Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

Alfred Thompson's blog about teaching computer science at the K-12 level. Alfred was a high school computer science teacher for 8 years. He has also taught grades K-8 as a computer specialist.

Kodu Game-Creation Tool for Kids Adapted for the PC

I love Kodu and I’ve written about it before (my Kodu blog posts) and I am regularly asked “when can...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/12/2010

Computer Engineer Barbie?

Those wonderful people who bring you Barbie (remember the version that said “Math is hard?”) are...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/11/2010

I’m headed to Tuesday night. I’m looking forward to helping with some Expression Web workshops and...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/11/2010

Starter Resources for Robotics Learning

iRobot is probably the best known robotics company in the US. Their Roomba vacuuming robots and...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/07/2010

Intel Schools of Distinction 2010

An announcement arrived in my inbox about applications being open for this year’s Intel Schools of...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/06/2010

High School Students Competing Against University Students

I’ve been saying for some time that the overlap between high end high school students and low end...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/05/2010

Happy New Year everyone. Are you back to school or work yet? I took two weeks off and really enjoyed...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/04/2010

What Should We Teach Software Developers

The great thing about having the career and credentials that Bjarne Stroustrup has is that he can...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 01/01/2010

Monte Carlo Simulation - Roulette

In theory, theory and practice as the same. In practice, all too often, they are not. Sometimes...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/31/2009

Keeping It Simple

Sample code is a great way to learn how to do things in computer programming. The problem for many...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/30/2009

Women and Computer Science – Is It The Environment?

The Internet was a buzz last week with reports of a study done on the effects of environment on...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/22/2009

This will probably be my last interesting links post for the year. I’m taking some vacation time and...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/21/2009

Microsoft at FETC 2010

I’m going to FTEC in Orlando this January. This will be my first time at FETC and I’m looking...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/18/2009

Where to Find Computer Science Lectures Online

With school vacations coming up this seemed like a great time to accept this guest blog post from...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/16/2009

Deploying XNA Games

Kathleen Weaver, one of the many amazing computer science teachers in Texas these days, has been...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/15/2009

Last week was the first ever national Computer Science Education week in the US. I Twittered...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/14/2009

Be Not Afraid

Several years ago I was helping out at a school book sale (private school, parents bought textbooks)...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/13/2009

Learning About Programming Language Design

Did you ever wonder why a programming language did or did not have a specific feature? Have you ever...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/11/2009

Web Development or Computer Science

I love to look at the logs to see how people find this blog. Some of the search strings people use...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/10/2009

The Importance of History in Computer Science

One of the people I really admire is Erik Meijer who is an absolutely brilliant computer scientist...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/09/2009

Computer Science Education Week Website is Live

The Computer Science Education week web site is now live at https://www.csedweek.org/ Some good stuff...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/04/2009

Let’s drop English from the curriculum

Just for fun, at your next faculty meeting or school board meeting try the following out. Let’s drop...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/03/2009

Software Development – Old School V. New School

One of the links floating around a lot recently has been this article from the recent Microsoft...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/02/2009

Are you going to SIGCSE 2010?

I see over on the SIGCSE 2010 blog that early registration for SIGCSE is now open. In my opinion...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 12/01/2009

Short work week last week. Not a lot of great links showing up in my RSS reader or my email inbox....

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/30/2009

Thoughts on the Edublogger Awards

Earlier in the week I received an email telling me that nomination for this year’s Edublogger Awards...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/26/2009

Ever wonder how they get the sound effects for car racing video games? A Tesla gets recorded for...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/23/2009

Creating Games with XNA® Game Studio and C#

New High School Computer Science Course Creating Games with XNA® Game Studio and C# Fall 2009...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/19/2009

Hacking and Ethics

I get a lot of interesting email. Today I received an email from a student in Japan asking me the...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/17/2009

Early in the week last week the @tcea Twitter account tweeted (Twittered?) "They may forget...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/16/2009

Dealing With Complexity

I had an interesting conversation with two teachers last week. One the chair of the computer science...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/14/2009

Wait while I look that up on the Internet

Recently I have been doing some mock interviews with high school students. I have some business...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/11/2009

Welcome to this week’s collection of interesting links. Some of these I found on Twitter, some on...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/09/2009

Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection Redesign

Back a year or so ago Microsoft opened the Pre-collegiate faculty connection web portal to share...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/06/2009

But I Don’t Want to be a Programmer

One of the things I hear pretty regularly is that not everyone needs (or wants) to be a programmer....

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/05/2009

Loneliness of a Department of One

I read the blog post by Daniel Moix on the CSTA blog today (My Voice) with interest and a mix of...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/29/2009

Project Learning

Joel Spolsky is an interesting guy with strong opinions about software development and the education...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/28/2009

Learning To Write By Reading

One of the most useful learning experiences I have had was working with editors. These talented...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/27/2009

Windows 7 released to the general public last week so I have to start with a couple of Windows 7...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/26/2009

Small Basic 0.7

Small Basic is a great little project out of Microsoft’s DevLab that I have been following for a...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/23/2009

One of the things I like to demo and to have people do as sort of a “Hello World” for XNA Game...

Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/17/2009

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