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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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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

RoboZZle – a social puzzle game
digg_url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2009/07/23/robozzle-a-social-puzzle-game.aspx";digg_title = "RoboZZle – a social puzzle game";digg_bgcolor = "#EEEEEE";digg_skin = "normal"; digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor = Read More...

Posted Thursday, July 23, 2009 5:02 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Kodu Demo – Programming for little kids
digg_url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2009/07/13/kodu-demo-programming-for-little-kids.aspx";digg_title = "Kodu Demo – Programming for little kids";digg_bgcolor = "#EEEEEE";digg_skin = "normal"; digg_url = undefined;digg_title = undefined;digg_bgcolor Read More...

Posted Monday, July 13, 2009 4:46 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Blog Reviews – Begin Game Programming & Teaching CS to Kids
digg_url = "http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2009/06/16/blog-reviews-begin-game-programming-teaching-cs-to-kids.aspx";digg_title = "Blog Reviews – Begin Game Programming & Teaching CS to Kids";digg_bgcolor = "#EEEEEE";digg_skin = "normal"; digg_url Read More...

Posted Tuesday, June 16, 2009 6:10 PM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Useful Web Links for Computer Science Teachers
I keep doing sets of links to hand out at various conferences. It seems like every time I do the list comes out a little differently. Some new things. Some things have new addresses. And the order of things changes for the audience. This list is from Read More...

Posted Friday, January 30, 2009 5:20 AM by Alfred Thompson | 4 Comments

Small Basic 0.2 Goes Live
The latest update of Small Basic went live this week. I wrote about Small Basic once before . The latest version includes a list of improvements, additions and bug fixes. See also the Small Basic forums or the Small Basic Blog for more information. At Read More...

Posted Thursday, December 18, 2008 12:34 PM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

LearnScratch.ORG
I keep learning cool things from Twitter. No really. The people I follow are often doing interesting and educational things and sharing via Twitter. Last week someone posted a Tweet about http://learnscratch.org/ . I made a note to visit the site and Read More...

Posted Thursday, November 13, 2008 6:00 AM by Alfred Thompson | 1 Comments

Computer Science for Middle School
I spent yesterday at a large STEM event in Denver Colorado. Something like 1,500 middle school girls were brought to the Colorado Convention center for workshops and talks about science, technology and engineering. My colleague Hilary Pike conducted several Read More...

Posted Thursday, November 06, 2008 12:22 PM by Alfred Thompson | 3 Comments

Announcing Small Basic From Microsoft DevLabs
Do you remember the old days of learning how to program with a simple, easy to use, uncomplicated version of BASIC? A lot of people including a lot of teachers (and more than a few professional developers) do. But in general companies are working on more Read More...

Posted Thursday, October 23, 2008 8:23 PM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

The Language is NOT the Important Thing
Invariably when anyone posts about “the right” programming language to use in a first course a lot of discussion ensues. People are notoriously opinionated about this topic. I am not exempt from this and I admit that I have fallen into this trap in the Read More...

Posted Thursday, August 07, 2008 4:58 PM by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments

Visual Declarative Designer
Last week the Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Toy was announced and I wrote about it in my blog . Today I wanted to give people a taste of what one of the features – the Visual Declarative Designer - looks like. This one really deserves the “toy” Read More...

Posted Thursday, July 31, 2008 5:26 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0
The Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 was originally created by Microsoft China to help meet the curriculum needs for teaching programming in that country. According to regulations/policies of China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) almost Read More...

Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 5:43 AM by Alfred Thompson | 7 Comments

Learn How to Create a Popfly Input Box
Ed Dunhill have been running a series on web development on his blog. Recently he wrote a great post on Popfly to teach people how to create a custom input box. Ed’s summary of what the post is about is here: For the purpose of this tutorial we will implement Read More...

Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008 6:59 AM by Alfred Thompson | 0 Comments

Links from my talk at Stevens Institute of Technology
digg_url = 'http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2008/05/16/links-from-my-talk-at-stevens-institute-of-technology.aspx'; Yesterday I gave one of the keynote talks at Stevens Institute of Technology’s second annual high school computer science workshop Read More...

Posted Friday, May 16, 2008 1:08 PM by Alfred Thompson | 5 Comments

DreamSpark - Microsoft Gives Software to Students for Academic Use
OK so it is already all over the blogosphere that Bill Gates announced a new program called DreamSpark to give software to students. (The official press release is here BTW) So I'm kind of late to the party already. Channel 8 is going to be a key source Read More...

Posted Wednesday, February 20, 2008 9:50 AM by Alfred Thompson | 2 Comments

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