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!
Today a comprehensive package to leverage Nokia developer skills while learning to build applications for Windows Phone. Microsoft and Nokia have worked together to build a great package.
The package contains the following tools and documentation to help you along the path to learning Windows Phone development:
These complement the similar iOS/Android guidance & mapping work we released a couple months ago.
The “Windows Phone Guide for Symbian Qt Application Developers” white paper is about 100 pages organized in 8 chapters.
The white paper is available in different formats (HTML, DOCX & PDF).
Chapter 6 introduces porting tutorials, in which you will find practical examples and tips on how to port your applications, like the RSS Reader applications or the “Diner” example, a catalog-type restaurant information application. From design consideration to data binding, the porting story addresses many aspects of the process that will be useful to you; the developer.
The full list of samples and source code is available to you.
The addition of Symbian Qt to the Windows Phone API mapping tool is another perk we wanted to deliver in order to speed up the learning curve to Windows Phone. For this first iteration of the mapping, includes core libraries for Qt 4.7 for Symbian (QtCore, QtGui, QtLocation, QtNetwork, QtSensors, QtSql, QtXml, QtWebKit, QML Elements, QML Components ).
Finally, keep an eye on the “Nokia Windows Phone Training” roadshow. During this one day training event, you’ll learn how to take your ideas and get them running on the Windows Phone platform. Upcoming dates and locations for the roadshow are as follows:
We realize this is only a few dates and locations, so for all the developers who want to learn Windows Phone, we recommend that you follow at your own pace the EXCELLENT “Window Phone Mango Jump Start” online video training.
So, go get your copy of the “Windows Phone Guide for Symbian Qt Application Developers”
The Microsoft robotics group have announced the release of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 Beta.
You can download RDS 4 beta at Microsoft.com/robotics. What is exciting about this release is that it has extensive support for the Kinect sensor hardware through the Kinect for Windows SDK.
This simply allows developers to create Kinect-enabled robots in the Visual Simulation Environment and in real life. Along with this release comes a standardized reference spec for building a Kinect-based robot. .
The last week has been pretty amazing, the BUILD conference had lots of great sessions explaining how to get productive with Microsoft’s new development tools, services and technologies.
The following are some of the highlights of the Build sessions which were attend by over 4000 developers. The complete list of sessions and videos are available at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011 which can you can view at your leisure.
The Overview of Windows 8 and Metro
If you want to learn more about Windows 8 Metro UI additionally if you want more designer-oriented information, check out Designing Metro style: principles and personalities.
A great overview of the platform, Windows RT and Windows 8 itself. If you want to know more about the API.
This is the second part of the Platform talk
This gives you a deeper look at WinRT
Get the XAML info right from the lead of Windows 8 XAML team
This is the talk that explains how to deeply integrate your XAML application with Windows 8.
Learn all about touch and gestures obviously very important to Windows 8 Metro applications.
Here's where you'll learn about styles, animations and more
Learn how to adapt to different screen sizes, resolutions and more
Want to learn about the tooling and the features of Visual Studio 11
Learn more about async and the future of Visual Studio with Project Roslyn copy and paste code transformation
Check out the full set via http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011
Or simply use the list below to go to content based on topic areas
More Windows 8 XAML
So overall an amazing conference, content and announcements. Please visit the following online resources to view the 200 + hours of content at your own leisure http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011
For further references and to download a developer preview of Windows 8 visit dev.windows.com and keep an eye on the Building Windows 8 Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8
This week I have been Microsoft’s BUILD developers conference in Anaheim, California.
BUILD is an event that shows modern hardware and software developers how to take advantage of the future of Windows and provides an avenue for them to discuss other products and tools that Microsoft is working on. The buzz from around the conference has been amazing with delegates super excited about the variety of new features within Windows 8 such as touch-first user interface, powerful applications and a seamless experience that syncs across all of your devices. The increased accessibility of applications across devices also brings about some exciting opportunities to drive innovation and creativity within the developer community. But, this week isn’t only about Windows, but advancements in Microsoft technologies, including Visual Studio 11, code-named “Windows Server 8,” and new capabilities for Windows Azure.
So if you are interested in knowing more about BUILD or what’s new from Microsoft, check out
The Microsoft News Center feature
The Microsoft Blog
Watch the keynotes from the BUILD website
and watch all the presentations at the Channel9 BUILD site.
