Wot u do with .net : MICROSOFT

Software changes the world – be proud to be part of it

paulfo — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:09:18 GMT

One of the joys of working for Microsoft is the real world citizenship. That sounds really corporate, but what I mean is the ability to stand up and do the right thing. Microsoft of course does lots locally and internationally as befits a successful company. But its the ability to do stuff as an individual that helps me fulfil ambitions, help others and feel like I’m making a positive contribution to the world.

For the last few years I’ve been able to support the First Lego League in the UK, and the UK Films for learning community by building and maintaining their websites. These are great activities that enable teachers and students of a wide range of ages to get in the mix with science and technology. Both have a huge effect on those taking part – enabling teachers to teach with flair and originality, and students to learn while having fun and enriching experiences.

Over the summer I’ve been able to do a few fun events with schools and colleges in my area. This has included:

College Technology day. I ran a workshop, repeated three times during the day, on different aspects of software and human interaction including speech controlled robot navigation, direct robot programming, multi-touch on Windows 7 and XNA game development. Nearly 60 students attended during the three workshops, all able to take part hands on building and driving stuff. Fantastic.

High School induction. Initially I was asked to run a robotics workshop as part of the schools activities to welcome its new year six intact. We thought we’d get enough kids interested to run one Saturday morning workshop with 30 student places. It was a surprise and a joy to get a phone call from Mr Cowan – the technology centre manager – to say 145 students had applied to take part. There is only one thing you can do in the face of such enthusiasm – scale out! With the help of Chris Proctor, organiser of the First Lego League in the UK, as well as my UK colleague Daniel Sumner, I was able to borrow more Lego NXT robots enough to allow ten robotic teams. With Mr Cowan’s and the support of senior teaching staff, we were then able to run the workshop twice a day for two consecutive Saturdays and allow all 145 students to take part!

Primary School club. Keen to support my local school, I was able to attend the after school Lego Club with my NXT robots (MS actually paid for them!!). In the brief hour after school, for a whole term, we built and programmed the robots to complete Lego missions on one of the First Lego League challenges. Fantastic fun, for boys and girls aged only 8yo. It never stops to amaze me how our children can rise to any challenge given the opportunity to participate.

My most recent adventure was to present a ‘Microsoft and me’ session for a local careers event for high school students. The event was full of fun with Thrust SSC engineers and a British Airways hostess presenting amongst others. I had a smallish group attend my session – an affect of the standardised lacklustre ITC classes I suspect. We had a great interactive session with discusses covering a range of topics including competitive angles. I enjoyed myself very much and today got some nice feedback from the students eval forms including comments like ‘Why can’t we have an IT teacher like that’ and ‘ Paul Foster is cool’. :-)

My latest project is to try to support a collection of schools in Uganda. They have very little access to computers and therefore the internet, but the teaching staff want to be part of the internet phenomenon and to share their schools stories. By using their mobile phones or dial-up cyber cafes the teachers want to publish what their students are doing. Having got joined up with a UK volunteer recently back from Uganda, thanks to the Films for learning community, I’m now building out a hosted web server that will be able to support not just one school but as many of the local schools as would like to take part. I’m talking to a UK hosting company about their dedicated server products and hope to have the site up and running before Christmas.

Projects like all of these demonstrate just how powerful software is. As Ray Ozzie says, in one of our new employee induction videos, ‘with software, if you can imagine it, you can build it’.

For me, being part of software that does change the world, making a positive contribution to all, makes me proud, excited and humbled.

I am one of many at Microsoft who does this sort of stuff. We are Microsoft, Microsoft is us. We are a force for good, and all the competitor FUD and the rubbish urban myths will not change us.

I’m a PC, and I’m going to change the world for the better.

CROSS POST FROM: http://wotudo.net

ReMix 08 - FREE SOFTWARE!

paulfo — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:14:40 GMT

Did I mention I'm presenting at ReMix 08 in Brighton on the 18th and 19th Sept? Well, if I didn't, I am - XNA games dev, MS Robotics and the sneak peaks keynote!!

Now, despite being on TV lately (re: Photosynth launch - BBC Click and Sky News Technofile. You missed them? Gutted), I can understand that I may not be your primary reason for attending ReMix. However, I have some news that could be.

Free software. To be precise, every delegate will receive a Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription - that is worth over £650! Given a ReMix ticket costs only £349 (£299 if you use this code CC11Pg) that is a good saving PLUS you get two days of sessions showing you some of the cool stuff you can do with your new software!

Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription includes:

Expression® Studio
(Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Encoder, Expression Blend, Expression Media)
Visual Studio® Standard Edition
Office Standard Edition
Office Visio® Professional
Windows® XP
Windows Vista® Business Edition
Virtual PC
Parallels Desktop for Mac (so Mac developers can install Windows Vista in a virtual machine on their Mac and run all the other software included)
Pre-configured virtualized server environments

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/purchase.aspx?key=professional

That looks like a great bundle to me. Make sure you don't miss out on the software and the knowledge - get your ReMix08 ticket now!

Awaiting the 2008 First LEGO League challenge

paulfo — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:17:15 GMT

All around the world, thousands of young people, teachers, parents and supporters are awaiting the publication of the 2008 First LEGO League challenge. Not due until Friday 5th Sept, teams only have to wait one more day.

The First LEGO League is one of many technology and science based challenges run by the US charity FIRST. FIRST's goal is to promote science and technology to young people. The First LEGO League is now a truly global event with 1000's of teams entering from countries all over the world. In it, teams of up to 10 young people aged from 9 to 16yrs (in the UK, ages vary slightly in other countries) have to complete several challenges. The challenge is set within a specific science or technology theme - we've had ocean exploration, nanotechnology, energy solutions and this year Climate Connections.

The challenge element that gets the most attention is the robot game. The team have to design, build and program a LEGO Mindstorms robot to complete several LEGO missions specifically manufactured for the challenge. The missions are laid out on a challenge mat and are designed to highlight a specific science or technology within the year's challenge theme. The robot has to complete the missions as autonomously as possible. Handling of the robot outside of the challenge mat base area will cause penalty fines for the teams. The teams are given only 2.5 minutes for their robot to complete the challenge - the best score from three runs goes to their challenge total.

Along side the robot challenge, and probably the most significant piece of the challenge, is the creation and presentation of a research project. Each team must identify an issue within the challenge theme, research it, propose at least one solution to it of their design, and share their learning with others. Teams are encouraged to reach out to business and academic specialists for help in producing their project. It is always great to see the enthusiastic support given to the teams. One year, a local team to me actually got to visit a nanotechnology clean room as part of their project research! Teams produce all manner of presentations and materials to share their research. From drama sketches to web sites.

The teams meet up a regional tournaments where they have to run their robot as well as make presentations on their research project, their robot programming and building experience and their teamwork experience during the challenge. The 'winning' teams from each tournament go on to national and then international tournaments - which leads to some exciting and motivational adventures!

The First LEGO League enables young people with a wide range of experience and ultimately skills. From engineering to software programming, from science subjects to life skills like communication and teamwork. the First LEGO League really does make a positive contribution to young peoples education. And all of this is accomplished through a happy band of adult volunteers who run after school clubs for the teams, mentor the teams, organise the tournaments and ultimately judge the teams work. It is a very satisfying activity to be involved in.

You can read more about the First LEGO League at the US site, or the UK site that I manage on behalf of the UK organisers and all the teams.

I'd like to wish all the First LEGO League teams success in the 2008 challenge - GFI!