Contagious Curiosity : Fun

Teaching Kids to Code – Graduating from SmallBasic

llangit — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:34:53 GMT

Regular blog readers may know of my work with Microsoft’s free kid’s coding IDE, SmallBasic as a tool to introduce the fun of coding to DigiGirlz. As I work with my volunteer developer teams on improving the way we work SmallBasic (more on that later in this post), I am thrilled to see a major enhancement in SmallBasic itself.

Kudos to the incredible Vijaye Raji (a developer on our Visual Studio team). He’s not only created SmallBasic alone and on his own time, but he continues to improve it. He’s recently released version 0.7, which includes the new ‘Graduate’ Feature. This allows SmallBasic applications to be seamlessly migrated to VB.NET.

To see this in action, download SmallBasic (it’s FREE) and install it. Open the IDE and write a simple program (sample screen below).

After writing your program, simply click on the new ‘Graduate’ button on the toolbar and the magic happens. Just fill in the destination on the pop-up dialog, and you’re done!

Just for fun, I’ve installed the Visual Basic Express 2010 beta 2 on my machine and am using it to open the newly created VB project. All of the Express editions of Visual Studio are also free – you could also use Visual Basic Express 2008. Because I did use 2010, there is a ‘update project’ wizard that pops up – just click through those dialogs and enjoy the results (shown below).

Of course, this being Visual Studio Express, you can enjoy all the features included in the Express Editions of Visual Studio, such as the Object Browser (shown below), debugging, etc… I am so excited about these capabilities as we are teaching kids over the long term!

In addition to the new ‘Graduate’ feature, my team of community technical volunteers and I are continuing to work with Vijaye to prioritize requests for improvements to the SmallBasic IDE, based our our work teaching with it.

Along with these improvements in tools, I have been working with community developer and technical instructor Llewellyn Falco on improvements in teaching methods and he’s come up with a great idea to ‘give legs’ to SmallBasic after the live classes we teach. His concept is to use ‘recipes’ for further exploration. We are quite interested in your feedback on this approach. Here’s a link to the wiki where we are posting recipes (partial screenshot shown below as well).

What do you think? Let us know. We are particularly interested in hearing feedback from middle and high-school technology classroom teachers on our new approach, so if you are reading this blog and know a teacher – please pass along the link – thanks!

HTC TouchPro 2 – a beautiful phone

llangit — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:42:24 GMT

The Windows Mobile team (thanks Loke!) sent me the new HTC Touch Pro 2 phone today– I am in heaven setting it up. This is, by far, the most beautiful phone I’ve ever used. I’ll just post the pictures from HTC’s website. The touch capability is terrific as well. Here’s the product specs as well. It took me 15 minutes to set it up – flawless! I can’t wait to upgrade to Windows 6.5, when it’s released soon.

And it tilts!

Must quit playing with new phone, must get some sleep…

DigiGirlz Summer Camp 2009

llangit — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:38:30 GMT

We hosted around 20 girls over the past two days at Microsoft’s Irvine, CA office. The global DigiGirlz program is funded by Microsoft and supports annual hosting of either one-day spring events or multi-day summer camps. The goal of the events is to get high-school aged girls interested in technology careers. I am the lead for SoCal. This year I elected to lead 4 events. The two spring events occurred in LA and San Diego. This first camp was held in Irvine. There will be another two-day camp at New Horizons, Culver City, CA on Thursday August 27 and 28. 50 high-school aged girls are registered to attend that camp.

The OC Register covered the Irvine event both on the front page of today’s Local section (two photos and a short story) and on-line (13 photos and stories).

Also some of the leads took pictures. Kim Schmidt was showing the girls SongSmith.

John Hubbard created a Photosynth of the participants.

Here is the list of volunteers (their roles at the camp listed as well) for the Irvine camp:

From Microsoft: Cindy Palmer / proctor
From the local technical community:
Kim Schmidt, Gina Johnston, Chris Savolskis curriculum creators, instructors and proctors
John Hubbard, Michael Hubbard / proctors
Marek Schmidt / setup help
Alexandra Moth / Heather Vescent / Lauren Berger / speakers

and a picture :)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We encourage ANYONE to reuse our curriculum. Below is the agenda and after that are all our our PowerPoint presentations.

