Mark Johnston's Blog : Teaching

XNA Creators Club codes in MSDN AA now

markjo — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:31:49 GMT

Andy has posted about XNA CC codes going into MSDN AA - great news if you are teaching games programming (or want to) and want to get your students building games on Windows and Xbox 360.

XNA Creators Club Codes are now in MSDN AA!

The Ultimate Steal...or Office for £38.95 is now available to university staff as well

markjo — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:57:36 GMT

There is only a little while left to get your copy of Office Ultimate for £38.95 if you are a university student studying in the UK. And the good news is that Lee and Ray over in the Education team have opened it up to staff as well!!

The Further Education blog has the detail on Ts&Cs, etc

To purchase please visit the Ultimate Steal UK web site

Imagine Cup Day on 5th June 2008 - Celebrating the best in UK student talent

markjo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:49:42 GMT

It's been a busy couple of months for the Imagine Cup and we have a good 200-odd students fighting it out for great prizes and the opportunity to travel to Paris (in style) to compete at the worldwide finals.

And to celebrate the best year for the Imagine Cup in the UK we are going to run an event tentatively called Imagine Cup Day (I'll update with a better name shortly!). It will be an event exclusively for Imagine Cup finalists in various categories to come to London to hear from Microsoft, leading industry speakers on the future of Software and to network with future employers looking for talented students. That's right, you could get a job at this event....

Credit to PSD

We will have several VIPs, employers and our sponsor Windows Live Search there on the day to talk to the students.

Outline agenda looks like:

Keynote presentation on the future of software innovation
Technology sessions
Showcase of Imagine Cup entries
Career networking session
Award ceremony (think the Oscars without the crying luvvies)

And then we throw a party! Got some fun stuff lined up - Guitar Hero III, Universally Challenged (a NxtGen production) and music/food/beer/drinks :-)

I bet you are wondering how to attend this extremely cool event - Well, if you are a talented student competing in the Imagine Cup then expect an invite very shortly. Same goes for our sponors, mentors and the student academics. If you are a London blogger - and want to attend, then we want you there - email me at markjo@microsoft.com and we'll get you a press pass (although these are very limited).

Silverlight event for UK Academics - 12th March 2008

markjo — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:10:04 GMT

We are holding an event for UK academics (students supplying a .ac.uk email will be allowed to attend) at Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes to help teaching staff understand Silverlight and how it can be applied in teaching.

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The event will have several sessions covering the following:

Keynote on Microsoft's web platform and overall strategy by Mark Quirk (Microsoft)
Next generation user experience technologies - a deep dive by Marc Holmes (Microsoft)
Microsoft Expression by John Allwright (Microsoft)
Silverlight in the classroom by Ian Palmer (University of Bradford)
Real world use of WPF and Silverlight by Mark and Alex from Shaxam

This is the pre-cursor to an exclusive teaching program to support universities wanting to adopt Silverlight in the classroom. This will include £3000 (*details and exact value tbc) of individual training on the technology, support from Microsoft and resources to build curriculum.

If you want to register please call as soon as possible (spaces are limited) the following number:

0870 166 6630

Any questions then please leave a comment or email me at markjo@microsoft.com

Also - attendees will receive a free Silverlight 1.0 MS Press book and a swanky Silverlight umbrella! (It's Britain and we anticipate rain and the tour goes outside.....and I really wanted a Silverlight umbrella :-))

How to get your students registered for the Imagine Cup

markjo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:19:35 GMT

We've received a lot of positive feedback from our faculty contacts about the Imagine Cup this year. Just to recap why it's such a great year:

More competition focus in the UK including great prizes
Easier to get involved in the Software Design (just an idea to start). All your teams can enter rather than having to pick a couple to represent your institution
Job opportunities for all UK competitors

Now, back to this post. One of the hardest things is to get all your students registering. We have produced a guide with some assets to help you do that but the feedback is that awareness is a great first step now I need to sit a bunch of them in the room and get them registering. Here is Mark's 5 step plan in doing that:

Use a lab session or book a lab for your class to come to

Holding a physical event is one of the best ways to maximise student engagement in the competition. So, by grabbing 30 minutes of a large audience of students at a lab session you are already going to be kick starting their interest and ideas around the Imagine Cup theme this year ("the environment").

Using proctors or Microsoft Student Partners is also a great way of running a lab exercise.