Welcome to the August/September edition of the Microsoft® Faculty Connection newsletter. This resource provides information about new curriculum resources and other useful educational content for use in the classroom
Please feel free to subscribe today to receive future editions directly to your inbox
TOP STORIES
Python Tools for Visual Studio Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) turns Visual Studio into a Python IDE. It is a free and open source plug-in for Visual Studio 2010 from the Microsoft Developer Division. PTVS lets developers use all the major productivity features of Visual Studio to build Python code using either CPython or IronPython, and it adds new features such as support for High Performance Computing clusters to scale your code.
Cloud Infrastructure Soars in Europe It was barely a year ago that European scientific and industry leaders came together to develop, test, and deploy a high-quality, interoperable cloud platform for industry and research. The result was VENUS-C (Virtual multidisciplinary EnviroNments USing Cloud infrastructures). Jointly sponsored by the European Commission and a consortium of 14 partners, among them Microsoft Research, VENUS-C was conceived to meet the needs of seven different research and commercial areas: bioinformatics, systems biology, drug discovery, civil engineering, civil protection, civil emergencies, and marine biodiversity. VENUS-C has since developed into a functional, operational platform, and is now being used for 15 new pilot projects, which received seed funds after an open call that elicited 60 proposals from throughout Europe.
Kinect for Windows SDK Beta Refresh Available Interest in the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) beta, released in June, has been strong, and we're delighted to learn that so many developers and innovators who are experimenting with natural user interface (NUI) applications have taken advantage of the SDK to explore the potential of the Kinect sensor. In support of our commitment to encourage researchers and enthusiasts in their exploration of the possibilities of the Kinect sensor, we have released a refreshed version of the SDK. The community has provided us with a lot of good feedback, and this release addresses some of the top items you've told us about.
CURRICULUM RESOURCES
The Faculty Connection Resource Center is the place to find these and other classroom-ready teaching materials:
Mango Jump Start: Building Applications for Windows Phone This introductory content covers how to create Windows Phone solutions, edit program source files, add and manage program resources, and then build and run the solution. It also explores options for debugging solutions using the Windows Phone Emulator or an actual device as well as managing the solution properties for deployment in the marketplace. Once you are done with the basics, continue on with additional Mango Jump Start sessions that examine Silverlight, building interfaces with Expression, app data storage, using Bing Maps, developing with XNA, and even selling apps.
Windows PowerShell Overview In this video presentation, Kurt Callemin provides an introduction to PowerShell, tells you what it is used for, why you should use it, and how it works. The goal is to make you familiar with the concepts behind this scripting language with examples and teach you how to explore the world of PowerShell in more depth.
Students to Business Day Belgium 2011 View these video presentations from the event:
NEWS FROM MICROSOFT RESEARCH
Find recent news from a Microsoft Research site near you.
Faculty Summit 2011 Microsoft Research Connections hosted its 12th Faculty Summit in July, providing a forum for lively debate on the development, application, and funding of technologies in the environmental, medical, and educational spheres. Presentations and streaming video of keynotes, talks, panels, workshops, and demonstrations are now available on-demand; find links to them on the Faculty Summit agenda page.
Project Hawaii SDK: Create Mobile Applications Create cloud-enabled mobile applications with the tools and services included in the Project Hawaii Software Development Kit (SDK). Arjmand Samuel, research program manager from Microsoft Research Connections, talks about what the SDK contains and how it can be used to develop Windows Phone applications.
NEWS FROM MICROSOFT DYNAMICS
CALL FOR PAPERS: Worldwide Microsoft Dynamics Academic Preconference 2012 The Microsoft Dynamics Academic Alliance (DynAA) will host the Worldwide Microsoft Dynamics Academic Preconference in Houston, Texas, USA on March 17-18, 2012. This is an event that all members of the DynAA should attend! You have the chance to:
Find more information about this event, including links to last year's preconference.
DynAA invites papers/abstracts in research, research-in-progress, teaching, applications, and case studies incorporating Microsoft Dynamics into business and information systems curricula. The deadline for refereed paper submission is January 1, 2012. DynAA will publish conference proceedings in CD/DVD format and online. In addition, the best quality papers from those accepted will be recommended to the Journal of Integrated Enterprise Systems (ISSN: 2162-9285) for publication. The deadline for presentation and panel discussion submissions is February 1, 2012. For more detailed information, please visit: clcloud.com/DYNAA2012.
