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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.
Internet Safety Videos
The netsmartz.org web site is a joint effort of the National Center for Missing & Exploited...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/25/2006
Big O Notation - just how bad is that algorithm?
Someone sent me an email the other day looking for information to help him understand Big O...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/24/2006
Fundamental CS Principles Animations
The University of Tennessee- Knoxville has a website that contains a series of animated...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/23/2006
UK Academic Team (higher ed) is blogging with XNA information
For those of you in higher education and/or if you at based in the United Kingdom (and maybe some of...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/21/2006
Service Pack Available for Visual Studio .NET 2003
The new service pack for Visual Studio .NET 2003 is available for download here. If you are not...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/21/2006
Where do you send people to ask about game programming?
I took a look at the newly updated MSDN Game Programming forum today and it looks like a great...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/18/2006
Parallax Scribbler Robot Review
Deepak Kumar over at the Institute for Personal Robots in Education Blog has a review of a new robot...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/16/2006
Using A Web Site to Manage Classes
Chris Higgins is a first year teacher of math and computer science. In his blog he layes out his...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/15/2006
Gaming programming for the Xbox 360 - for everyone
Well the big announcement is out. XNA Express is a great new development environment that lets...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/14/2006
Mono – Open Source .NET
I get a lot of questions about Open Source both as a concept and on specific Open Source projects....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/14/2006
Testing Windows Live Writer
I've been using Word to write most of my blog posts for a while. It supports the API for this blog...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/13/2006
Feedback for Coding4Fun
Dan Fernandez is the person in charge of the Coding 4 Fun web site and he is looking for suggestions...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/11/2006
Static Typing, Dynamic Typing or maybe both?
Erik Meijer has a new interview up on Channel 9. Erik is one of the people at Microsoft who I have a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/10/2006
Online Teacher Communities
Where do teachers go online to find and share resources, ask questions and generally get in touch...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/09/2006
Evaluating Web Pages, Blogs, Podcasts and Other Online Resources
If you are like a lot of teachers who have students evaluate web pages you probably struggle a bit...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/08/2006
New Release of Microsoft Robotics Studio
I read an announcement that the August CTP (Community Technical Preview) of the Microsoft Robotics...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/07/2006
Large Collection of Robotics Articles
The RoboBusiness Conference and Expo was held back in June in Pittsburg. I found out that the papers...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/05/2006
A Programming Aptitude Test
Back in the day (in other words 30 years ago when I was looking for my first programming job) I took...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/04/2006
Learn to Phrogram
Brian Keller had a post on his blog where I found out that the people behind KPL or Kid’s...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/03/2006
CSTA Asking Questions About Resources Too
I see that Chris Stephenson the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association is...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/02/2006
Should Teachers Blog?
I've you have been reading my blog for any length of time you probably know that I think teachers...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/01/2006
Take a Look at the Next Generation Lego MindStorms
The people from Lego visited the Microsoft campus to show off the latest version of the Lego...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/01/2006
Who are the high school developers?
I spend a lot of my time thinking about high school (and younger) students who are doing software...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/30/2006
Review of the new Lego Mindstorms NXT Robotics Kit
Deepak Kumar of the Institute for Personal Robots in Education has a nice review of the new Lego...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/28/2006
More Engineering Resources
I had an email today pointing me to this site (https://www.tryengineering.org/home.php) which is a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/27/2006
Opening Up Communication with Parents
I found this article very interesting. The Buckman Arts Magnet Elementary School is trying to move...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/26/2006
Beginning Computer Science Education is Broken
I’ve been reading the Institute for Personal Robots in Education Blog out of Georgia Tech lately....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/25/2006
Computational Thinking
I spent last Saturday (and actually part of the day before) at Carnegie Mellon University at a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/24/2006
Putting Some E in STEM
I found a site called Teach Engineering that looks pretty interesting. Engineers have a hand in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/21/2006
Meeting the technical challenges of the future
For the first time in several years I am not at Microsoft Research’s Research Faculty Summit. It’s a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/20/2006
Databases for Beginners
Now available for free is a series of video lessons that use SQL Server 2005 Express Edition to...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/19/2006
Can your students create a business?
I ran into this interesting blog entry by Rick Segal, a venture capitalist, this morning and it...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/19/2006
Fun with data validation
I’ve been spending some time over the weekend thinking about interesting projects. I think that the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/17/2006
Do you RSS?
One of the great things about blogs is that there are a lot of ways to read them. You can of course...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/14/2006
More on Educational Robotics
Yesterday Microsoft announced that they are partnering with Georgia Tech and Bryn Mawr to create a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/13/2006
Visual Basic 2005 Jump Start
My friend and co-worker Martin Schray (check out his resources page) just sent me a copy of his new...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/12/2006
Computer Science and the Well-rounded Life
I found this essay by Marie Klawe on her being an artist and a computer scientist thanks to the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/10/2006
Sometimes It Is All About the Conversation
I was reading about Steve Dembo’s visit to the Microsoft booth at NECC this afternoon and I have to...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/09/2006
What a week – some closing thoughts from NECC
NECC has been an amazing event this year. While this is not my first year at NECC it has been one of...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/08/2006
Thoughts About the $100 Laptop Project
Nicholas Negroponte gave the opening keynote at NECC this morning and talked about his One Laptop...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/06/2006
If You Are Not at NECC But Wish You Could Be
Vicki Davis at Cool Cat Teacher is blogging NECC without being here. And doing a wonderful job of it...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/05/2006
NECC Day One
Well it was my first day. It was also the first day of the exhibit hall and most of the general...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/05/2006
Running Late To NECC
I am supposed to be in a hotel in San Diego right now. But I’m not. I’m in a hotel in Atlanta. There...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/05/2006
A New Liberal Art
I found a great post yesterday. Jim Heynderickx writes about a Computer Science K-12 session at the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/04/2006
A Variable By Any Other Name …
Recently there have been some comments in the Advanced Placement Computer Science mailing list about...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 07/03/2006