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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.

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Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection Redesign
Back a year or so ago Microsoft opened the Pre-collegiate faculty connection web portal to share resources for computer science, computer programming, web development and other related teaching areas. It’s been a pretty successful site with tens of thousands Read More...

Posted Friday, November 06, 2009 1:57 PM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

But I Don’t Want to be a Programmer
One of the things I hear pretty regularly is that not everyone needs (or wants) to be a programmer. Some people want or perhaps even need to do some programming or more generally programming like activities but they don’t want to be full time programmers Read More...

Posted Thursday, November 05, 2009 3:55 PM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Sequencing
Imagine you had a pickup truck that you used for work. One day the person in charge of company vehicles says to you “we’re going to replace your pickup truck with a Prius. We’ll be saving money on gas. Isn’t that great?” You of course reply with something Read More...

Posted Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:26 AM by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments

Interesting Links Post November 2 2009
One interesting thing that happened to me this past week was that Twitter enabled the list function for my Twitter account (@ AlfredTwo ) Lists are a way to create lists or groups of the people you follow on Twitter. One can open up your lists ( or public Read More...

Posted Monday, November 02, 2009 5:02 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Loneliness of a Department of One
I read the blog post by Daniel Moix on the CSTA blog today ( My Voice ) with interest and a mix of emotions. His is a story I have heard before. The computer science teacher who is a department of one or merged into a department (sometimes science, sometimes Read More...

Posted Thursday, October 29, 2009 4:12 PM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

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Project Learning
Joel Spolsky is an interesting guy with strong opinions about software development and the education of people going into software development. Recently he posted a blog article called Capstone projects and time management which is pretty critical of Read More...

Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 8:49 PM by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments

Learning To Write By Reading
One of the most useful learning experiences I have had was working with editors. These talented people read my prose and make corrections, suggestions, edits, deletions and make some very helpful comments. Over time this has improved my writing quite Read More...

Posted Tuesday, October 27, 2009 10:33 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Interesting Links September 26 2009
Windows 7 released to the general public last week so I have to start with a couple of Windows 7 links. OK maybe I don’t *have* to but there are a couple I wanted to share. From the Teacher Tech blog there is a list of 7 things teachers will like about Read More...

Posted Monday, October 26, 2009 5:15 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Small Basic 0.7
Small Basic is a great little project out of Microsoft’s DevLab that I have been following for a while. It’s a simple, little Basic language and IDE that harkens back to things like Qbasic and GBBasic and other early versions of BASIC that many of us Read More...

Posted Friday, October 23, 2009 11:23 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Students Teaching Students
The highlight of my first year of teaching came Monday morning when the kindergarten kids came into my computer lab. I was working part time at two schools and between them I saw grades kindergarten through grade 8. It was a crazy schedule but the kindergarten Read More...

Posted Monday, October 19, 2009 11:58 AM by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments

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Workshop Links September 17 2009
One of the things I like to demo and to have people do as sort of a “Hello World” for XNA Game Studio is create a simple Pong game. I did this demo today (well technically I will do it this afternoon) and thought I should make the materials more easily Read More...

Posted Saturday, October 17, 2009 10:25 AM by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments

Web 2.0 and Other Educational Resources from Microsoft
OK, this may not be the definitive index to Microsoft resources for teachers but it’s close. Something for everyone from elementary school English teachers to high school science teachers (check out the world wide telescope) to high school computer science Read More...

Posted Wednesday, October 14, 2009 5:53 PM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

Opinions on Supportive Curriculum Resources
I’m looking for some feedback. I’ve been working on the idea of creating and sharing some computer science related curriculum units. Some might be fairly comprehensive and some, well, let’s call them supplemental resources. The idea is to provide some Read More...

Posted Tuesday, October 13, 2009 6:21 AM by Alfred Thompson | 11 Comments

Interesting Links October 12 2009
Well here it is Columbus Day and my home wi-fi is dead – long story. So I drove to the library to use their wi-fi. And they are closed. Closed on a holiday? I guess it make some sense. Fortunately the wi-fi reaches the parking lot and so I sit here working Read More...

Posted Monday, October 12, 2009 10:44 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing 2009/10
Know some high school women with aspirations in the computing fields? You may want to nominate them for the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Award . Sponsored by Bank of America, the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing recognizes young women at the Read More...

Posted Friday, October 09, 2009 4:39 AM by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments

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