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IN THIS EDITION
SUGGESTED RESOURCES
The Faculty Connection Resource Center contains recommended Curriculum Resources, Reference Materials, Software, and Supplemental Resources:
RESOURCE KITS
View the Faculty Connection Resource Kit page for curriculum materials on areas such as Cloud Computing and Operating Systems. These kits contain lecture materials, PowerPoint presentations, videos, white papers, labs, and more that can be used for classroom presentations.
Find Higher Education and Teacher resource kits to help you engage your students.
OTHER PROGRAMS
Find additional faculty and student resources:
TOP DOWNLOADS
These are the top downloads by faculty and teachers from the Faculty Connection Resource Center:
1. Windows Phone Programming in C#
2. Introduction to Programming Through Game Development Using Microsoft XNA Game Studio
3. Windows Operating System Internals Curriculum Resource Kit (CRK)
4. A Comparative Analysis of Cloud Computing Environments （简体中文）
5. Programming with C# and XNA 0.5: Jump Start
6. A Lap Around Microsoft Expression Blend®
7. Learn Programming with XNA
8. Expression Web 4 Quick Start Tutorial: Beaches Around the World
9. Введение в современные веб-технологии (in Russian)
10. Introduction to Mobile Application Development Using Silverlight (Lecture 3 of 3)
FEEDBACK
If you have any questions or would like to know more about Microsoft Faculty Connection, please send us an email at fchelp@microsoft.com.
If your not really a phone app developer or if you don't have curricula aimed at a specific mobile platform, you may want to look at the opportunity of the PhoneGap libraries.
PhoneGap is an open source mobile framework that enables developers to build applications targeting multiple platforms, by using standard web technologies (HTML5, CSS and JavaScript). On Windows Phone Mango PhoneGap leverages the new HTML5 support provided by IE9.
PhoneGap is currently in beta, but does includes most of the basic features, and includes JavaScript APIs to use Windows Phone Mango features like:
Here’s a screen shot of the PhoneGap Unit Test application running on the Windows Phone emulator:
This is a new option to build applications targeting Windows Phone and gives your students more choices . PhoneGap is unique as its aimed at Web developers and simply allows them to leverage their HTML5 skills to target Windows Phone IE9 browser.
The beta version of the PhoneGap libraries can be downloaded from: https://github.com/phonegap/phonegap-wp7
For more details and information please read Nitobi’s blog post to get more details on how the whole process works. With the availability of Windows Phone developer tools, made available freely via DreamSpark to all students and academics and the fact that Windows Phone Mango Released to Manufacturing and developer tools hitting “Release Candidate”, it’s the perfect time to start trying this out.
So please get developing give feedback and join the PhoneGap open source project.
So its now only a few days until the Build Windows conference, BUILD takes place between 13th – 16th of September 2011.
The event has been total sold out for many months. I have to say I am pretty excited! why? I am lucky enough to be attending the event. As your aware from my previous posts Build Windows is a new event that shows modern hardware and software developers how to take advantage of the future of Windows. So make sure you take note of the URLs and twitter addresses below to learn how the new Windows 8 UI is being designed to work seamlessly with a diversity of devices and form factors.
BUILD will be the first place to take a dive deep into the future of Windows. Microsoft is extending its newest developer event Build Windows globally in multiple ways including live streamed keynotes, having a major international presence in Anaheim. So it want to learn about the future of Windows make sure you take a look at the following..
BUILD Conference Site - http://www.buildwindows.com/
BUILD Conference Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/bldwin make sure you follow @bldwin
BUILD Conference Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Build/156095381124816
Building Windows 8 Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/
Building Windows 8 Twitter - http://twitter.com/#!/BuildWindows8 make sure you follow @BuildWindows8
The download also includes the AzureBlobCopy utility that is mentioned in the paper. This utility helps you copy files to and from Azure Storage, Azure Nodes, and on-premises computers.
Note: Code samples that were added in the September 2011 update are denoted as "New!". MPI samples are supported on Azure Nodes that are deployed on a Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 cluster that has Service Pack 2 installed.
There are also technical articles which provide technical overview of developing HPC applications that are supported for the Windows Azure burst scenario. The article addresses the application models that are supported, and the data issues that arise when working with Windows Azure and on-premises nodes, such as the proper location for the data, the storage types in Windows Azure, various techniques to upload data to Windows Azure storage, and how to access data from the computational nodes in the cluster (on-premises and Windows Azure). Finally, this article describes how to deploy HPC applications to Windows Azure nodes and how to run these HPC applications from client applications, as well as from the Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 job submission interfaces.
