Additional profile information on Alfred Thompson at Google+
As promised here are a bunch more links that I hope you will find interesting and useful.
The CSTA blog had a couple of recent posts of interest:
Lynn Langit (@llangit ) is a developer evangelist at Microsoft who has a passion for education as well. In a recent post she talks about Volunteering as a Comp Sci Teacher – How To It’s an interesting look at how to volunteer to teach and what it is like for a professional developer type to do it. Also check out her Teacher-for-a-Week post that tells the story of her recent experiences at the Girl’s Middle School.
I found a bunch of videos on new things in Office 2010 for teachers:
Looking at Windows 7? Highly recommended. If you are or if you have it check out 67 Windows 7 tips, tricks and secrets I found things I didn't know here. Some cool stuff!
I’m a big fan of FIRST Robotics. The regular season is over but I found this list of FIRST Robotics post-season events run by local teams. If you haven't been to one you should go and see one.
From @CapstoneEdu is an interesting looking conference event event May 6th in Cambridge, MA.
Capstone Partners and Microsoft are organizing an event to discuss the education landscape from K-12 to Post-Secondary and how technology will change the experience in the future. We will discuss challenges schools face in competing with online programs, business models that are emerging to improve education (not just test scores), and technologies that disrupt the status quo. Topics will include: student retention lecture capture cloud computing & info security tools & apps: wikis/ phones/tablets online proctoring open-source textbooks learning management systems of the future distance learning across borders
Capstone Partners and Microsoft are organizing an event to discuss the education landscape from K-12 to Post-Secondary and how technology will change the experience in the future. We will discuss challenges schools face in competing with online programs, business models that are emerging to improve education (not just test scores), and technologies that disrupt the status quo. Topics will include:
Register: http://bit.ly/a1sWJb They really need more real educators to show up and make sure they don’t go too far afield I think.
The @scratchteam has a new video with an overview of Scratch 2.0.
Don’t have enough time for social media? You may find this post that answer the question How Do Busy Leaders Find Time for Social Media? interesting. It was written by Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt) who is the CEO of a major publishing company. And related to that Doug Peterson asks about teacher’s online footprints at 404 Educator. What do people find when they search for you
I twittered up quite a storm last week. Much of it was because of the US Imagine Cup which I was also blogging a lot about. I was also putting updates on the Microsoft Facebook account. The Imagine Cup was flat out busy but much fun and much excitement for me as well as all involved. I did find a bunch of useful links to share though. I apologize for them being so late this week but, well, I was busy.
First a couple of Imagine Cup links to highlight:
Looking for girls in technology? One of the very interesting people I met at the US Imagine Cup was Genevieve L'Esperance Geek girl and video blogger. Gen is a teenager from Montreal, Quebec. Gen has a bunch of video posts and interviews on her blog GenINC.
Garth Flint has an interesting review of of programming languages and their usefulness in first CS courses. You may also find his discussion about what makes a good first programming language to be interesting as well. Garth’s blog is new but its off to a great start. I recommend subscribing.
A couple of workshops to recommend. There will be a workshop on Alice at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi in June. And a High School (AP) Computer science teachers workshop at Carnegie Mellon Judith Hromcik is one of the presenters at CMU. I’ve known Judy for years and there are few people who know more about AP CS than she does.
I’ve got still more to write up but they’re going to have to wait for tomorrow.
Today after keynote presentations by James Cameron (who praised Microsoft Research for helping them create a digital asset management system that made Avatar possible), Craig Mundie, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer, and Karen Cator, Direction of Educational Technology at the US Dept of Education the winners of the US Imagine Cup Software Design and Game Development competitions. And the winners are:
Software Design Teams
Game Teams
There were a number of additional achievement awards given as well.
There are some events in the worldwide Imagine Cup that are still open to entries. One of the events that excites me the most is the Windows Phone 7 Rockstar Award.