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I was reading through a couple of blog posts by Garth Flint earlier today. I’ve been using some of my vacation time to catch up on blog reading and had put off reading some of Garth’s posts until I had time to do it right. Garth is one of those people who uses his blog for self examination and the working...

I’ve been thinking a lot about textbooks lately. Do students really read/use them? What is the difference between a textbook and a reference book and what are the pros and cons of each in education? What about books designed for professionals rather than for teaching? They seem to be half way between...

You may have noticed that I wasn’t blogging much last week. Or maybe you didn’t notice but allow me my allusions. I had a good reason though. My son was married this past weekend and that kept me a bit preoccupied. I hope to keep up better this week and then go on vacation. Today I finally had a chance...

Over the holiday I did some browsing around the Internet. I found a couple of new blogs to follow, read some posts by people who hadn't blogged in a while, and just stumbled across some interesting things while looking for something completely different. Among my discoveries were some interesting curriculum...

There is a lot of talk on the Internet today about Amazon's new electronic book called the Kindle . The talk among bloggers is largely about subscribing to blogs. Others are talking about books for, mostly, pleasure reading. I am wondering though if this technological innovation might be the thing that...

It looks like a lot of my co-workers have been running into students who are having fun creating games with XNA . Hilary Pike writes about a student from her alma mater (The Ohio State University) who is interested in a lot more than football. In fact he has created an interesting looking game with XNA...

I've never been very good at taking notes and here are NECC hasn't been much of an exception. While I have blogged about a number of sessions for the most part I have just listened intently but not blogged or taken notes. I have to say that I regret this somewhat. So I am trying again during this...

Mark Hendrickson from O'Reilly has an interesting review of the market for computer books in a four part series. The fourth part examines the programming language book market. I have no doubt that it is a valuable discussion for people who are thinking about what sort of programming language book to...

The Visual Studio Express people have just announced a new Beginner Developer Learning Center . The main part of the site is for beginners of all ages who are interested in learning how to program computers or design and build dynamic web sites. It looks pretty interesting and I think a lot of people...

I read a resume recently where the job applicant told of his 7 years of professional experience. It read as if he thought that was a long time. I have over four times that much experience and yet I still feel like a newby at times. Things are just changing that quickly. My friend Mr I (who is not as...

Sometimes just when you think an argument is over and become a settled issue someone else comes up an reopens it. Sometimes what you discover is that people have been as much beaten into submission as convinced my the arguments. All they were waiting for was someone with some authority or credibility...

I'm enjoying following Chris Higgins ' first year teaching computer science at his blog. On Friday he posted a pair of interesting posts. One is a review of the textbook he is using. The other is a description of how he is using some web based tools to make things more efficient. I really appreciated...

I've been getting questions about C# (pronounced Sea Sharp or C Sharp) textbooks for high school courses lately. There are a lot of C# books out there but I think most of them are aimed either at professional developers or college level programs. Teachers are teaching C# in high schools though and I...

My friend and co-worker Martin Schray (check out his resources page) just sent me a copy of his new book – Jump Start Guide for Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 . It’s a really useful book if you are upgrading from earlier versions of Visual Basic but it is also useful if you are looking for a better understanding...

About 10 years ago now I was sitting in the teacher’s lounge and the mail came in. There was a package for me and it was tossed on the table in front of me. Seeing the return address I knew exactly what it was and hurried to open it. One of my friends asked what I was so excited about. I explained that...