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Things You Love Are Made With Code
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Things You Love Are Made With Code

Well it looks like Google is jumping into the effort to get more girls interested in computer science in a big way. Their new program is called Made with Code.From...

Programming as Storytelling
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Programming as Storytelling

Code tells a story. When I hear someone talking about telling a story in code I tend to think of tools like Alice, Kodu and Scratch. After all those are tools with...

Computers Don’t Do Ambiguity Well
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Computers Don’t Do Ambiguity Well

I’ve seen several variations of the image below over the years. The last time I saw it I decided I’m going to use it with my computer science students next year...

The Things We Argue About
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

The Things We Argue About

I shared the image below on my Facebook page last week. As I write this there are ten “Likes” and nineteen comments from my friends. Over how curly braces should...

Interesting Links 16 June 2014
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 16 June 2014

School is out! Well after lunch today school is over for the year for me and my school. I’ll miss the kids over the summer but I’m ready for a break. I plan toOffice...

I Am Not a Bug
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

I Am Not a Bug

The term "undocumented feature" is a humorous term for something that was not planned in software. OH for sure there can be features added to a product that are...

Office Mix and Binary Numbers
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Office Mix and Binary Numbers

One of the things I worked on this year was sharing resources with students. I uploaded all my PowerPoint presentations to our learning management system for example...

Hour of Code 2014
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Hour of Code 2014

The latest announcement from code.org hit my email inbox yeterday. Looks like they are planning for a bigger better "Hour of Code" for CS education week this fall...

Good Things Are Happening in APCS
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Good Things Are Happening in APCS

The Advanced Placement Computer Science exam was graded last week. Well the free response part was anyway. I had a number of friends there and got some news from...

That Was (Not) Easy
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

That Was (Not) Easy

Someone mentioned in a comment somewhere (I wish I could find a link) that sometimes they create a project for students that they haven’t built themselves first...

Interesting Links 9 June 2014
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 9 June 2014

Well my seniors are done. Graduation was yesterday. The Salutatorian had several interesting and funny things to say. Perhaps because it is a Catholic school some...

On Being a Software Developer
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

On Being a Software Developer

Recently Mark Guzdial had a post called High school CS teachers need to read and trace code, not develop software that got me thinking along some new lines. Working...

Computer Science Principles Summit–Virtually
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Computer Science Principles Summit–Virtually

In case you are not a CSTA member  (why not?) and didn’t get the email this looks pretty interesting. In a new twist for 2014, CSTA is thrilled to invite youvirtual...

A Matter of Focus
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

A Matter of Focus

My students are wrapping up the year with final projects. For the most part these are great learning experiences. Sometimes though students get hung up on the wrong...

That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

That Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

I’ve had some fun with a line from the movie The Princess Bride and meme generator below inspired by working with students. Programming is so non intuitive for...

Interesting Links 2 June 2014
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 2 June 2014

I used to tell people that I liked to blog because I knew that classroom teachers didn’t have a lot of time to look for things. As the school year comes to a close...

Looking Back To Move Forward
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Looking Back To Move Forward

I think most teachers do some introspection at the end of the school year about how things went for them. They think about what worked and what didn’t work so that...

Interesting Links 26 May 2014
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 26 May 2014

There are still a couple of weeks of school for me and my students. Well the seniors are done with their finals on Friday but underclassmen  have some time after...

Is the Tech Community Working Fine Without Women?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Is the Tech Community Working Fine Without Women?

Mark Guzdial linked to a post about Technology’s Man Problem yesterday and highlighted one piece of it. It really got me thinking. a commenter calling himself...

Coding as Game Play
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding as Game Play

I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of how we teach computer science or perhaps just programming to younger students. Some of it brought on my the online debate...
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