The links in this section correspond to files available for this download. Download the files from below or visit http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=12006.
Microsoft Learning hosted another new and exclusive Jump Start virtual training event featuring renowned MVPs Rob Miles, University of Hull & Andy Wigley AppMundi over 1,270 people joined the two-day event (Aug. 23-24, 2011).
The two days of Building Applications for Windows Phone Mango Jump Start was extremely popular and we are thrilled to announce the availability of HD-quality video recordings for FREE on Channel 9! There is over 14 hours of course content covering all aspects of Windows Phone development Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight, Expression, data storage, networks, user interface, XNA and the Marketplace.
Team teaching with every module having engaging discussion, packed full of best practices and real-world demonstrations and examples.
· Entire course on Channel 9: “Building Applications for Windows Phone Mango Jump Start”
Mango Jump Start (01): Building Windows Phone Apps with Visual Studio 2010
Mango Jump Start (02): Silverlight on Windows Phone—Introduction
Mango Jump Start (03): Silverlight on Windows Phone—Advanced
Mango Jump Start (04): Using Expression to Build Windows Phone Interfaces
Mango Jump Start (05): Windows Phone Fast Application Switching
Mango Jump Start (06): Windows Phone Multi-tasking & Background Tasks
Mango Jump Start (07): Using Windows Phone Resources (Bing Maps, Camera, etc.)
Mango Jump Start (08a): Application Data Storage on Windows Phone | Part 1
Mango Jump Start (08b): Application Data Storage on Windows Phone | Part 2
Mango Jump Start (09): Using Networks with Windows Phone
Mango Jump Start (10): Tiles & Notifications on Windows Phone
Mango Jump Start (11a): XNA for Windows Phone | Part 1
Mango Jump Start (11b): XNA for Windows Phone | Part 2
Mango Jump Start (12): Selling a Windows Phone Application
After this Jump Start, please check out the Microsoft Learning Windows Phone training options to better understand mobile certifications and where to find instructor-led classes to help you and your students gain accredited certification into Windows Mobile application development.
Due to my role, I have interactions with Universities across the length and breadth of the UK. I have the great fortune of seeing best practices and some truly transforming faculties, departments and schools. From my visits I get to hear and learn from educators and I’m always inspired and amazed with the activity which is being undertaken. However innovation in education is a global issue and something we all must work to solve and identifying innovative teaching practices and the impact that they can have on student outcomes is a great place to start.
There is now a real need to transform education to align with the realities of life and work in the 21st Century. This is not just about the effective use of technology but about developing the future generation to be deeply engaged in the learning process and taking the initiative to learn and to continue to have the desire, passion and want to learn throughout their career.
As part of Microsoft’s commitment to education transformation, Microsoft have initiated the Innovative Teaching and Learning (ITL) Research project http://www.itlresearch.com
The purpose of ITL is to contribute information and policy insights on where and how effective education transformation is taking place around the world. ITL Research is a multiyear global research program designed to investigate the factors that promote the transformation of teaching practices and the impact those changes have on students’ learning outcomes across a broad range of country contexts.
Microsoft is working with global and local education leaders such as UNESCO and local Ministries of Education and will be sharing data and results openly with all research partners and with the broader academic education community.
The goal of ITL is to recognise the importance of innovative teaching practices, inspire others to commitment to scaling innovation and creating a foundation for holistic education transformation. Another exciting component of this project is the opportunity for individual schools and leaders to take part. Microsoft’s Partners in Learning School Research is a self-assessment survey research system that helps educators and school leaders understand and measure innovative teaching practices that develop the skills students need for life and work in the 21st Century.
The online tool is an incredibly powerful tool that will give individual leaders an opportunity to measure and identify innovative teaching practices and compare and measure against the global survey results.
The process is also very easy to administer…
1. A school signs up on this website. 2. A administrator from the school sends out the survey to all educators and leaders. 3. Each educator and leader takes a 15 to 20 minute online survey about innovative teaching practices. 4. Once the surveys have been completed, a research report based on the responses is sent to the administrator within 24 hours, who can then share it. 5. The report shows measures of innovative teaching practices and examples of innovative teaching practices. 6. The surveys can be repeated each year to track and measure progress.
Visit http://www.pilsr.com to learn more about this project and how your school can take part.
Also you can watch the video below which provides an overview.