Camp Agenda

Day One
8:00 – 8:30 - prepare facility, greet girls, gather registration / release forms – Icebreaker
9:00-10:00 – SQL Database class
10:00 – 10:15 – break
10:30-11:45 – Small Basic class
11:45 – 1:00 – Lunch + technical career discussion with all instructors
1:00 – 2:15 – DemoFest – Kodu, MS Surface, SongSmith, Windows 7 multi touch applications
2:15 – 3:00 – speaker, Intern Queen – Lauren Berger

Day Two
8:00 – 8:30 - prepare facility, greet girls
9:00-10:00 – Movie maker class
10:00 – 10:15 – break
10:30-11:45 – XNA Game class
11:45 – 1:00 – Lunch + speaker – Alex Moth from Girl Gamer
1:00 – 2:15 – Blend 3 class
2:15 – 3:00 – speaker, Heather Vescent from the Purple Tornado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Classroom machine setup requires the following

Internet access
Vista w/ Windows Movie Maker
SQL Server Express 2008 w/Advanced Services
XNA
Visual Studio 2008 Express C#
Expression Blend 3 CTP + Silverlight SDK

We also set up demo machines with
Kodu (Academic edition is via internal MS beta only) and requires wired XBox 360 controller
SongSmith - (non-expiring edition is via internal MS beta only)
Windows 7 Touch Pack Applications on multi touch HP TouchSmart tx2 laptop (software is MS internal only at this time)

We used a samples files for the database class (boyfriends.mdf) and for Blend class. We also created an icebreaker activity. All of these files can be downloaded from this Skydrive location (you must sign in with ANY Windows Live ID first).

Power points

1 Digi Girlz So Cal Databases Kims Final

View more presentations from llangit.

2 Digi Girlz Small Basic

View more presentations from llangit.

3 Kodu

View more presentations from llangit.

4 Making Movies

View more presentations from llangit.

5 Digigirlz Xna

View more presentations from llangit.

6 Digigirl Creating A Video Player In Blend 3

View more presentations from llangit.

Another important piece of information we shared with all of the DigiGirlz is the fact that they (and ANY high-school aged student) can have access to FULL VERSIONS of our software for studying via the DreamSpark program. Included products are shown in the screenshot below.

So, spread the word, find a kid and teach her (or him) how to code today! If you’d like to be a part of a future DigiGirlz event, please read the FAQ below first.

DigiGirlz FAQ

Q. When is the next event? Is there an event in my area?
A. Read the DigiGirlz site – all events are listed there.

Q. I want to send my daughter – what is the age limit? requirement, etc..?
A. Read the DigiGirlz site – all attendance information is listed there. All attendees must register in advance. Each event has specific attendance limits because there are hands on classes (i.e. need to have one computer per attendee.)

Q. I would like to volunteer, what can I do?
A. Great! We need help with logistics management (i.e. answer email, evaluations, etc..) and with technical classroom proctoring. We do conduct ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions at DigiGirlz SoCal prior to each event. Proctors should have technical backgrounds.

Q. Can I use your courseware?
A. Yes, but this is a volunteer effort, so there is no one to support it beyond what I post on this blog.

Q. I would like to be a speaker at a DigiGirlz event, what is the next step?
A. Send an email to the event coordinator (email listed on DigiGirlz site) with your resume / topic

Q. I am a teacher, can I attend?
A. This varies by location. Contact the location lead to ask via the email listed on the DigiGirlz site.

Q. Can boys attend?
A. No, this program is specifically targeted at girls. However, you can use/modify the courses and hold your own event with these topics.

SoCalDevGal does the social

llangit — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:43:45 GMT

What’s going on with my Windows 7 blog series, you might be wondering? Well, I am still working on it, in fact I’ve broadened the scope of my studies to include ALL AREAS of Windows 7 development (in preparation for my upcoming trip and talks in South Africa). I do plan to publish quite a few more posts in the series over the next couple of weeks. Lest you think I am all work and no play, I’ll have to admit that I’ve been combining work and socializing too. Below is a sampling of recent good times…

Geek BBQ in Venice

Swanky party in Hollywood

Beach party with the Laguna Girls(I took the picture, so I am not in this one!)

Birthday celebration with the cool girls

Hanging with the hipsters downtown LA

Oh and there’s more to come – this week I’ve got four more tech social events to go to. Life is good.

SoCalDevGal shares…’Teaching Kids to Code’

llangit — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:04:24 GMT

Here’s the deck from my prezo at SoCalCodeCamp in San Diego (UCSD) – enjoy! Examples included have the following availability – SmallBasic is a free download, Kodu is NOT available to the general public on the PC. Kodu will be released as an XBox 360 game soon.

