Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

July 2006 - Posts

Sunday, July 30, 2006 10:24 PM

Who are the high school developers?

I spend a lot of my time thinking about high school (and younger) students who are doing software development of one sort or another. Being one of those people who tend to think in terms of groups I group those students several ways. One way is to differentiate
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments
Friday, July 28, 2006 2:07 AM

Review of the new Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Kit

Deepak Kumar of the Institute for Personal Robots in Education has a nice review of the new Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics platform . If you are using Lego or thinking about using robots in your curriculum you will want to read this review. There is nothing
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under:
Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:28 AM

More Engineering Resources

I had an email today pointing me to this site ( http://www.tryengineering.org/home.php ) which is a joint project between IBM (I think they are in the computer business somehow) and the IEEE (of which I am a member). The site is called Try Engineering
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: ,
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 2:46 AM

Opening Up Communication with Parents

I found this article very interesting. The Buckman Arts Magnet Elementary School is trying to move towards paperless communication with parents by using a more interactive website with blogs. Because not every family has Internet at home they are setting
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, July 25, 2006 1:56 AM

Beginning Computer Science Education is Broken

I’ve been reading the Institute for Personal Robots in Education Blog out of Georgia Tech lately. One of the more interesting and I think slightly provocative statements I’ve read recently comes from a recent post there . It is now widely agreed in the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, July 24, 2006 3:26 AM

Computational Thinking

I spent last Saturday (and actually part of the day before) at Carnegie Mellon University at a workshop for high school computer science teachers called CS4HS . The workshop started with a talk by Jeannette Wing , the head of the Computer Science department,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, July 21, 2006 3:30 AM

Putting Some E in STEM

I found a site called Teach Engineering that looks pretty interesting. Engineers have a hand in designing, creating or modifying nearly everything we touch, wear, eat, see and hear. Introducing engineering into the K-12 classroom connects science and
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under: , ,
Thursday, July 20, 2006 4:13 AM

Meeting the technical challenges of the future

For the first time in several years I am not at Microsoft Research’s Research Faculty Summit . It’s a great conference but with changes in my job and different responsibilities I wasn’t able to make it. Fortunately some of the talks have been webcast.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, July 19, 2006 7:19 PM

Databases for Beginners

Now available for free is a series of video lessons that use SQL Server 2005 Express Edition to teach databases. The whole series starts here and includes over four hours of video-based instruction. There are 8 lessons in all and they start at the very
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Wednesday, July 19, 2006 11:02 AM

Can your students create a business?

I ran into this interesting blog entry by Rick Segal , a venture capitalist, this morning and it really got me thinking on a couple of levels. In the blog Rick talks about showing the CEO and CTO of a large company how a small start up could, in a very
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under: ,
Tuesday, July 18, 2006 3:44 AM

Which is more likely – growing up to be Bill Gates or Tiger Woods?

I read an interesting quote on Todd Bishop’s Microsoft Blog yesterday. "Kids have, genetically, a better chance of growing up and being Bill Gates than growing up and being Tiger Woods." -- Craig Mundie, Microsoft chief research and strategy officer,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under:
Monday, July 17, 2006 12:21 PM

Fun with data validation

I’ve been spending some time over the weekend thinking about interesting projects. I think that the best projects teach concepts in context. By that I mean they don’t just teach a concept but make it real and show how it is valuable. If you can teach
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under: ,
Friday, July 14, 2006 1:41 PM

Do you RSS?

One of the great things about blogs is that there are a lot of ways to read them. You can of course use a web browser like Internet Express (or FireFox or Opera or Safari) and the statistics for this blog suggest that a lot of people are reading it on
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, July 13, 2006 3:41 AM

More on Educational Robotics

Yesterday Microsoft announced that they are partnering with Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr to create a new Institute for Personal Robots in Education . This program is going to deliver robotics technology and curriculum materials for the computer science
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,
Wednesday, July 12, 2006 11:05 AM

Visual Basic 2005 Jump Start

My friend and co-worker Martin Schray (check out his resources page) just sent me a copy of his new book – Jump Start Guide for Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 . It’s a really useful book if you are upgrading from earlier versions of Visual Basic but it is
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, July 10, 2006 10:14 AM

Computer Science and the Well-rounded Life

I found this essay by Marie Klawe on her being an artist and a computer scientist thanks to the Wicked Teacher of the West (who is not very wicked in real life.) Maria Klawe is transitioning from being the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments
Sunday, July 09, 2006 5:02 PM

Sometimes It Is All About the Conversation

I was reading about Steve Dembo’s visit to the Microsoft booth at NECC this afternoon and I have to say it made me feel good. Yes, even though he was not very satisfied with the Samsung Q1 Oragami devices that he tried out. I think the feedback is helpful
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Saturday, July 08, 2006 2:13 PM

What a week – some closing thoughts from NECC

NECC has been an amazing event this year. While this is not my first year at NECC it has been one of the more productive visits. One thing that NECC offers that people may not realize is a chance to network with other like-minded people. For example on
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, July 06, 2006 6:38 PM

Thoughts About the $100 Laptop Project

Nicholas Negroponte gave the opening keynote at NECC this morning and talked about his One Laptop Per Child project. You’ve probably read about this ambitious plan to develop a $100 laptop that will be sold by the 10s of millions in the developing world
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Filed under:
Wednesday, July 05, 2006 11:55 PM

If You Are Not at NECC But Wish You Could Be

Vicki Davis at Cool Cat Teacher is blogging NECC without being here. And doing a wonderful job of it I might add. Read how she is doing it here . Or just read what she is collecting. Either way there is a lot you can get out of NECC without being here.
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Filed under:
Wednesday, July 05, 2006 11:26 PM

NECC Day One

Well it was my first day. It was also the first day of the exhibit hall and most of the general sessions. It had an inauspicious start for me as I didn’t get to San Diego until mid morning and once I got here I was running less than 100%. But after a
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,
Wednesday, July 05, 2006 12:48 AM

Running Late To NECC

I am supposed to be in a hotel in San Diego right now. But I’m not. I’m in a hotel in Atlanta. There were a series of hardware and weather issues that conspired to keep me from getting to where I need to go. But I should be at NECC tomorrow – if all goes
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, July 04, 2006 3:09 AM

A New Liberal Art

I found a great post yesterday . Jim Heynderickx writes about a Computer Science K-12 session at the PNAIS TechShare . One of his comments really resonates with me. What’s missing is basically a new liberal art– that of algorithms, symbolic reasoning,
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, July 03, 2006 2:14 AM

A Variable By Any Other Name …

Recently there have been some comments in the Advanced Placement Computer Science mailing list about the use of variable names for parameters in sample code and code used in the exam. The objection is to using a simple one letter variable name, usually
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Filed under:
Sunday, July 02, 2006 3:52 PM

Getting Together at NECC

Well it is about 48 hours until I take off for NECC. I’m really looking forward to it. On Wednesday night from 7 until 9 Microsoft is hosting a reception. I’m supposed to be there for work but I think I can get a bunch of invitations for others (it is
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Filed under: ,
Saturday, July 01, 2006 9:29 PM

Fun with the Console (C++)

Since I brought up C++ the other day I’ve had a few questions in email. Some of the common questions I get revolve around doing more interesting things with the console. By interesting I mean different colors, placing the cursor at specific parts of the
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Filed under: , ,
 
Page view tracker