Have them register

www.imaginecup.co.uk - take the fun quiz and then register for the Imagine Cup (and if interested the HPC competition).

Which competitions?

There are 9 diverse competitions in this year's competition so I would direct students depending on their interest to enter multiple competitions.

Top groups of students should definitely enter the Software Design competition. This will give them great software engineering/development skills, entrepreneurship and presentation training if they get through to Round 2 (and if they have a great idea that is pretty likely).
Individuals (or everyone in the lab) should enter the IT challenge. It's a great quiz on all things IT and technology.
Then on interest area: There are competitions around Game development, Embedded technologies, UI/Interface Design and creative subjects such as Photography or Short Film

Helping them compete

We have a competitors guide that you can download for them OR if you are quick by emailing in a request (ukacinfo@microsoft.com), we can send you some hard copies.

Faculty: Promoting Imagine Cup to your students

markjo — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:14:00 GMT

We get a lot of requests from faculty to promote the Imagine Cup to their students. To that end, we've pulled together several resources that will make it easier to promote to your students.

URL to promote to students to register

http://www.microsoft.co.uk/uk/academia/imaginecup/2008/quiz/default.mspx (and www.imaginecup.co.uk)

The Competitors Guide

A glossy guide that helps students get started with the Imagine Cup focusing on some of the more popular invitationals. It includes an introduction to all the invitationals, guides to Algorithm, Game Development, Embedded and Project Hoshimi and a few tips on why you should register.

Download from here

Web site, Blog Banners and Email templates

We've got a bunch of JPEGs if you want to stick it on a department web site, faculty or personal blog. Some simple examples of emails are also included that can be sent out to students (written from student's and lecturer's perspectives).

Download from here

Top 5 things to tell your students about the Imagine Cup

1. There are 9 great competitions for all interests and skill levels. We are providing life changing prizes for UK competitors of ALL 9 competitions. Examples include: 2 week work experience trip to Microsoft in Seattle, Hi-Def video camera, 2 week placement at Microsoft Game Studio in the UK, Developer spec PC (quad core, big screen, the lot), Xbox 360 Elite packs, and many more

2. Really easy and fun to register this year with prizes up for grabs. An Xbox 360 Elite each month to those who register. There is a university leaderboard for those students who take the quiz so good for university competitiveness

3. Software Design has been split up into 3 sections – The Idea; Innovation Accelerator and the Code Submission. This means that between now and Christmas there is plenty of opportunity to focus on the idea (“the idea is king”) and fit around your academic schedules.

4. The Innovation Accelerator is a unique opportunity to learn entrepreneurship skills and higher level technology skills which many students don’t learn while at university. It will be a 2-3 day event in Reading with leading partners and MS staff helping students take their great idea and turn it into a technological and business reality. Think ‘Dragons Den’ meets ‘The Restaurant’ meets Silicon Valley!

5. Imagine Cup culminates in a grand celebration day in London in June for the top competitors in all 9 competitions to meet and hear from leading industry speakers and employers to talk jobs. There will be a prize giving ceremony and maybe even a party at a club in London.

Unannounced Prizes for all 9 competitions

As you can see below we have a bunch of great prizes which are both very desirable to students and will help kick start their future career by building relationships with industry and get an insight into the leading edge of software development:

SDC	2 week work placement in Seattle with Popfly team Prizes of Xbox 360 Elites, MP3 players for 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place teams
Embedded	2 week work placement with specialist Microsoft embedded partner
XNA	2 week work placement with UK Microsoft Game Studio Xbox 360 Elite pack
Hoshimi	2 week placement at UK MGS Xbox 360 Elite pack
Algorithm	Developer PC (top spec, e.g. Quad core, 24” LCD monitors)
IT Challenge	Windows Home Server
Photography	Digital SLR camera, lens, bag and tripod
Short Film	HD video camera, accessories and tripod
Interface Design	1 Student: 2 week work placement with major UK creative agency Designer PC (top spec, e.g. Quad core, 24” LCD monitors)

Best practice for promoting on campus

How to get your students registered for the Imagine Cup

Xbox 360 + Students + Paul Smith = Freeplay lounge and GamesCity event

markjo — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:49:40 GMT

Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend but it looked like a cracking event (pulled together mainly by Claire on our team!). A great event hosted by Nottingham council and Nottingham Trent University.