Abou Teaching Girls Technology

View more documents from lynnlangit.

Report from StepUp First Annual Career Conference in Carson, CA

llangit — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:29:47 GMT

On Saturday after TechEd, I attended the first-ever StepUp Career Conference for underserved high-school aged girls. This event was put on by the national StepUp non-profit, based in Los Angeles and was hosted at the Dermologica HQ in Carson, CA. On this day 30 girls and their professional mentors participated in a series of activities around career development. I was connected to this organization’s local lead, Alexa Brandt, by formerly LA-based do-gooder Sloane Berrent, because of my work with Microsoft’s Digigirlz program.

I loved attending and learned quite a bit about how their very effective professional mentor program runs. I enjoyed observing the activities and the girls seemed quite engaged all day. Below is a picture from a great activity, speed mentoring. During this mentees were encircled by mentors, music was played and when it stopped, girls asked professional women a series of questions. Dancing was encouraged, fun and learning was had by all! This was a very successful event and I intend to continue to work with this organization in Southern California.

Here’s the detailed agenda for the conference:

Agenda:

1. Mentor Check In, Debriefing and Refreshments (9:30-10) - Review event details with Senior Program Manager Alexa Brandt - Girls Arrive (10:00)

2. Welcome, Introduction of Mentor/Mentees and Ice Breakers (10-11)

3. Break into two groups – Successful Sisters & Working Women (swap after sessions)

Working Women: How to Become an Internship Queen by Lauren Berger www.internqueen.com (11:00 – 11:45)

a. What is an internship/part-time job. Why is it beneficial, why would you work for free? Where can you find an internship? Mentors share their internship experiences

b. Strengths with fun self-assessment tests

c. Interview tips and role playing

Successful Sisters: A Career Girl’s Keys To Success Led by Lisa Lee (11:00 – 11:45)

a. What is a Career, My Mission: What Do I Want to Do

b. My Plan: How Do I Make it Happen, Importance of Education, Time Management & Prioritization

c. Women’s History in the Workplace

d. Activity: Each pair will be given an item such as a cel phone, magazine, credit card, etc. The pairs will be asked to brainstorm as many careers and related skills that correlate with the product. The exercise is designed to get girls to look at everyday items in a new way and get them thinking about careers they may not have considered

4. Lunch and Trivia (12:30-1:15) Please sit with your mentee(s) during lunch

5. Career Speed Networking (1:15-1:40)

a. Inner/Outer Circle – all mentors will be in the “inner circle” in which they face out while girls will be on the outer circle, facing in. Music will be playing while everyone walks in a circle. When the music stops, girls will ask 2-3 career related questions to whichever mentor they stop in front of. We will play a handful of rounds.

6. Passport to Professions: Career Stations (1:40 – 2:25)

a. Mentors will be grouped together by industry. Each industry will have a table where you will sit. Girls will have a passport booklet. They have to find mentors that meet certain requirements such as find a woman that works with clients or patients. How does she work with different personality types?

b. If you meet the bill, chat with the girl and then stamp her passport

7. Closing Remarks and Gift Bags (2:25-2:30) - Girls turn in their passport for a Dermologica goody bag. Volunteers get bags too!

Report from TechEd – Jam on IT Community Party

llangit — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:19:27 GMT

Thursday was community party night at TechEd. In addition to the attendee party, we in SoCal were able to invite around 300 people from the local tech community (who weren’t registered to attend TechEd). It was really cool to see who turned out for our free food and drink, and then hung around for the social events, the Birds of a Feather informal tech sessions hosted by INETA, the women in tech event (more on that in the next blog post) and/or the speaker idol competition. Here were the activities:

The mix was really great. In particular, in addition to SoCal MVPs and MS community members, our local evangelism team reached out to invite SoCal tech luminaries from social media and those who use competitive products (i.e. Adobe, Google, etc…)

In general, I heard lots of good comments. Probably the best way is to look at highlights from the TweetStream – complete stream here.

Report from TechEd – ITPros know how to throw a great party!

llangit — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:17:24 GMT

Well it wouldn’t be TechEd, if there weren’t one or more fun parties to attend, but I have to hand it to our corporate ITPro team this year. Their Windows 7 SpringBoard party at the StandardLA was really great.

The atmosphere was great – Stephen Rose (Sr. Community Manager Windows Client ITPro) was a great host. He’s also been literally traveling the entire planet talking non-stop about Windows 7. If you know an ITPro – send them his way.

