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Coding for Fun and Advent of Code
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding for Fun and Advent of Code

My friend Mike Zamansky is a big proponent of the Advent of Code – 25 days of coding problems leading up the Christmas. Since I have been thinking I want to write...

What’s In A Name?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What’s In A Name?

Naming things seems to be a continual problem with programming students. I’ve written about this before (two years ago A Rose By Any Other Name Gives An Error )...

Coding For Fun
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding For Fun

As with so many things, it started with Doug Peterson. Doug recently posted about something called 100 days of code. This got me started about the need I feel (some...

Teachers Helping Teachers For Free
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teachers Helping Teachers For Free

I understand the appeal of sites like Teachers Pay Teachers. Really I do. Some teachers are awesome at creating resources and the idea of getting paid to shareAmazon...

Not Too Easy and Not Too Hard
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Not Too Easy and Not Too Hard

We’re covering Classes and Objects in my Programming Honors course this week. Specifically we are learning how to program classes in C# and use them in programs...

Define Better
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Define Better

Someone posted an interesting question on Facebook.Is using ++i(pre-increment) better than i++(post-increment) ?My reply was to ask for a definition of “better....

AI-assisted Programming
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

AI-assisted Programming

As I said in yesterday’s blog post,Microsoft has been running their big MSIgnite event this week and making all sorts of announcements. One interesting announcement...

Visual Studio Online–Possibilities for Education?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Visual Studio Online–Possibilities for Education?

Microsoft has been running their big MSIgnite event this week and making all sorts of announcements.  One of them was a cloud-based development environment called...

CSTA at 15 #CSTAat15
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

CSTA at 15 #CSTAat15

The Computer Science Teachers Association is now 15 years old. I’ve been a member from the start and I have to say that in some ways it feels like it has always...

Magic 8 Ball and Projects From Real Life
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Magic 8 Ball and Projects From Real Life

There has been a 12 inch tall Pez dispenser on my desk for a couple of years now. It’s a great visual aid for talking about stacks. Today I got a Magic 8 Ball as...

A Loop By Any Other Name
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

A Loop By Any Other Name

My first programming language was FORTRAN IV. As I recall we had Do loops. They worked pretty much the same as what we call For loops in most languages today. We...

How Many Words in That Text?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How Many Words in That Text?

One of the projects I have used for years is a letter counter program. The idea is to count the occurrences of each individual letter. It’s a nice project thatAbout...

What Time Is 30 Minutes From Now?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What Time Is 30 Minutes From Now?

Got the proctor guide for the PSAT that I have to proctor next week. There is a chart to help proctors determine stop times that are 25, 35, 50, and 60 minutes...

Michael Backus Alaska Middle School Computer Science Teacher
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Michael Backus Alaska Middle School Computer Science Teacher

Every so often I run into a computer science teacher’s work online and ask myself “how have I never heard of this person before?” This week I listened to a podcast...

ACM/CSTA 2020 Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

ACM/CSTA 2020 Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing

Applications for the ACM/CSTA 2020 Cutler-Bell Prize in High School Computing are now open. The deadline is 12 January 2020.The AwardThe ACM/CSTA Cutler-Bell Prize...

2019 Champions of Computer Science Awards
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

2019 Champions of Computer Science Awards

Know a student or teacher or administrator who has achieved something this year to increase access and quality of CS education. I can think of a number of people...

The Problem Of Cheating on Programming Projects
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

The Problem Of Cheating on Programming Projects

This seems to be the year a lot of people are really getting concerned about cheating on computer science programming projects. There has been some discussion of...

If Statement Programming Projects
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

If Statement Programming Projects

Over the years I have used a number of projects to give students practice using if statements – especially those that involved nesting or checking lots of values...

Book Review: "Tools and Weapons"
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Book Review: "Tools and Weapons"

"Tools and Weapons" by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne is a look at some important computing issues through a Microsoft lens. It is a pretty revealing look as the...

Password Checking Tools
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Password Checking Tools

Neil Plotnick shared some Password Checking Tools on Facebook recently. I’ve used some of these in the past and find them useful and instructive. https://howsecureismypassword...
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