Browse by Tags

Last week Microsoft put several curriculum modules on on the higher education part of the Faculty Connection. While aimed at the college/university space I think they may be useful for many high school people especially those working on independent studies involving XNA. What is a Curriculum Module...

This started out as a comment on Mark Guzdial’s blog post What changes CS Education? which you of course must read. No really. I’ll even wait. Back? OK a key summary jumped out at me: My first pass analysis suggests that, to make change in CS, invent a language or tool at a well-known institution. ...

A while back the College Board dropped one of the Advanced Placement Computer Science exams – the so-called AB exam. (About 14 months ago and I wrote about dropping the APCS AB exam here ) Ever since then there has been a lot of discussion about the AP computer science curriculum in specific and the...

So I have this soft spot in my heart for Carnegie Mellon University. I have been fortunate enough to  take workshops there several times during my teaching career. They’ve been outstanding and incredibly valuable both for the in-class learning and for the wonderful people (attendees as well as faculty...

Just on the heels of my finding the Java to C# Orange book I received the following announcement of a pre-conference workshop for SIGCE. Joe Hummel always does a great job with his workshops so I have no hesitation recommending this workshop. The Microsoft pre-conference workshop, From Java to C# - How...

So perhaps you are teaching Java and your students want to learn C# (sea sharp). Or maybe you want to learn or teach C# your self and are coming from a Java background. Well I have found the free resource for you. Rob Miles who wrote the free “ C# Yellow Book ” text book that I have written...

I get inspiration for blog posts from a number of places. Sometimes from Twitter (see yesterday’s post) and sometimes for other blogs. Actually other blogs are a constant and regular source of inspirations. Today’s post was inspired by a Programming Pop Quiz posted by Rob Miles. The sample code he uses...

“What does this code do?” is often a bit of a gotcha sort of question. OK sometimes it is a simple thing to make sure a student understands the syntax but many times it is really asking if the student understands some underlying concepts of either the programming language or how computers work. Rob Miles...

If you are an AP CS teacher one of the things that is an important part of your curriculum is the GridWorld case study. The case study is one of the key pieces of the APCS exam and understanding how it works and being able to use and modify it is very important for student success. For a number of years...

I just found out about the RampUp program. Briefly this is a program that lets people sign up for and take online training on various Microsoft developer technology such as web development and Visual Studio. There are special tracks for Java developers and for developers who want to upgrade their skills...

It is often interesting what one finds by reviewing referral links (the information that shows how people get to a blog or web site). One of the sites I found last week was Vince Huston’s “ Teaching Programming ” page. Besides having a number of useful links (including one to my blog – thanks!) is a...

I've been talking to a lot of schools lately that are experimenting with game development using XNA in their courses. For some of them at least some of the motivation is to attract more students into their computer science programs. Springbrook High School has a video advertisement that shows students...

I received a pair of announcements about summer workshops for teachers at Carnegie Mellon this summer. having attended a number of workshops at CMU over the years I have come to respect them as about the best learning opportunity a teacher can have. They are also wonderful networking opportunities as...