Joey Snow from TechNet Edge was doing DJ duty at the party. Joey is another ‘rock-star’ speaker. In fact he and Stephen are often traveling together these days, speaking everywhere from the MCT summit in Prague, to TechEd and more. What makes both of these guys so effective is not so long ago they were working ITPros (both joined MS only in the last couple of years), so they really know what it’s like in the real world. Also they’ve both been MCTs for years, so they are effective communicators.

Of course you probably already heard the big announcements (Win7 ‘on track’ for holiday delivery, WinSvr2008 R2 RC available at the show), so what else is on the mind of ITPros at TechEd? Although it’s not really my world, there was much talk around the team’s Springboard website – even mentioned in the TechEd keynote as being a top site for customers.

*special thanks to my friend and top photographer Wm. Marc Salsberry for yet again, taking incredible pictures.

Post TechEd SoCal Tech Events

llangit — Sat, 16 May 2009 19:01:02 GMT

There are worse problems to have, but a person really needs stamina to keep up with all of the possible tech events in SoCal. I had fun at TechEd, working in the Oslo booth with the team (finally met Don Box in person!), leading the WiT event, attending sessions (mostly BI or Windows Mobile), and, of course, being social.

If you didn’t make it to TechEd US last week, check out TechEd Online. I think one of the most interesting parts is the blog aggregator page – here. Also our friends at TechZulu did a series of interviews with top TechEd developer speakers at TechEd. I’ll post links to those videos soon. TechZulu was also kind enough to cover the WiT WomenBuild SeriousPlay with LEGOs at TechEd. That video will be linked here as well. Check out the facebook group for more info about this global program.

Now that we are ‘post-TechEd’, what events are on my radar this week?

MON – DigitalDrinksLA at the Viceroy. Facebook link here.

TUES – geekDinner at uWink in Hollywood. Upcoming link here.

WED – MSDN event ‘Best of Mix’ at MS LA. Registration link here. Event is also running at MS Irvine next week (Thurs, May 28) – reg link here. I plan to definitely be at the Irvine instance, probably will bring some of my books to raffle and sign as well.

WED – DigitalGames go Social Panel discussion at uWink in Hollywood – reg link is here.

THURS – Black Card Circle in Pasadena. I think this is an invite only event – it’s tech and charity, so, of course, I will go. :) Here’s the facebook link.

Lest you think that all I do is attend events, I’ll mention that I am beginning work on a couple of projects as well.

1) DigiGirlz summer courses and events.

2) SQL Data Services webcasts for the Azure team

3) Abstracts and Sessions for TechEd South Africa in Durban Aug 2 – 5.

SoCalDevGal is a Twitter Evangelist

llangit — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:05:09 GMT

SoCalDevGal asks ‘Want 5k? – Can YOU code a killer Cloud app?’

llangit — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:08:18 GMT

From the site…GOOD LUCK and happy coding!

“new CloudApp() is a US-based developer challenge for .NET & PHP developers creating cloud applications or services (hereafter "application") on the Azure™ Services Platform. Have your application judged by industry leaders Om Malik and Michael Cote and share your cloud coding skills with other developers. Grand Prize Winners will be announced on stage at Structure 09 and featured on azure.com. Register and submit your application now! – there are three contest categories (listed below):

1) .NET Applications - Create a .NET application running on Windows Azure.

2) PHP Applications - Build a PHP application running on Windows Azure.

3) Community Winner - A community winner will be chosen in addition to the individual category winners determined by Michael Cote and Om Malik. Starting June 19th through June 29th, your friends and peers will be allowed to vote for their favorite application to determine the Community winner. Spread the word about your application through your blog and Twitter.

Winning submissions will:

Be featured on www.azure.com as well as at major Microsoft events
Be featured in a video interview on Channel 9
Be announced at Structure 09
Receive cash ($):
- NET App Category winner: $5,000 VISA gift card
- PHP App Category winner: $5,000 VISA gift card
- Community winner: $2,500 VISA gift card

When?

April 30: Contest Open
June 18: Submission deadline
June 19: Community voting starts
June 25: .NET & PHP category winners announced @ Structure 09
June 29: Community voting ends
June 30: Community winner announced

Getting Started

Sign up for the Azure Services
Download the SDKs and Tools
Learn more about the Azure Services
Tutorial videos are also available here
More info on deploying PHP applications on Windows Azure

Need Microsoft Development Tools?

