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
Interesting Links 11 January 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
Interesting Links January 4th 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
Interesting Links December 21 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
Interesting links December 14 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
Interesting Links and Twitter Lists
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
Interesting Links 23 November 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
Interesting Links November 16 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
Interesting Links November 9 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
Interesting Links September 26 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
Workshop Links September 17 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