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.
Kinect-ing at the NJSBA Annual Workshop
Normally the conferences I attend are about educational technology or computer science education....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/26/2011
Interesting Links 24 October 2011
I am constantly amazed by the opportunities to learn things online by virtual attendance at events...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/24/2011
More Access to the ACM Digital Library
One of the great resources available on the Internet is the ACM Digital Library. One of the problems...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/21/2011
Imagine Cup as Group Projects
One of the things that often makes Imagine Cup entries a good educational experience is that they...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/19/2011
How Many Jobs Are There For Poets
I was listening to an Internet stream of Gary Stager presenting a keynote at an education conference...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/18/2011
New Hampshire TechFest 2011
Last Saturday I spend the day at Windham High School in Windham New Hampshire for the second annual...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/18/2011
Interesting Links 17 October 2011
I spent two days are a Windows Phone event last week. One of several I posted date for at Your...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/17/2011
Preparation to Teach High School Computer Science
“What qualifies you to teach computer science?” The question took me off guard. The tone...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/13/2011
Teaching Kids to Read but not Write?
A tweet passed though my stream last night. Eugene Wallingford retweeted someone else’s...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/12/2011
Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo 2011
Last week I attended part of SIEGE 2011 (Southern Interactive Entertainment & Game Expo) in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/11/2011
Interesting Links 10 October 2011
Last week the computing industry lost one of its great innovators in Steve Jobs. It’s a great loss...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/10/2011
Be The Robot
One of the issues with computer science is that some people would rather move atoms than pixels....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/07/2011
Conversations in Kodu
Recently the Kodu team announced a new version of Kodu and a new Kodu Community Website. You can...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/05/2011
Quality of Testing and Quality of Code
I see a good number of Tweets in my Twitter stream that just flash by without leaving any...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 10/04/2011
When Fish Fly
How excited am I about the Partners in Learning Global Forum? I’m seriously thinking of taking...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/28/2011
Robotics @ Home Competition
The Microsoft Robotics team has released a new software stack for controlling robots – RDS4...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/27/2011
Interesting Links 26 September 2011
Autumn has technically arrived in New Hampshire. The leafs are starting to turn but the weather has...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/26/2011
Computer Science Education Act
One of the big issues with computer science education is that it is not an integral part of the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/23/2011
Interesting Links 20 September 2011
I really had to post the information about the new Game development course yesterday (Game...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/20/2011
Game Development with XNA Curriculum–Semester Course
Revitalize your Computer Science program with Game Development with XNA: Semester 1. This exciting...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/19/2011
Four Dimensional Tic Tac Toe
Back in my college days we had a computer program that played three-dimensional tic tac toe. The...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/16/2011
Your Chance to Learn Windows Phone Development for Free
Microsoft is offering a number of FREE Phone Camps around the US. These are fun and interesting...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/16/2011
Imagine Cup 2012–Changing The World For The Better
Solving the world’s great problems! Changing the world for the better. Giving students projects that...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/15/2011
What is an app?
In the Mobile Game Design and Mobile App Design categories of the NFTE World Series of Innovation...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/14/2011
Interesting Links 12 September 2011
After a wonderful long weekend for Labor Day I spent the rest of last week in San Antonio Texas for...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/12/2011
NFTE World Series of Innovation
Innovation! What is is and how can we teach it to children? Big questions today as many of us...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/09/2011
ScriptTD: Tower Defense Game Creation Made Easy
Coding a game from scratch is hard. Make no mistake about there is a lot to it. OF course many...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/08/2011
Windows Phone Mango Jump Start Workshop Now On Video
IF you missed it live (like I did) you can now view the recording of the Windows Phone Mango Jump...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/07/2011
Private Character Editor
I get questions. Oh boy do I get questions. I don’t know if people think I know a lot (I don’t) or...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 09/01/2011
Python Tools for Visual Studio V1.0 Released
A lot of people are looking into using Python in computer science education these days. Of course a...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/31/2011
ACSL International Contest About to Begin
Interested in programming competitions for your students but travel is not in the budget? You may...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/30/2011
Interesting Links 29 August 2011
Hurricane Irene was the big news on the east coast of the US and parts of the Caribbean last week....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/29/2011
2011 NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing
Calling all digital divas, web chix & coder girls! It’s time to start thinking about the...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/26/2011
Computational Thinking Leadership Toolkit
Computational thinking is, in my opinion at least, a lot more than the latest buzz word or fad in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/25/2011
Languages That Make You Think
The old joke used to be that “a good FORTRAN programmer can write a good FORTRAN program in...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/24/2011
There Is Research On That
Computers are good at games. Well sort of. Computers are good at following rules and making...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/23/2011
Interesting Links 22 August 2011
No out of the area travel for me last week. It was nice to sleep in my own bed every night. This is...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/22/2011
Ready or Not–New School Year About To Start
Well according to my Twitter feed a lot of schools in the US south are back to school. Teachers are...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/19/2011
Web-Based Problem Solving Software for Programming Courses
We all know that students benefit for problem solving exercises. Creating these sorts of...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/18/2011
Time To Cut The Cake
I ran across a couple of cool Lego links yesterday. One of was this link to Robots for Everyone:...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/17/2011
Windows Phone Development Training Online
SO you probably know that a new version of the Windows Phone software is coming very soon. If you...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/16/2011
Interesting Links 15 August 2011
I’m going to start this week’s list with some left over stuff from the Innovative Education Forum....
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/15/2011
Low Level Programming
A blog post by Andy Firth, an Engineer Architect at Bungie, called The demise of the low level...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/11/2011
Computer Science Before Programming
For most people the first real computer science course is introduction to programming. It may be...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/10/2011
Abstraction At The Core of Computer Science
I spent the latter part of last week in Palo Alto, California working on the CS 2013 project. There...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/09/2011
Interesting Links 8 August 2011
I’m home for a while now. A month anyway. I’ve made 6 trips in the last 6 weeks and only...
Author: Alfred Thompson Date: 08/08/2011