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Microsoft at SIGCSE 2012

For the first time in several years I am not attending SIGCSE this week. I’m really missing it as so many of my friends will be there. But no use crying over what could have been. Even though I am not there the Microsoft presence is going to be awesome. I wanted to highlight some of it. As you can see from the schedule below there are both short booth sessions with prizes, some regular sessions and a workshop. When you go to these talks please do two things. One is come back and leave your thoughts on the session (or anything else about Microsoft’s presence) on this blog and Two TELL EVERYONE ALFRED SENT YOU! Smile And the Microsoft people in the booth can’t wait to talk to you about what they brought to show off so keep the booth busy.

APCS teachers will really want to talk to Susan Evans about the Pex4Fun for APCS that she has been working on. I have previewed some of this and it looks great. It gives a chance for students to work on interesting and relevant exercises online and on their own time. Great practice for students. Related in some ways is Try F# which is an online tool for learning this great functional language.

Rob Miles is an outstanding speaker and has been teaching Windows Phone development for a while so if you are interested in phones go hear him talk. For something really different related to phones catch the talk on TouchDevelop which lets you do your phone development on the phone itself!

Pat Yongpradit will be talking about XNA and Kodu as well. Always a great talk from him. For people who like a little bit of hardware to play with NET Gadgeteer  was a big hit last year. If you didn’t see it then you will want to see it this year.

This year, we are having 10-min Demo Talks at the booth at 15 past each hour during peak times, which include a lucky draw for great prizes . Attendees can be a winner at a demo, or just be a winner by spending time with our experts. The timetable for Demo Talks and prizes is:

 

Day 

Time 

Demo Talk

Presenter 

Prize

Thursday 

10:15 am

Windows Phone

Rob Miles 

Windows phone

12:15 pm

Project Hawaii

Arjmand Samuel 

Windows phone

1:15 pm

.NET Gadgeteer

Scarlet S. Grosche 

.NET Gadgeteer Toolkit

3:15 pm

TouchDevelop

Peli de Halleux 

Windows phone

Friday 

10:15 am

XNA and Kodu

Pat Yongpradit  

Kinect for Windows Sensor

12:15 pm

Pex4fun for APCS

Susan Evans 

Windows phone

1:15 pm

Try F#

Nigel Horspool 

Three F# books

3:15 pm

Faculty Programs

Arkady Retik 

Kinect for Windows Sensor

Saturday 

10:15 am

Imagine Cup

Kimberly Voltero 

Kinect for Windows Sensor

As part of the main program Microsoft is presenting 4 Sessions and an exciting Workshop on TouchDevelop on Saturday. The schedule is:

 

Day 

Time 

Topic

Room 

Thursday 

10:45 am–12:00 pm

Empowering Students: Teaching Software Development with Windows Phone

305A 

1:45–3:00 pm

Creative Uses for Kinect in Teaching—with Curriculum Materials

305A 

Friday 

1:45–3:00 pm

Fun, Phone, and the Future: Microsoft XNA Game Studio, Windows Phone, and Kinect SDK

305B 

3:45–5:00 pm

Cloud in a Classroom: Faculty Experiences Panel

305A 

Saturday 

3:00–6:00 pm

Workshop on Engaging Your Students by Teaching Programming Using Only Mobile Devices with TouchDevelop

305A 

So if you are at SIGCSE be sure to visit that Microsoft both to see some cool educational technologies and to tell them I sent you.