Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Looking Back on Computer Science Education in 2020
What a year it has been. I was reading my start of the year post from January. The closing was “2019 has some serious potential.” I had no idea what was to come...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Pythagorean Theorem Day Programming Project
I’ve been doing little programming projects for my own amusement. I thought about doing Advent of Code like the cool kids are (Looking at you Mike Zamansky who...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Musings on the Goals of High School Computer Science Education
Recent conversations on Twitter and Facebook have had me thinking about the goals of teaching computer science in high school. There is no single goal and it probably...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Dreidel Game–A Chanukah Programming Project
If you’re anything like me, you like to assign projects that have some relationship to what is going on in the world. Holidays are one such thing. December brings...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New Resources for Teaching and Learning about Artificial Intelligence
Earlier this week I was a guest speaker in a computer science class (via Zoom of course). It was fun to be back into a class and interacting with students. Thehttps...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Why Do I Care About This Program I am Coding?
Why do we program? Well, for some of us it is because we get paid to write code. For some it is part of our learning experiences. For a few it is the fun of it....
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Does It Matter How Fast the Code Is?
I’ve been having a lot of fun playing with code lately. One of the things I have been experimenting with is cryptography (See Tiny Book of Simple Cryptography)...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Making of a Computer Science Teacher
There is quite the conversation going on in the private Computer Science Educators group on Facebook about teacher preparation for CS educators. This is a veryhighly...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Tiny Book of Simple Cryptography
I've been playing with simple cryptography. Mostly stuff that was solid before computers. Just for fun mostly but some of it may make for interesting projects for...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
TileCode–Creating games on and for handheld devices
People are Microsoft always seem to be working on interesting and unexpected (to me anyway) things. My most recent discovery is TileCode. From the website:Microsoft...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What If We Asked Students To Write Textbooks?
A professor friend on Facebook posted that a student emailed him to say that they textbook the were using was “crap.” I suggested in jest that he asked the student...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Thinking About the Algorithms in Our Lives
My wife and I use these fitness trackers, ours are made by Garmin, to keep track of our activity during the day. Each day the devices give us a goal for how many...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Artificial Intelligence, Humor, and Appreciation of Beauty
Last night I started re-reading Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. It’s an old book, written in the mid 1960s, so there are some old ideas about computers...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
MicroBlocks For IoT and other Physical Computing
Well, there is a new tool in town for programming micro devices like the Micro:bit and the AdaFruit Circuit Playground Express and many more! It's called MicroBlocks...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What I miss and don’t miss about teaching
Fall has come and while students are back in school I am not. I’ve been reflecting a bit about that. I don’t miss getting up at 6 AM and driving for close to an...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Why Computer Science Teachers Should Read Books
Since I retired I have been reading more computer science related books. You may have read my book reviews on Humble Pi, Weapons of Math Destruction, or Computer...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
How Are You Doing?
We’ve now finished the first week after Labor Day and at least in North America almost everyone is back to school. That may not mean physically back in a bricks...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The End of School Computer Labs?
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about doing away with computer labs in schools. BYOD and one to one computers have been talked about and have been...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Book Review: Humble Pi
Recently, I asked my Facebook friends for recommendations for non-fiction books that would not get me depressed. Several people recommended Humble Pi: When Math...
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson