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May 2006 - Posts

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 3:59 AM

Power Toys for Visual Studio

Have you read about the new Power Toys for Visual Studio yet? Sara Ford talks about them a bit on her blog. These toys, tools really, have been released as shared source at the http://codeplex.com web site. Shared source means that the code is available
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:30 PM

One computer, several users

My very first teaching job was in a pair of elementary schools as a computer specialist. I had some notes from the teachers who had taught in the past but basically I was making things up as I went along. It was an interesting year to be sure and some
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Saturday, May 27, 2006 12:59 PM

More Thoughts on Computer Science Teacher Certification

There don’t seem to be any comments on teacher certification at the CSTA blog. This amazes me as I know this is an issue of wide-spread interest and concern. I can only assume that people just don’t know that Chris is asking the questions . Well I could
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, May 26, 2006 2:05 AM

Will I see you at NECC?

Pat Phillips and I will be hosting a Birds of a Feather session at NECC for teachers interested in teaching Visual Basic .NET. So if you are going to be at NECC and teach VB or plan to teach VB or think you might want to teach VB we'd really love to see
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Friday, May 26, 2006 1:14 AM

Looking for advice on buying a laptop for a student?

Kathy Schrock , one of the all time pioneer educators on the web and in using technology in education, has some great pointers on her blog . I like her list of the 7 Ps. I would modify one thing. She recommends 512 to 1024 MB of main memory and I would
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, May 25, 2006 2:16 AM

CS Teacher Certification - what ARE we going to do about it?

One of the big problems computer science teachers face is the lack of consistant certification requirements. There is a major lack of understanding about computer science at the state level in most states. Chris Stephenson over at the CSTA blog lays out
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 1:54 PM

Computer Science 4 High Schools

It seems like everyone I talk to lately is going to CS4HS this summer. OK not everyone but a good number of high school computer science teachers are planning on traveling to Carnegie Mellon University for one or more workshops. For many of them the workshop
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:08 AM

What the Tech?

What the Tech is a blog at On10.net that provides "Simple explanations of the latest tech innovations, jargon, devices, practices and more." So far there have been explanations of things like Del.iciu.us , Digg , Wikipedia , RSS Readers and podcasts .
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 23, 2006 2:27 AM

$40,000 for writing an MSN Messenger Bot

I blogged about a third party SDK for creating MSN Messenger bots some time ago. Now though Microsoft is challenging people directly to create bots for MSN® Messenger and Windows Live™ Messenger. The most original, useful robots collect $40,000 in total
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Monday, May 22, 2006 2:34 AM

Upgrade Your Game

Do you know students who are interested in doing some game programming developement? The Visual Studio Express group just opened a new web site with game programming code and resources and a contest that students may want to enter. The site is called
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Saturday, May 20, 2006 3:31 PM

Computer Science Beyond Just Programming

These days I have a lot of my conversations with teachers via MSN Messenger. It’s pretty easy to notice that someone is online and send a quick hello to see if they can talk. I try to keep my outgoing pings to when I really have something to say because
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Friday, May 19, 2006 1:30 AM

AP CS Teacher Web Sites

I found an interesting web page the other day. Sam Markowitz is building a list of links to web sites by Advanced Placement Computer Science teachers . If you are an AP CS teacher with a web site you may want to add it to the list. All AP CS teachers
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:14 AM

C++ and Visual Studio Express Learning Videos

Personally I think that C++ is an important computer science language. OK I don't really want to use it when I program for fun but if the choice is Assembly language and C++ (and sometimes it does come to that) give me C++ any day. Plus of course there
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 4:39 PM

The Myth That Women Don't Play Games

One of the things I hear from computer science teachers from time to time is that games turn girls off and so you can't use them for projects. What I have been hearing from people with ties to the computer caming industry though is that girls, or at least
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Wednesday, May 17, 2006 1:50 AM

Science Day Camps from FIRST

I see that FIRST (the people behind the FIRST Robotics and FIRST Lego League ) are running Summer Science Day Camps this summer. Most of the camps involve robotics as a tool to introduce concepts in science, technology, engineering and math. Girls FIRST
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 12:53 PM

More on professional development

Hot on top of my posting about NECC and the CS & IT Symposium I read Brian Scarbeau's blog this morning. Brian will also be presenting at the CS & IT Symposium. Brian does a lot of training and he is really good at it. Brian's question this morning
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 1:30 AM

NECC Sessions of Interest for CS Teachers

Are you going to NECC 2006 in San Diego July 5-7? Joe Kmock and others created a list of sessions at NECC for members of the SIGCS (Special Interest Group in Computer Science) and Pat Phillips has it posted on her blog . It's worth checking out. I think
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, May 15, 2006 2:59 AM

Educational Videos

Brian Scarbeau sent me a great link to videos from the 1997 Grace Hopper Conference. If you go up a level to http://researchchannel.org/prog/ you can find more videos in other differnt topics as well. It's amazing what resources are available online these
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, May 12, 2006 1:05 AM

Why people should get a degree in CS or SE

Interesting article from David Lemphers on Why you should have a degree in computer science or computer engineering . Short answer - professionalism. That and transferable skill, better and more widely usable problem solving ability and better software
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Thursday, May 11, 2006 2:35 AM

Beta Software for Students

Do you have students who like to stay on the leading edge of technology? Are they already looking at web sites and magazines for information about Windows Vista and the upcoming new version of Microsoft Office? If so then we have a web site for them -
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, May 10, 2006 1:09 AM

Co-op Jobs for high school students?

Daniel Shapiro talked to a group of teachers last week and one of them suggested that we need to find IT internships and co-op opportunities for high school students. I think this is a great idea. When I was teaching high school CS a number of companies
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 09, 2006 1:06 PM

Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT)

I am a member of ISTE and recieved an email from them yesterday. I quote some of it (they asked people to forward it) below. I think that educators and others should look at this issue (Federal funds for technology in education) and think about supporting
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 09, 2006 2:59 AM

Computer Science Looks for a Remake

There was an interesting article in last week's Computer World about the changing face of computer science. Here are a few though provolking quotes from the article. Chazelle: CS is the new "new math," and people are beginning to realize that. CS, like
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Monday, May 08, 2006 10:43 AM

Pocket PC Programming Projects

Tom Indelicato blogged today about the end of year projects he has his AP CS students doing. For the second year in a row he has them writing projects for Pocket PCs. His students use Visual Studio which has a PPC emulator built right into it. He also
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, May 08, 2006 3:34 AM

High School Students Peer into the Future

Recently a group of high school students visited Microsoft Research in California . I was part of a visit by a group of high school students to the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham MA . I've heard of other field trips to other Microsoft facilities,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Sunday, May 07, 2006 7:45 PM

A Parent's Guide to MySpace

Blake Handler has written a " Parent's Guide to MySpace " that has a lot of good information in it. While written for parents it may be useful for teachers as well. Blake has a set of recommended settings that I found useful just to know what the options
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, May 05, 2006 3:41 AM

Book Review: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms

I’ve reviewed books on blogging for business, for casual bloggers and today- teachers. Will Richardson has written a book that does a great job of introducing blogs, wikis, podcasts and related software for use by classroom teachers. This is a book by
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Thursday, May 04, 2006 1:59 AM

Dealing with the Facebook and related software

I found this really good post on the Facebook titled How University Administrators Should Approach the Facebook today thanks to a link from Liz Lawley . I think that a lot of this applies to other sites like MySpaces as well. It clearly applies to high
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, May 04, 2006 12:13 AM

Looking for Code Examples in Visual Basic or C# with Visual Studio 2005

Thanks to Dan Fernandez for the link. There is a new and updated set of 101 code samples for Visual Studio .NET now available. There are samples for networking, data access, web development, Windows Forms, Tablet PC applications, Office applications and
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, May 03, 2006 11:09 AM

.NET Workshops at Lake Forest College

Joe Hummel is offering a pair of .NET workshops for faculty at Lake Forest College this summer. There is a 2.5 day intro level workshop and a 2.5 day advanced level workshop. The registration fee for each track is $99.00. Attendees are also responsible
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Wednesday, May 03, 2006 3:36 AM

Microsoft and Open Source

Port 25 is a community site run my Microsoft's Open Source lab. Yep, Microsoft not only has Mac labs we have Open Source labs. Currently in the spotlight is an interview about how research into Open Source is helping Windows to communicate and interoperate
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 02, 2006 3:02 AM

Using Games to Attract Girls to Computer Science

A lot of people think that just because girls tend not to be as interested in the same type of computer games as boys that they are not interested in computer games. Here is an article that suggests otherwise. Norm Messa at the Seacoast School of Technology
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, May 02, 2006 1:29 AM

Betsy Aoki - Microsoft's Queen of Bloggers

Channel 9 has a new interview in their Women at Microsoft series. Betsy Aoki was in charge of a lot of community efforts including the blogs at this web site (blogs.msdn.com). She also ran GotDotNet for a long time. Currently she is a program manager
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, May 01, 2006 1:01 AM

Have you seen Microsoft's Mac Lab?

This is a very interesting tour of the main Mac lab run by Microsoft's Mac Business Unit. This is the unit at Microsoft that is made up of a lot of developers who just love the Apple Mac. They also create perhaps the best selling software for the Mac
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
 
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