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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.
Computer Science Snipits from CSTA
Last week Pat Philips of the CSTA blogged about a new collection of podcasts, audio interviews, that...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/06/2007
My Ideal First Programming Language
Long before I ran into graphical/drag and drop programming languages for kids like Scratch and Alice...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/05/2007
2007 Edublogger Awards
Nominations for the 2007 Edublog Awards are now open. Anyone can nominate their favorite education...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/04/2007
Top Posts From October
Well October was an interesting month. In some cases I was pretty good at predicting which posts...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/02/2007
Technology For Education
I've noticed a lot of talk about using technology to teach. Not just teaching the technology as a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 11/01/2007
New Community Site for Robots in Education
RobotEvents.com is a new community portal for robotics and technology in education. Highlights...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/31/2007
Security V. Ease of Use
I've run into lots of security talk lately. I visited a school last week where the programming...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/30/2007
Tablet PC Tips on Video
The Tablet PC Education blog points out that Jim Vanides has created some videos to show instructors...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/29/2007
When Programming was Women's Work
These days when the picture one automatically gets when they hear the words "computer programmer" is...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/26/2007
HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative
I spotted this program on Jim Vanides blog recently. (Emphasis mine) The HP Technology for Teaching...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/25/2007
Cyberbullying - Let's All Fight It
I came across a moving video on cyberbullying last week. It is remarkably well done and tells the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/24/2007
DigiGirlz Days are scheduled
The DigiGirlz Days schedule is out (actually I got a sneak peak - thanks Diane) and there are more...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/23/2007
Please Help Me Understand Who Is Reading
I have created a very brief (five questions, multiple choice) survey to try to better understand who...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/22/2007
CS Degree Starting Salaries Are Up
Last week I posted about information that I thought guidance counselors should have about the CS/IT...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/19/2007
Do Your Students Understand this Cartoon
Lots of people pointed out this cartoon recently. It's an example of an SQL Injection exploit of...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/18/2007
Reals and Integers, Apples and Oranges
Do you remember when you first learned about real numbers? I do. Things had been so easy when all I...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/17/2007
Threat Modeling - How it Works at Microsoft
When internationally known security expert Bruce Schneier recommends a series of blogs on threat...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/16/2007
Phun with Phishing
OK maybe phun (or even fun) isn't quite the word but some people at Carnegie Mellon University...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/15/2007
PowerPoint as a Random Access Device
Here is something completely different. What I love about this idea is that it is really thinking...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/12/2007
What Guidance Needs to Know About Computer Science
When ever computer science teachers get together and talk about what makes their life difficult...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/11/2007
My Game Builder - An online tool for building simple games
My Game Builder is a project being developed by David Golds in his spare time. He's either got a lot...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/10/2007
The Five Essential Gaming Methods in XNA Game Studio
The folks over at Channel 9 have posted a really good video on the five most important methods in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/09/2007
When the Second Programming Language is Harder to Learn
Mark Guzdial had an interesting blog post recently titled "Why is assessing learning about computing...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/08/2007
How many posts are too many posts
This is sort of a meta post. That is to say it is a post about posting. I've been thinking a lot...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/05/2007
Worldwide Teacher Appreciation Day
By designation of UNESCO today October 5th is Worldwide Teacher Appreciation Day. I am very lucky...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/05/2007
How would you improve K-12 Computer Science Education
Chris Stephenson is the director of the Computer Science Teacher Association and recently her...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/04/2007
ACM Student Memberships
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is the professional society for people in the computer...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/03/2007
Free Book On Building Great Web Sites
The Microsoft Office Live team has created a free book entitled "Build a Web site That Sells" that...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/02/2007
Top Links from September
I thought I might review some of the things I linked to that seemed to be the most interesting to...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/01/2007
Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
It's been about a week now since Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon gave his last lecture. In high...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/28/2007
Heavyweight or Lightweight User Interfaces
We're all pretty used to search engine interfaces being pretty simple and lightweight these days. A...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/27/2007
Do We Still Need To Teach HTML
Brian Scarbeau asks "Should html be taught in a web design course?" The comments at his blog are all...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/25/2007
Imagine Cup 2008 is Ramping Up
The Imagine Cup, an international set of competitions for computer college/university students, is...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/24/2007
New Robotics Curriculum from Microsoft Robotics Studio
Recently the Microsoft Robotics Studio team released a seven unit introductory course in robotics. I...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/21/2007
2007 FIRST Women in Science and Technology Forum
While FIRST is best known for there amazing robotics competitions they have been running an annual...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/20/2007
Road Trip - CCSC Eastern 2007 Conference
One of the really great things I get to do is to attend conferences. I find these to be great...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/19/2007
Computer Science Education Day 2007 is Coming
Brian Scarbeau the man who came up with this great idea recently reminded me that Computer Science...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/19/2007
High School Internships at Microsoft
Microsoft brings in a large number of interns each summer. Almost all of them are undergraduate or...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/18/2007
Tablet PC Articles available
This must be the week for Tablet PC news. The IEEE Computer Society magazine issue with a bunch of...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/14/2007
The Important Things We Are Leaving Out of Computer Science Education
Recently eWeek had a great article entitled "Programming Grads Meet a Skills Gap in the Real World"...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/13/2007
Tablet PCs in Action in the Classroom
OK this is too cool not to share. On Monday I blogged about the Thomas Jefferson school that uses...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/12/2007
Software Engineering Vs. Fun
"The goal of much of software engineering is to remove all the fun out of programming." So says...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/11/2007
Department of Learning Prevention
Earlier I reported on a teacher who was seeing some interesting and positive results by letting...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/10/2007
The Risks of Letting Students Use The Network
You really have to be careful about letting students use computer/network chat programs in school. I...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/10/2007
A Tablet PC School That Works
While I am not a fan of just dropping computers into a school and expecting miracles I do believe...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/10/2007
Debugging Training For Beginners
One of the hardest things for students to learn how to do is to debug their code. I think that most...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/07/2007
Excel Training for Teachers (and others)
Teachers and school administrators have lots of data. lots and lots of data. Grades, test results,...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/06/2007