We hosted a bunch of academics and students at two venues - a Paul Smith cinema and bar called Bluu to show them what's hot about the games industry and the Microsoft developer platform, particularly looking at XNA.

For any students that attended, I hope you signed up to the Imagine Cup and are thinking of entering the Game Development or Project Hoshimi competitions!!

You can see more photos on Andy's Flickr set here. Kudos to the guys at Rare, Ginger and the Xbox team for their support. Also to the Fragdolls who came to the event.

(Now what was my XBL gamertag again so I can play Sithers at Halo 3?!)

Are you interested in teaching Silverlight? Then read on...

markjo — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:44:05 GMT

Kate put up a post on our Academic blog around a new teaching program we are planning to roll out in the next couple of months and she is looking for feedback and a gauge of interest with any UK academics - specifically both our traditional audience of Computer Science/Engineering and those from a Design related faculty (teaching web design, interaction, computer animation, etc)

"For those of you who haven’t already heard the buzz Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. It really is impressive stuff.

so If you would like to register your interest about joining this exciting teaching program please email us at Ukacinfo@microsoft.com and we will forward on details of this program. "

This is a great opportunity if you are interested in the "next web" and creating more compelling web experiences inside the browser.

MSDN AA System Administrator event in UK: 6 September. Register Now!

markjo — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 15:24:17 GMT

Back after a great week in the US attending the annual sales and marketing funfest that is MGX. I've come back really buzzed about the job I do and ready to make a big difference in the coming year.

And what better way to start than an event for some of our most important customers in academia. The guys and girls that manage the labs that students and academics use!!

We are holding an event at our Reading campus on the 6th September. Here is what is on the cards:

Agenda
The sessions will take you through the key technology areas that are vital for you and your role:

Deploying and Managing Windows Vista
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
New developments from the Education product group
Exchange Server 2007,
Groove 2007
Real time scenarios

All of which, will really make a difference to how effectively you work. You will also have the opportunity to talk to Microsoft’s technology experts about any questions you have making this a must attend event for 2007.
Cost
The event is FREE to attend and lunch and refreshments will be provided.
Venue
The event will be held at Microsoft’s UK Campus at Thames Valley Park, Reading.
Booking Enquires

Find out the detailed agenda and book online now.
Alternatively, for telephone booking enquiries, call 0870 166 6680 quoting Ref: 6049

I'll be there and would like to meet up with all my old system administrator friends from around the country. Please feel to drop me a line at markjo@microsoft.com if you are coming or want to ask any questions.

Microsoft UK Student page goes live - built on Silverlight

markjo — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:32:41 GMT

I haven't been part of the development but it's good to see this finally go live. We've been hankering for a 1-stop-shop for students wanting to see what Microsoft has to offer for ages and finally have it at:

www.microsoft.com/uk/students

It highlights:

Windows Vista
Windows Media
Xbox and PC gaming
Jobs
Office 2007
Windows Mobile
Visual Studio and Expression
Security
Imagine Cup

(Warning - it can make you feel a bit queasy when the globe starts to spin to fast. All part of the fun and I'm sure we'll continue to developer over the coming months)

Me = Evangelism -> Marketing

markjo — Fri, 18 May 2007 16:07:56 GMT

It's finally public knowledge, that I am moving away from pure evangelism (yeap, that's my job title!) and over to marketing! I currently spend a lot of time deep in technology (primarily Silverlight and WPF) coding, learning it and talking about it and I've enjoyed the immense opportunities this has given me (from being part of Windows Vista launch through to travelling the country with my team in a branded 4x4). But, about a month ago an opportunity presented itself which was too good to turn down and enabled me to move my career in a direction towards marketing (which I enjoy a lot!).

So, in the next few weeks I'll be transitioning from Developer Evangelist to Academic Marketing Manager. My responsibility will be quite simple (this is a personal view):

Connect with as many students as possible and help them get better skills on Microsoft technology and have the best start to their career! And hopefully improve their view of Microsoft as an organisation along the way

What does that mean in reality? I'll be working on the marketing for all the academic programs from the Imagine Cup through to curriculum in teaching and software access. I've done this type of thing before but as an evangelist working at the coal face, now I get to help reach thousands more students from a marketing angle. Maybe I'll even get the chance to bring that big Blue Monster I hear so much into my work:

