tests games. Now a lot of the students I have been talking to think that is pretty much the ideal career. There is a lot more to this sort of job than just being good at playing games. Valuable
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 6:57 AM

Why you should teach secure programming

I found this interesting. It is from CERT (US Computer Emergency Readiness Team) This bulletin provides a year-end summary of software vulnerabilities that were identified between January 2005 and December 2005. The information is presented only as a
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, January 09, 2006 6:03 AM

Classic Computer Science Books

The ACM is looking to select the 20 favorite computer science book (as picked by ACM members) and make the full text available to the membership. To this purpose the ACM has set up a wiki so that members can discuss the books that have been nominated.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 06, 2006 7:49 PM

Free Software Resources for Teachers and Administrators

I found these free downloadable tools thanks to a pointer from Blake Handler . They look like they may be very useful. Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office, a free program for schools, transforms familiar Office
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, January 06, 2006 7:44 AM

Privacy and Identity Interview

Kim Cameron is an architect in the Windows Identity and Access management group at Microsoft. Kim is the author of the Laws of Identity which is a way of looking at how identity can and perhaps should be handled on the Internet. Ron Jacobs has a good
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, January 05, 2006 1:11 AM

20 Technology Skills Every Educator Should Have

Laura Turner writes about 20 technology skills every educator should have at T*H*E Journal. Here are 20 basic technology skills that all educators should now have: Word Processing Skills Spreadsheets Skills Database Skills Electronic Presentation Skills
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, January 03, 2006 7:52 AM

Blogging for Educators 101

I found this EduBlogging 101 wiki the other day and thought that others may find it useful. There is a lot of good information about blogging for teachers and administrators there already. If you know something that isn't there but that should be you
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
 
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