Faculty Connection is an online set of real-world resources and shared peer knowledge, the goal of the Faculty Connection site is to put relevant and applicable tools and information at the fingertips of technology educators.
The UK Academic Team is responsible for offering IT students and faculty members free access to software, for enhancing knowledge and skills by providing curriculum materials and other learning opportunities, for helping students achieve their dreams by organizing an international competition, and finally for assisting last year students through career resources and job opportunities at our customers and partners.
With this blog we want to inform you on our latest initiatives.
Enjoy reading and stay tuned!
Microsoft has been working hard to innovate on the Smartphone market.
At the Mix conference Microsoft released TouchStudio, TouchStudio simply allows developers to develop applications for their phones, right on their phones.
This is the first application ever to be released of its kind for any smartphone device. The Microsoft Research Team created TouchStudio with the simple idea: “the programs are authored and executed on mobile devices. No other computers are needed”. Microsoft Research is also the home of Microsoft Kinect and Bill Buxton.
If you have a Windows Phone 7 device, make sure you download a copy today, and let us know what cool and exciting applications you come up with. For Academics out there, we are excited to see if these kinds of applications can help you introduce programming concepts and increase the use of mobile application development within the academic curricula.
So what are you doing or planning on doing with Microsoft Kinect?
Are you interested in the official Kinect SDK when it becomes available?
Want to know more about this project watch the following
So please let us know how your using or planning on using Kinect?
Microsoft Vision of the Future Video
Ever wondered what tech will be available in the future?
The following is a video is a 5 min insight into what Microsoft believe IT technology of tomorrow will be capable of.
We are excited by Windows Phone 7 and to help share some of that we have a student competition and an incentive programme.
To enter the student ONLY competition you have to write a Windows Phone 7 app and publish it in Marketplace, you then need to email ukstucom@microsoft.com with your publisher name, app name and a screen shot of your app and that’s it! we’ll do the rest.
You can win a Microsoft LifeCam Show and/or Windows Phone 7 t-shirt in each of the 6 rounds of the competition and one of the 6 winners will win the grand prize of an HTC 7 Trophy.
See full terms and conditions for the STUDENT ONLY competition on Microsoft UK Student Blog.
If you require software to develop Windows Phone 7 see http://www.DreamSpark.com
Microsoft® BizSpark™ is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business.
So if you're interested in becoming a startup or are a institution incubator or innovations centre and are interested in becoming a Bizspark network partner simply visit www.bizspark.com for more information.
Boost your resume by getting Microsoft Certified. And right now, you can get a FREE Microsoft Certification Exam voucher code for select exams to help you get started.
Microsoft Certification is designed to validate your IT skills and shows potential employers that you are motivated and focused on your career.
Like new jobs, these vouchers are in limited supply so don’t wait! Visit www.dreamspark.com
THINK.DEV Rewards
Get rewarded with fantastic prizes by building your own and unique Windows Phone application and publishing it on the Windows Phone Marketplace. Just one thing – we’re only looking for original and unique Windows Phone applications. There is a massive line up of rewards to be redeemed including XBOX360 consoles, LG 22” LCD Tvs, Samsung Home Theatre packages.
It’s simple. Every successful and original application published in the marketplace gets you one point to exchange for a range of substantial state-of-the-art goodies.* You can choose something right away or wait – the more applications you publish, the bigger and shinier the stuff you get to choose from.And hold on... that's not all... Every application also gets you an entry in that week’s prize draw. So just one little app could win you a Dell Inspiron Duo, Acer Iconia, Alienware M11x Or an Alienware M15 – that’s on top of whatever goodies you choose to exchange for.
So, register now and get in there to see what you need to do and how you can win today!
To find out more about the THINK.DEV programme log on to www.my-rewards.com/wp7 and register yourself using the same email and publisher name used in the Windows Phone Marketplace (AppHub). Good Luck!
Terms and conditions
Amazing story relating to Tech Student and tuition funding
As part of the adoption of Windows Phone 7 by the student community, there are currently four student developers who have Free Apps in the worldwide Top 50 list on Microsoft App MarketPlace.
These students and their apps are listed below.
Title
Developer
Solitaire
Jake Poznanski
Kill the Duck
andreasvilela
Wikipedia
P. M. Software
Word Search
The adoption of Windows Phone development within UK HE has been great with a number of Universities now teaching Windows Phone 7 App development including XNA gaming module.
What is great news is that two students within the US have published 10+ apps and through advertising have already earned over $12K. Talk about solving the tuition challenges! Microsoft has additionally commissioned the following case study below which has been created to encourage more students to develop applications on Windows Phone 7.
Case study of Jake Poznanski and the development of Windows Phone 7 Apps
We’d like to invite you to tell us what technology you use and what you think about it.
If you can spare the time to complete the survey it will help us understand you and what you need from us. The goal of the survey is to better understand the use of technology by students and faculty across the UK. It collects no personal information, and our sole purpose is to get your opinion, not who you are. We understand how busy you are, especially at this time of the year, and the questionnaire has been designed to require only ten minutes of your time.
All you need to do is to click here to participate in the survey.
Python Tools for Visual Studio is a free & open source plug-in for Visual Studio 2010 from Microsoft's Technical Computing Group. PTVS enables developers to use all the major productivity features of Visual Studio to build Python code using either CPython or IronPython and adds new features such as using High Performance Computing clusters to scale your code. Together with one of the standard distros, you can turn Visual Studio into a powerful Technical Computing IDE...
Advanced editing, Intellisense, browsing, “Find all refs”, REPL, …
Supports CPython and IronPython
Local & Cluster/remote debugging
Profiling with multiple views
Interactive parallel computing via integrated IPython REPL
Support for HPC clusters and MPI, including debugging support
NumPy & SciPy for .Net
Support for Cloud Computing (soon)
Support for Dryad (large scale, data-intensive parallel programming) (soon)
Free & Open Source (Apache 2.0)