This blog will be staying the same though as I'm ultimately a technologist in disguise and want to keep that passion in my life fulfilled. Hopefully I'll get to diversify a bit into the fun worlds of robotics, XNA, Windows Home Server and other gumf that students love to play with :)

An introduction to WPF for academics

markjo — Thu, 03 May 2007 11:52:43 GMT

In my old job, I used to spend a lot of time talking to academics about curriculum development covering a number of subject areas. Unfortunately, WPF was never really on the agenda due to timing and it being a beta product - now that it is prime time several academics have contacted the team and they in turn came to me as I tend to spend a lot of time talking about it. I thought it would be a good excuse to put a blog post together with some of the fundamentals of WPF from a teaching point of view.

Simple what is?

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a UI/application framework for creating next generation user experiences (software) on Windows Vista (and down-level to XP/Server 2003). Software that can look like this (no more battleship grey buttons):

Introduction

This Getting Started with WPF introduces what WPF is, XAML as a UI markup language and several of the main building blocks of WPF:

To drill deeper and look at the 'engine' running WPF then you need to read this article on WPF Architecture. This Channel 9 video interview with Greg Schecter discusses how WPF is designed.

Tools

I think there are three things a lecturer needs to teach WPF depending on their interest:

Windows SDK and XamlPad
Visual Studio Codename 'Orcas'
Expression Blend (new designer products from Microsoft)

all of which come under the MSDN AA software access program

Software examples using WPF

It's always great to show students what real-world applications exist that harness the power of any given technology. This long Wiki list has many examples of applications that you can download and install or even run through the browser (WPF can be deployed through IE in a browser window).

Books

Applications = Code + Markup: A Guide to WPF (Charles Petzold)

Programming Windows Presentation Foundation (Chris Sells & Ian Griffiths)

Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed (Adam Nathan)

Foundations of WPF (Laurence Moroney)

Essential Windows Presentation Foundation (Chris Anderson)

Hands on labs

Practical tutorials to learn how to create and harness the power of WPF:

Building WPF Applications

Building WPF XBAP Browser Applications

Creating Rich 2D and 3D Content

Creating a Rich Reading Experience

Using Databinding

Existing college courses

The only one I could find online with detail was this one and isn't 100% aligned with university teaching (more practical learning than CS focussed) but a good start for anyone wanting ideas to start:

WPF Academic college course
Designing User Interfaces with Expression Blend

Any questions?

Academic connection is the place to start and a worthwhile community to be part of if you are interested in the world of teaching.

Technorati tags: WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation, academia, teaching

UK Imagine Cup 2007

markjo — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 02:13:00 GMT

The local Imagine Cup software design finals are over once again. I was lucky enough to be involved, this year in a much more relaxed capacity doing "demo dolly" with my team mates showing the latest and greatest in developer tools and platforms, and also getting to give some last minute support to the final 3 teams presenting to the audience of students, academics and other VIPs.

Three teams got through to the final 3, after a grueling set of poster presentations to the judges, were:

The Seedlings, University of Hull
Comp-u-teach, University of Aberystwyth
Herts of Code, University of Herfordshire.

The theme this year is around improving education and each of the teams in the top 3 (and the other 8 in the final) created some really innovative ideas. I won't give you a run down on what each team delivered but they covered every angle I could think of from education tools for young kids wanting to learn to program through to rich media applications that aid international language learning.

Mark Quirk (Head of technology for Microsoft UK Developer and Platform) summed up really well what makes these students and the Imagine Cup in general so exciting, I'm paraphrasing a lot: "normal people live with problems every day from sitting in a traffic jam to world hunger,...., but the students here today go way beyond by solving them!". This is the kind of stuff I get really excited about, the fact that the students we saw today have the potential to be the next BillG, or Larry and Sergey, or Hewlett and Packard, etc. One great example of this is Team 3Pair from last year who have all since gone onto great things either here in the UK or gone out to the US - it was cool seeing Tom and James again, just pity Andy couldn't make it across the pond for a proper reunion.

And the 1-2-3 ordering was as follows:

The Seedlings, University of Hull
Comp-u-teach, University of Aberystwyth
Herts of Code, University of Herfordshire.

Yes, that's right, exactly the same order they came out and presented in (I did ask one of the judges if they just decided to stick with the order and have a relaxing cuppa instead but he said it was a nightmare decision as they were all so good). Well done Seedlings and good luck for Korea!

