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July 2007 - Posts

Tuesday, July 31, 2007 3:39 AM

Kids Are Smarter Than You Think They Are

I gave a couple of talks on Internet safety last week. I spoke to a group of middle school students and a group of third and fourth graders at a summer technology camp. As always I learned a lot from teaching kids. I asked the younger kids for examples
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, July 30, 2007 8:52 AM

Microsoft and Open Source

It never fails that when I am introduced to a big Open Source supporter one of the first things I hear is "and of course Microsoft hates Open Source." Well actually they don't. Microsoft competes with some Open Source products but that is not the same
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
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Friday, July 27, 2007 2:26 AM

Turning Our Backs On Tech

Or perhaps the growing shortage of Chief Information Officers (CIOs). All of a sudden I've been getting copies of or links to this column in Fortune by Geoff Colvin . According to some sources there is a shortage of really qualified CIOs in the US. I
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments
Thursday, July 26, 2007 4:22 AM

Some Useful Links For Teachers

I put together a handout of useful links for teachers today for a workshop that was hosted in Microsoft's Waltham sales office today. Most of these links were in response to questions from teachers in attendance. It seemed to me that these links may be
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 6 Comments
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:43 AM

More on Changing the Way We Teach Computer Science

Deepak Kumar who is involved with the Institute for Personal Robots in Education program has a blog post reporting on some of the discussion at last week's Microsoft Faculty Research Summit. The first thing that jumped out at me was that 73% of the attendees
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Tuesday, July 24, 2007 12:52 PM

Turn On Channel 8

Microsoft just opened in new web site/community site for student technology enthusiasts called Channel 8 . Channel 8 is THE place to be for STUDENTS who want to code, connect and create technology. Stay plugged into tech news and share in the experience
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
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Monday, July 23, 2007 11:55 AM

The 20 Dumbest Words in Software Development

Brandon McMillon (a friend who I used to work with) has a great post out titled " The 20 Dumbest Words in Software Development " that should be recommended reading for anyone with a career in software development or who is thinking about a career in software
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Friday, July 20, 2007 4:06 AM

Outreach-in-a-Box: Discovering IT

NCWIT ( National Center for Women & Information Technology ) has created a resource for helping to help people in the Information Technology field to introduce middle-school students to the field of computing. It is now available online. Are you ready
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, July 19, 2007 3:46 AM

How to Do Cool Things in Visual Basic

OK here's the deal. If you are teaching Visual Basic, programming in Visual Basic for fun or profit, or just interested in how Visual Basic works you really should be subscribed to the Visual Basic Team Blog . Why? A couple of sample links should tell
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, July 18, 2007 2:17 AM

2007 STEM Summit IV: Accelerating Forward (Massachusetts)

If you are in Massachusetts and interested in improving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education you will want to be aware of the fourth annual STEM summit being held this October. Registration is now open. I have attended the last several
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Tuesday, July 17, 2007 1:17 AM

Camp MMU from MathMovesU

I received an announcement from the people at MathMovesU (I first wrote about them in June) that they have opened up their summer program called Camp MMU . It looks interesting and there are prizes! Put the math skills you learned during the school year
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Monday, July 16, 2007 5:24 PM

Changing the Way We Teach Computer Science

When two different and completely independent articles pop into my inbox at about the same time that are this closely related I interpret that as a sign to write a blog post. No, really I do. The first thing I found was an article about Owen Astrachan
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Monday, July 16, 2007 10:24 AM

Maybe I Should Go On Vacation More Often

You may not have noticed but I have been away on vacation the last two weeks. I was out of the country (mostly in Norway with some short stays in Iceland and Sweden) and really didn't have Internet access or time to use it when I did have it. Before I
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
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Friday, July 13, 2007 3:20 AM

Programming Proverbs 26: Don't be afraid to start over

The statement "Don't be afraid to start over" seems obvious to the breed of programmer today who starts off assuming that they will always throw away the first several versions of their program. There is some indication that this idea of rapid prototypes
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Thursday, July 12, 2007 4:03 AM

If You Like Mixing Math and Programming

If you are looking for some mathematical programming challenges either as exercises, smaller projects or just because you or students you know like mathematical puzzles than you will want to look at Project Euler . Project Euler is a series of challenging
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 3:20 AM

Programming Proverbs 25 Consider another language

What's that old line about if all you have is a hammer all your problems look like nails? There are some programmers who only have one programming language in their tool box. They way they look at programming problems is colored by what can be done in
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Monday, July 09, 2007 3:16 AM

Programming Proverbs 24: Re-read the manual

I've been telling students and others that " reading the manual is the shortcut " for years. I really believe it. When a program isn't working out the way one expects re-visiting the manual is often a great short cut. Sometimes the manual in question
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Friday, July 06, 2007 3:16 AM

Programming Proverbs 23: When the program is correct, produce good output

This proverb is a corollary to the last post in this series . While getting the program correct and the right results is the first priority that doesn't mean that the results can be tossed out in any old way. A programmer's program, a program written
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
Thursday, July 05, 2007 4:46 AM

ClubTech - Technology Programs from the Boys and Girls Clubs

Last week I met with someone from the national headquarters of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America to learn about their ClubTech programs. These programs are designed to teach young people technical skills and to integrate technology into the core program
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments
Wednesday, July 04, 2007 3:27 AM

Why would you want to teach high school computer science?

Brian Scarbeau and I had an interesting conversation in Atlanta last week. Brian blogged about some of it . One of the concerns we both have is the shrinking pool of high school computer science teachers. A friend of ours just left teaching to take a
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 10 Comments
Tuesday, July 03, 2007 3:27 AM

Computer Science Research Surveys - Please Help

One of the problems the whole field of computer science education faces is a lack of good data. Data on a lot of various subjects. Lack of data makes it hard to understand what is going on and how computer science is taught. And in fact there is a lack
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments
Monday, July 02, 2007 2:00 AM

Weightless Flights of Discovery

Do you know a middle school math or science teacher who would like to experience weightlessness? Well it just might be possible. the Northrop Grumman Foundation Weightless Flights of Discovery program is giving hundreds of teachers and college students
Posted by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments
 
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