Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

Alfred Thompson's blog about teaching computer science at the K-12 level. Alfred was a high school computer science teacher for 8 years. He has also taught grades K-8 as a computer specialist. He has written several textbooks and project books for teaching Visual Basic in high school and middle school. Alfred is the K-12 Computer Science Academic Relations Manager for Microsoft and is trying to be the Microsoft Education Blogger.

Syndication

News


Featured in Education.AllTop.com



TwitterCounter for @alfredtwo




Browse by Tags

All Tags » Hardware   (RSS)
Hardware Matters
A big focus of my time these days is on introduction to computer science courses. What might be called CS0 at the university level. basic courses to provide a foundation for later learning. Perhaps these courses will create or drive interest in additional Read More...

Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 10:43 AM by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments

Saving Computer History
The old saying is that “ those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ” Does that apply to computer science and information technology? Oh yes it does. Well I think it does. Look at today’s use of “thin clients” connected to servers. Read More...

Posted Friday, September 12, 2008 5:43 AM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

Who Cares How Fast the Code Is?
digg_url = 'http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/05/27/who-cares-how-fast-the-code-is.aspx'; Ironically one of the problems teachers can have with teaching about optimizing programs is that computers are a) so fast now and b) getting faster all Read More...

Posted Tuesday, May 27, 2008 10:56 AM by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments

RoboChamps – Online, Virtual Robot Competition
digg_url = 'http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/04/25/robochamps-online-virtual-robot-competition.aspx'; Most robotic competitions are fairly expensive to enter. The hardware is expensive, hard to assemble and tends to break at the worst possible Read More...

Posted Friday, April 25, 2008 4:01 PM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

History of Data Storage
Thanks to a link from Leigh Ann Sudol's blog I found this set of images and descriptions of some early computer data storage devices . I confess to having some old punch cards and I think some old magnetic tapes in the attic. I used punch paper tape as Read More...

Posted Thursday, April 10, 2008 2:18 PM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Top Conversations In March
There were a number of blog posts with above average comment counts in March. The post I wrote about number systems in computer science had 9 comments. Pretty much everyone thought this was/is an important topic for computer science students. Personally Read More...

Posted Monday, April 07, 2008 7:57 AM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

Build Your Own or Buy Built
I'm not much of a hardware guy. Oh sure I have built a few systems and I can add and replace hardware with the best of them. I've installed hardware since back in the days when installing software meant bringing a tool kit so you could connect wires and Read More...

Posted Wednesday, March 12, 2008 7:18 AM by Alfred Thompson | 6 Comments

Build, Craft, Hack, Play, Make!
It looks like Maker Faire is starting to ramp up for this coming May. I'm trying to see if I can justify a trip out to California for it this year. Last year a couple of my friends worked the event showing off some really cool stuff and had a great time. Read More...

Posted Wednesday, February 13, 2008 5:17 AM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

Filed under: , ,

Use Your Wii Controller To Fly Through Virtual Earth
Now I love Virtual Earth and I especially enjoy using my Xbox 360 controller to fly around, zoom in and out and otherwise travel though the three dimensional maps. Its all so much better than using the mouse or arrow keys. Virtual Earth supports the Xbox Read More...

Posted Friday, December 28, 2007 4:15 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Max Builds a PC
My friend Max is building a PC from parts. Over at Channel 8 ( First post in the series here ) he's looking for recommendations and suggestions about parts. Looks like a good conversation is taking place already but there is always room for more. Oh by Read More...

Posted Thursday, December 06, 2007 4:05 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Page view tracker