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! 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.