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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.
Visual Basic Textbook Review and Saving Class Time
I'm enjoying following Chris Higgins' first year teaching computer science at his blog. On Friday he...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/22/2006
How's Your School Year Going?
My friend Dave Jacobus is blogging again and provides a look into how his school year is going. Dave...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/20/2006
100 Principal Blogs in 100 Days
The CASTLE Project is trying to get 100 school principals to become active bloggers in 100 days. The...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/19/2006
What are the most important concepts in Object Oriented Programming
The Wicked Teacher of the West is looking for the most important concepts in Object Oriented...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/18/2006
An Online Education Conference
There is an interesting education going on. Most of the main events are next week but the keynote by...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/17/2006
Game Camp (Canada) - Build Games for the Xbox 360 and Windows!
In Canada Microsoft is inviting students and hobbyists who are interested in game development to a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/17/2006
How to answer a coding question on a test
Diane Curtis who works with college students wrote a great blog last week about answering an...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/16/2006
National Cyber Security Awareness Month
This month is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. A joint program between Microsoft and the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/13/2006
New Build of the Microsoft Robotics Studio Available
The Microsoft Robotics blog announced the latest Community Technical Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/12/2006
Multimedia about XNA
If you are a visual person like I am you often find it easier to visualize and understand things...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/12/2006
Is Computer Science a Science? Redux
There is an interesting article by Peter Denning titled "Is computer science science?" that was...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/11/2006
Informaion on RSS and RSS Readers
I have talked before about using RSS to follow blogs. Earlier today I came across a good article...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/10/2006
Visual Web Developer Express or Visual Studio for web development
I am often asked if one of the Express editions will do or does a course/teacher/developer really...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/10/2006
Projects Involving Math and Physics with Computer Science
Chris Higgins blogs about a couple of projects that he is using with his Java students. There...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/09/2006
A List of Education and Tech Ed Blogs
For no better reason than to share a look at what it out there is the way of blogs about education...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/08/2006
Google Code Search and Plagiarism
Google has a new code search in beta test. It lets users search for code samples and specify the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/06/2006
ASP .NET for Visual Basic People
Kathleen McGrath on the Visual Basic team posted some interesting links for people who know Visual...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/05/2006
C# Textbooks
I've been getting questions about C# (pronounced Sea Sharp or C Sharp) textbooks for high school...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/03/2006
Interesting links - Women in Computing & Computational Thinking
Diane and Hilary (two very talented young women I work with) continue their road trip through the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/02/2006
Are you teaching regular expressions?
I came across the RegEx Side blog this week (hat tip to Jason Haley) where Brendan asks the question...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/01/2006
How would you do this without a computer?
I found this web site earlier this week. (Thanks to Jill Walker) The site has recordings of over 500...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/28/2006
DigiGirz - a technology experience for girls
Over at the Technical Careers @ Microsoft blog Priya writes about the DigiGirlz camp that Microsoft...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/27/2006
Where do Random numbers come from?
One of the things that gets used and discussed a lot by beginning programmers is random numbers. of...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/26/2006
Texas leads the way - down hill
Texas decided the require four years of both math and science. This seems like a good thing and in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/25/2006
PrintForm in Visual Basic? Yes it's back!
I must get asked once a month about the ability to print a form from a Visual Basic .NET program....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/25/2006
Connecting class assignments to the real world
Here is something interesting. Dan Fernandez is asking users to rate and vote for different web site...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/22/2006
Florida Girls Get IT
The latest edition of the CSTA Voice (Yes, I read it cover to cover every time it comes in and so...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/22/2006
Everything you ever wanted to know about pairs programming for the classroom
I'm not a pairs programming expert but it is something that looks very interesting. I found a list...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/21/2006
Computer Science Unplugged Road Show
Tim Bell who is part of the Computer Science Unplugged program (books and materials) is currently in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/20/2006
Time I Need More Time - Visual Robot Programming - I Need to Try it Out
The Microsoft Robotics group released the new September CTP (Community Technical Preview for those...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/19/2006
Ten Programming Languages You Should Teach - You may want to learn them first
Seriously I don't expect that high schools should teach ten languages. I'm not sure that its a good...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/19/2006
Workforce Needs and Future Opportunities
Philip DesAutels who works with major universities in the Boston area has long had his finger on the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/18/2006
Why Johnny Can't Code
This article by the author David Brin set off a long round of discussion in Slashdot. A one line...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/15/2006
Visual Basic Express Beginner Videos
The Visual Basic Express team just posted a number of tutorials with accompanying screencasts that...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/14/2006
Some interesting XNA Links
I saw that Brian Scarbeau is looking at using XNA for his high school computer science class this...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/13/2006
Bring It On!
The women at the computer science department at Indiana University have a wonderful outreach program...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/13/2006
Grace Hopper and Women in Computing
My friend and co-worker Diane Curtis is really looking forward to heading west for the Grace Hopper...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/12/2006
High School Computer Science - What's it all about?
Kathleen Weaver relates a couple of frustrating conversations in her blog today. The other people in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/11/2006
Judging from my inbox it must be back to school time
Actually I knew it was back to school time because friends have been starting back since early...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/08/2006
Kinesthetic Learning - Get the kids up and doing things to learn
Leigh Ann Sudol blogging at the CSTA blog reminded me about a topic I have been meaning to blog...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/07/2006
Iron Python V1.0 is Released
For those of you interested in using Python, Microsoft has released the 1.0 version of this tool....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/06/2006
Is science too hard or are other courses too easy?
I've long been of the opinion that in high schools a lot of student eschew computer science and...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/06/2006
Putting group pictures together
Years ago I was part of the photography staff on my college yearbook. One of the very difficult...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/05/2006
What are these system admins thinking about?
It never ceases to amaze me how many high school computer science teachers have trouble running...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/04/2006
Mixing math and Computer Science
I am always on the look out for new and interesting projects to use in programming classes. Well I...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/04/2006
Where to learn about using XNA
Krishna Kumar in my group has just opened up a blog with a focus on XNA. In his "welcome to my blog"...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/31/2006
It's here! XNA Studio Express Beta
The XNA Studio Express beta for creating games on both Windows and Xbox 360 is now available for...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/30/2006
Starter Kits for Windows Mobile Device Programming
A lot of people are interested in including some programming for mobile devices (Pocket PCs,...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/28/2006