Hopefully we will see some blog entries go up over the next few days but the first one is from one of the stars of Herts of Code, Ben Hall. Seems he had an enjoyable time and I'm sure will benefit loads from the added exposure that the IC brings, maybe with the confidence of having presented in Chicago he'll be submittng a session for DDD 5.

Technorati tags: imagine cup, uk, university of hull, university of aberystwyth, university of hertfordshire

Birmingham University Talk - Lap around WPF

markjo — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 13:32:00 GMT

Yesterday, I travelled north to visit Birmingham Computer Science department to give a guest presentation on WPF to a large lecture theatre's worth of students. I think that will be my 4th presentation there in 3 odd years so it's kind of a regular gig, even though I was filling in for Team Academia, and a pleasure as always.

As promised to the students who attended and the lecturer, Dr Edmonson, here are the slides (unfortunately I can't upload the code although there are plenty of great demos around to look at)

The talk covered the following topics:

1. Introduction and look at the history of Operating Systems and their user interfaces
2. Value of User Experience in current and future software
3. What is .NET 3.0?
4. WPF, it's architecture and XAML
5. Demo - live coding bonanza
     - Layout and controls
     - Data and DataTemplates
     - Templates and Styling
     - Triggers and Animation
6. Summary and demo of New York Times reader

As part of this module Dr Edmonson allows industry speakers like yours truly to propose essay topics and the one which we came up with in his office before hand which I think marries the real-world/industry direction and the academic research world really well is:

Is Vista a move in the direction of an invisible OS/Application? (or words to that effect)

My old team mate Andy Sithers will be doing the marking and I'm sure I'll get roped into helping.

And as a challenge to the students who attended my talk - if you have any questions about the talk, WPF or how you think you should approach the essay then leave a comment/question in the Comments section of this blog entry.

XNA Express BETA released - games industry 2.0

markjo — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 12:04:54 GMT

I've been following the development of XNA for a long time since it's introduction at GDC a couple of years ago and was aware of the developments with XNA Express and the possibility to develop games for the Xbox 360.

In my old job I used to spend a lot of time working with universities teaching games programming and design and this was always the number one ask - "how can I get an Xbox Development Kit?". For a number of business and IP issues we could never make this possible in the UK and we had been hoping for an XNA Express type product for a long time.

A great article by Bill Thompson @ the BBC talks about his experiences of the games industry way back when (when I started off in computers there were developers writing games in their bedrooms which was the start of the games industry here in the UK). Combining the product, some great teaching material from someone like Hull or Derby, and some very passionate students I think this could open up a new world of Indie/Cottage-industry games companies in the UK with loads of ideas and the potential for new Rares/Lionheads/Bizarres right here in sunny old Blighty!!

It's now available here, so go get it and create the next Grand Theft Auto or Project Gotham: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21e979e3-b8ae-4ea6-8e65-393ea7684d6c&displaylang=en

tags: XNA, Games Programming

Mark Johnston's Blog : Teaching

XNA Creators Club codes in MSDN AA now

The Ultimate Steal...or Office for £38.95 is now available to university staff as well

Imagine Cup Day on 5th June 2008 - Celebrating the best in UK student talent

Silverlight event for *UK* Academics - 12th March 2008

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0870 166 6630

How to get your students registered for the Imagine Cup

Use a lab session or book a lab for your class to come to

Have them register

Which competitions?

Helping them compete

Faculty: Promoting Imagine Cup to your students

URL to promote to students to register

The Competitors Guide

Web site, Blog Banners and Email templates

Top 5 things to tell your students about the Imagine Cup

Unannounced Prizes for all 9 competitions

Best practice for promoting on campus

Xbox 360 + Students + Paul Smith = Freeplay lounge and GamesCity event

Are you interested in teaching Silverlight? Then read on...

MSDN AA System Administrator event in UK: 6 September. Register Now!

Microsoft UK Student page goes live - built on Silverlight

www.microsoft.com/uk/students

Me = Evangelism -> Marketing

An introduction to WPF for academics

Simple what is?

Introduction

Tools

Software examples using WPF

Books

Hands on labs

Existing college courses

Any questions?

UK Imagine Cup 2007

Birmingham University Talk - Lap around WPF

XNA Express BETA released - games industry 2.0

Silverlight event for UK Academics - 12th March 2008