Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

February 2006 - Posts

Tuesday, February 28, 2006 9:14 AM

Technorati Favorites

Technorati has a new feature that lets you create a list of favorite blogs. I'm starting to build mine up and you can see it at this link . You can use the link below to add this blog to your favorites list.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, February 27, 2006 8:09 PM

SIGCSE - Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education

In another day or so I am heading down to Houston Texas for the annual SIGCSE conference. SIGCSE is by far my favorite conference of the year. It is attended by university, community college and high school computer science educators. Friday is officially
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, February 27, 2006 5:43 AM

ACM Report of Globalization

The ACM announced last week that they were releasing a new report on globalization and the US labor market for Information Technology and Computing jobs. The report seems to put to rest the idea that there are no jobs from computing professionals. The
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, February 26, 2006 6:15 AM

3rd Graders as Project Managers

Mitch Lacey has a great blog entry ( Even 3rd Graders are Project Managers ) about how he uses project management techniques with his third grader. It sounds like a great technique and is decidedly low tech - note cards on a cork board. I think it will
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, February 24, 2006 6:49 AM

The Code Room: Breaking into Las Vegas

This edition of the Code Room goes to Las Vegas to take a look at the world of application security where one mistake in code or procedures can mean losing millions of dollars. This eposode highlights the need to write secure code and for security design
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, February 24, 2006 5:50 AM

Robots - toys or learning tool?

A friend of mine sent me a link to an article on the new Robosapiens . Well it looks like a great little toy but what else? My friend also sent me a link to a course at Northeaster University that uses this same type of robot as part of a networking course.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Thursday, February 23, 2006 5:02 PM

Field Trip!

The Microsoft Campus Connection Tour might just make an interesting field trip for some students. These events are taking place all over the country at various college campuses. There are presentations on Windows Vista and Office 12, tools for Information
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, February 23, 2006 4:52 PM

Project Hoshimi Webcasts Available

I recorded my second webcast on Project Hoshimi the other day. So now there are two availble for playback. They are both available from the MainFunction Training Center . When you register for the webcasts they will be added to the list of "My Webcasts"
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, February 23, 2006 6:54 AM

CE, CS, IS, IT, SE - Making Sense of Computing Majors

One of the questions I remember dealing with a lot when I was teaching high school seniors was "what should I major in in college?" The array of computer related majors has grown a lot since I was in university. There is Computer Science, Computer Engineering,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, February 23, 2006 5:27 AM

Want to learn about ASP .NET 2.0?

Brian Goldfarb from the ASP.NET team just posted about a new series of "How Do I..." videos . Brian is a top notch speaker who seems to know jsut about everything there is to know about ASP .NET. There are about 2 hours of them I believe. There are lot
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Wednesday, February 22, 2006 4:07 AM

Asteroids in KPL and Game Development at Coding 4 Fun

The Coding 4 Fun web site has a lot of interesting things for students and for people programming as a hobby. A number of these are projects that use the Kid's Programming Language (also known as KPL) to write game programs. A friend of mine pointed out
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 21, 2006 8:17 PM

Starter Programming Language Discussion

Teachers continue to discuss the languages to use for a first programming course in the forums at MainFunction . The key discussion is going on at this thread . It is a really great discussion as teachers discuss their first course, what languages they
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:39 AM

Office Solutions for Educators

Blake Handler keeps finding and sending me these links and I really have to share them. Microsoft is such a huge company and so many groups are doing things for education that it is hard to keep up with them. So I always appreciate it when people send
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, February 20, 2006 5:06 PM

Hoshimi Challenge Webcast Information

I did the first of two webcasts on Project Hoshimi and the Hoshimi Challenge today. Doing a webcast is an interesting experience. For one thing I was sitting in my home office in New Hampshire at the time and there were no "students" visible in person.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Saturday, February 18, 2006 9:22 PM

NECC Schedule is Out

The National Educational Computing Conference schedule is out. My good friend Pat Phillips is giving a presentation called A Video Game Curriculum for Computer Science . It promises to be a very interesting session. NECC is the big educational computing
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, February 16, 2006 7:55 PM

Free Hoshimi Challenge Webcasts next week

I'm going to do two webcasts on the Project Hoshimi Challenge next week. The webcasts are scheduled for Monday and Wednesday at 1PM Eastern time. If you can't make it live you will still want to register so that you can view the recordings of them later.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, February 16, 2006 6:32 AM

New Bill Gates Interview on Channel 9

Channel 9 has a new interview with Bill Gates. About two thirds of the way in he talks about how software can help to change education. He also talks about the need to make education meaningful to students. One of the things I've seen that proves the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, February 15, 2006 6:40 AM

Links of the Day

Are you interested in databases? Do you have students who are interested in learning about them? Gene Babon has some suggestions at the Beantown Web . Hangman is always a favorite project. Dave Jacobus has a write up on how he is using a Hangman project
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 14, 2006 7:29 AM

Not just what but why

Paul Vick has posted an interesting code question at his blog. He has a sample piece of code and asks "what should this code do?" The bold is mine because I want you to notice that he doesn't ask "what does this code do?" There is a big difference in
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, February 10, 2006 10:35 PM

Bill Gates Talks to High School Students About Life Long Learning

Friday was Microsoft's annual Minority Student Day and Bill Gates addressed high school students at a number of high schools, some remotely and some in person at a Seattle area high school. There is a report of it the Seattle P-I . One of the things I
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, February 10, 2006 12:59 PM

The AP CS Marine Biology Simulation Case Study

The Advanced Placement Computer Science program has always used a large case study as part of the materials that students need to learn. I’ve always liked the idea of a case study because it exposes students to a project that is larger than what they
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Wednesday, February 08, 2006 7:16 PM

TCEA and the Hoshimi Challenge

I am enjoying myself at the Texas Computer Educator Conference (TCEA) here in Austin Texas today. I’m talking about the Hoshimi Challenge at our booth theatre today and tomorrow. It’s really great to talk about it live and in person. People seem to be
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, February 07, 2006 1:51 AM

Technology Gone Wild - TCEA 2006

Well I'm on my way to Austin TX for the TCEA conference today. I wish I could be there for the whole thing but I just can't. In any case if anyone reading this will be at TCEA stop by the Microsoft booth and ask for me. I'd love to say "hello."
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, February 06, 2006 6:31 AM

Today's Links - 6 Feb 2006

I thought I'd try something different today. Here is a list of links to a few interesting articles with a paragraph or two taken from each article. I've been meaning to link to and comment on each but just haven't had as much free time as I'd like. But
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, February 03, 2006 2:25 PM

Create your own IM BOT!

Nicole, from the MSN Messenger group (Windows Live Messenger?), has a blog entry about some existing Bots that you can use from MSN Messenger and some suggestions of Bots she would like to see. You may have already heard about the Encarta® Instant Answers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 8 Comments
Friday, February 03, 2006 1:27 AM

Call to Action - help people understand that Computer Science is Science

Chris Stephenson over at the CSTA blog has a call for action to get the message to get out the word to our elected officials that Computer Science is a real and important part of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Help CSTA get the word
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, February 02, 2006 6:06 AM

Is it about the journey or the destination?

I like to work with wood. I find that building things myself is very satisfying and enjoyable. But I had a professional carpenter working in my bathroom this morning. He was fixing a section of floor that had been ruined by water from a leak. I could
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Wednesday, February 01, 2006 6:04 AM

Data Structures Using C#

The MSDN web site has a series of six articles about data structures using C# that may be useful in the classroom if you are using C#. Actually even if you are using other programming languages. The reading level is a bit higher than the average high
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
 
Page view tracker