Students can get Visual Studio to write a .NET application through Microsoft DreamSpark
Startup companies can use BizSpark to get software licenses and developer tools
Developers can also use the free Visual Studio Express to get started “

SoCalDevGal plays…MSDN Code Gallery – Solver Foundation

llangit — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:51:49 GMT

I know most of you know about CodePlex, but do you use the MSDN Code Gallery? Both are FREE code repositories – so what is the difference you may ask. From the FAQ:

Code Gallery is a community-enabled Web site where you can share developer information and resources such as sample applications and code snippets. CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting Web site. Code Gallery is a pure storage site, with no project management capabilities. If you need to manage a live code project, CodePlex is a better choice.

BTW..what is Microsoft Solver Foundation, you may ask. From the abstract:

“Microsoft Solver Foundation is a new .Net-based system designed to contribute to an integrated business planning and optimization platform. Solver Foundation provides model-driven planning, scheduling, and optimization capabilities. This effort is conceived to be one part of an overall “360 degree” system that can address all business critical perspectives for business process simulation, analysis, definition, deployment, automation and full lifecycle management. Solver Foundation is focused on the initial part of this tool and model chain –planning, simulation (in v2), scheduling and optimization done during strategic decision making and business planning. Planning is understood to encompass risk modeling, process (flow) optimization, and simulation. Solver Foundation is a technology framework for providing these services to businesses and Microsoft technology partners. It delivers a set of extensible solvers underneath a framework to aide in business people making better strategic and tactical business decisions using modern operations research and mathematical programming techniques. The Solver Foundation system is designed to run in both stand-alone mode, for example as an Add-in for Excel2007, as well as part of a continuous planning/scheduling system with real-time constraints on performance and operation such as MBS’s Dynamics AX System. It is designed to support its own embedding in business server and information worker systems and to run in single-node topologies. Finally, Solver Foundation provides a rich and expressive decision modeling infrastructure for higher-level modeling of business systems using either our Optimization Modeling Language (OML) or any CLS-compliant .Net languages (e.g., C#, F#, C++, IronPython, IronRuby, etc.).”

So, go play – find some fun FREE stuff on CodePlex and/or MSDN Code Gallery. Also share (via comments on the blog) – what did you find? how did you like it?

SoCalDevGal hearts Facebook

llangit — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:05:38 GMT

When things are good, well, they are just good, aren’t they?

Where else could I talk about Developer best practices with an analyst from Wisconsin, a SQL developer from Sweden, a SharePoint admin from Kitwe (Zambia), the UG lead for Adobe in LA, the SQL UG lead from Belgium, an independent developer / trainer from Seattle, a developer from Orange County and more – all on a Sunday, no less.

More and more, I am considering abandoning blogging, rather just to use Facebook. What do you think? You are reading this blog after all, aren’t you?

Also, unlike Twitter, Facebook doesn’t seem to have the #fail problem on a regular basis.

SoCalDevGal has an idea…Virtual DigiGirlz

llangit — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:11:36 GMT

Inspiration does come from unexpected places, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking, for well over a year now, on how to take the Microsoft DigiGirlz program to the next level – that is beyond live events to scale it online. Well, I think I’ve got a good idea, which I’ve been floating around to a couple of people and today I got that extra push at, of all places, the UPS Store. Who knew that the women carefully packing my shipment has been a programmer for 25 years? Well, I sure didn’t until after I talked to her a bit. She still codes in her spare time, for love of it, even though she is semi-retired now. Without recounting the entire conversation, I’ll just say ‘thanks’, because today I am writing my idea as a proposal – I am thinking pretty big, wish me luck. I’ll post progress updates here as I get them.

To blog, to facebook, to tweet…SoCalDevGal wonders

llangit — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:35:00 GMT

What is the difference? Should these things be the same, different, differentiated, what? How much is simply TMI? Blog readers – what do you like best about blogs that you do NOT get from social media (facebook, etc..)? Does it annoy you when one or more social media vehicles is linked so you ‘get to’ read the same updates twice (or more)? What do you use your blog for? Facebook? MySpace? Twitter? FriendFeed? LinkedIn? etc…

And the tools only make it more confusing. Are you using TweetDeck yet? (screen below). I am not sure I want to facebook chat (not the tiny green dot showing online status in the facebook status) from twitter, and so on. Oh, and btw…do you notice that you rarely actually speak to anyone anymore – very few phone calls, no voice mail. Is this a good thing? Also, less email. Does more informal text communication actually improve communication?