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From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Students are Creative and that is a Good Thing

I love the creativity of students. We worked on a whack a mole game in class today. The purpose was to create a user control but of course students want to do more... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | December 2, 2015 at 02:49 PM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 30 November 2015

Last week was busy on a personal level with some great family time. I even got to babysit my 14-month old grandson while everyone else when shopping. Double win... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 30, 2015 at 06:04 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How Much Does a $5 Computer Cost?

This week the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced their new Pi Zero. It only costs $5 in the US. Wow! Here are the specs, via the foundation: BCM2835 (same as Pi... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 26, 2015 at 08:25 PM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 23 November 2015

Microsoft Underground Part 1 – Dawn DuPriest is a middle school math and computer science teacher who was invited to Microsoft headquarters with some other teachers... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 23, 2015 at 06:39 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Finding Methods in the Madness

Beginning programmers seem to like monolithic code. Give them a task to program and they start right off. writing everything in one huge method. If you assign them... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 20, 2015 at 05:46 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding For More Than an Hour

Aman Yadav from Michigan State University made this great image from the popular meme. I love it because for me it is so very true. I code for fun these days.Hour... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 19, 2015 at 06:28 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Creative Coding Through Games and Apps

I've been looking into this lately. It looks like an interesting first course for a lot of schools. Creative Coding Through Games and Apps is a first-semester... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 18, 2015 at 06:06 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Contests for Computer Science Students and Grants for Teachers

Earth | Microsoft Imagine Cup https://www.imaginecup.com/Earth via @MSFTimagine An Imagine Cup coding competition for students between 6 and 18 years old from Microsoft... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 18, 2015 at 06:05 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 17 November 2015

Yesterday’s interesting links was all about links to educators and their blogs and resources. Today is about links from non profits and companies. Good stuff all... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 17, 2015 at 06:09 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 16 November 2015

Last week was loaded with interesting things flowing from blogs, twitter, Facebook and email. When I first put this post together I realized it was so long that... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 16, 2015 at 05:43 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How do you terrify computer science students?

How do you terrify computer science students? Ask them to design their own project to be graded. I asked my programming students today to come up with a project... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 13, 2015 at 09:40 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Adding Interest Via Data

One of the lessons that stuck with my from some workshops I took some years ago was that more interesting projects involved doing things that involve a lot of data... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 13, 2015 at 08:55 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Imagine Cup Earth–Online Competition

Back in my Microsoft days I was actively promoting the Imagine Cup competitions. Realistically, while a couple of high school teams did well, its really hard for... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 12, 2015 at 08:02 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Beetle Blocks Visual Code for 3D Design

The other day I added a new entry to my blog post listing drag and drop programming languages. It is based on Scratch and Snap! which many teachers are alreadyBeetle... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 11, 2015 at 06:15 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How to Teach Coding

Mitchel Resnick, the man behind Scratch and other cool educational tools, runs the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at MIT’s Media Lab. He posted a great article... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 10, 2015 at 09:55 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Congressional App Challenge 2016

Do you know students who are interested in creating an app? The Congressional App Challenge is now open for submissions! Entries are due by January 15, 2016. Learn... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 10, 2015 at 05:44 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Interesting Links 7 November 2015

I spent the last few days in Phoenix Arizona at the fall board meeting of the Computer Science Teachers Association. It was a very busy couple of days and I got... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 9, 2015 at 06:26 AM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Are there some students who can't learn how to code?

Are there some students who can't learn how to code? Mark Guzdial asks that question on his blog and says that “Teachers must always answer "No!"” There is some... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 4, 2015 at 02:05 PM

From Computer Science Teachers Association

Do We Still Need Computer Science Teachers?

These days it seems like “how to learn coding yourself” opportunities are everywhere. There are MOOCs from major universities, code.org (http://code.org) has great... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teachers Association | November 3, 2015 at 01:02 PM

From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Thoughts On Old Software–Why We Need Documentation

A former student sent me a links today - NASA seeks programmer fluent in 60-year-old languages to work on Voyager My first thought was that I know FORTRAN and... Alfred Thompson
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson | November 3, 2015 at 06:33 AM