Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

Tools for Teaching Adults to Program

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:04:00 GMT

We seem to be developing tools to teach younger and younger people to program. Kodu in theory is for students 8 and older but I know that some 6 and 7 years olds do very well with it. Last week I read about Scratch Jr which will be aimed at teaching programming to children from preK to grade 3 (basically ages 4 to 8). I admit that the first question I asked myself is “is that too young?” Are children that age ready for programming? Maybe maybe not. But the second question that came to me was “what would programming tools designed for adults (say 25 plus) look like? Honestly I have no clue.

Now I have taught older students. In fact I recently wrote about teaching middle and high school students in the same class as adult learners. (http://fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu) Young people and adults learn this stuff differently. The younger learners have less fear and are more likely to boldly try new things and accept things being “broken.” I’m not sure if the issue is the tool or the teaching style though. Or are there just basic differences in teaching adults that are not as much a factor of the tool as they are the nature of the students?

Could we come up with a better teaching tool for adults than what we have now? Or do we just want to adapt something of the way we teach with existing tools of the sort we use with young adults (16 to 25)? I’m open to suggestions here. Is anyone looking at this (or doing it regularly)? What works well with adult learners who have no prior programming experience? What do people recommend? Is what works in college just as good for people in their 30s, 40’s 50s, and up?

Interesting Links 6 February 2012

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:46:00 GMT

I’m headed to Austin TX today for the Texas Computer Educators Association (TCEA) conference. Hoping to see some old friends and meet some new friends. If you are at TCEA I hope you will stop by the Microsoft booth and find me. Also I am looking forward to a couple of talks including Pat Yongpradit (twitter @MrYongpradit) presenting - Games for Social Causes using Microsoft XNA Game Studio. Wed 2/8 9:15 a.m. and Bryan Baker talking about his work with Kinect on Thursday. Should be a good week.

Ed Donahue blogged about the Big App On Campus College students – submit your app for chance to win $15,000 or a trip to SXSW!!

As a reminder, up to 100 of the top teams competing in the Kinect Fun Labs Challenge will receive a free Kinect for Windows sensor and a Kinect Gadget Accelerator Kit (“GAK”) with which they can build their Round 2 gadgets (see additional details). Please encourage your local students to participate in this Challenge. Remember, Software Design teams can also compete in Challenges, and vice versa.

Scratch Jr programming for preK to grade 3? Now that is an interesting idea.

Kinect Sweepstakes For Schools Win an Xbox/Kinect package for your school

Are You Applying for the 2012 US Forum? Read about it and some of the teachers who did last year

Some Serious Fun With Kodu Programming – That project and its challenge blew me away. Take a look for yourself.

RT @TheOfficialACM: ACM Queue has launched an online programming challenge! Get involved today! bit.ly/xMylnV

I found a new CS educator on Twitter @DrStephenFalcon and his blog at icodecompsci.blogspot.com. He’s been added to my CS education blog roll at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2011/12/08/computer-science-education-blog-roll.aspx

Using the Windows 7 USB Download Tool with ANY .iso file - Randy Guthrie explains how to do it. I think you will find it very useful especially if you have netbooks or other computers without optical disks.

Chevon Christie, our January Tech Student of the Month! See what makes Chevon so special you could be featured next!

When Just Working Isn’t Good Enough

Alfred Thompson — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:00:00 GMT

I wrote a tic tac toe game for my Windows Phone today. It works just fine. I’m just not happy with it. I loaded a screen shot of it to the left. Oh it is obvious that the graphics are not so hot. Graphic design and UI design are just not my thing. I’m actually pretty happy that (in theory at least) I could give the XAML code off and have someone who is good at design fix it all up for me so I could just worry about the code. No, it’s the code I am unhappy with. Why? Well it’s a mess. It wasn’t designed. Now I’ve written multiple tic tac toe programs in my time. I know how it should work. But each time I just wing it. With close to 40 years of programming behind me I do a fairly good job of winging it. Unfortunately that same experience lets me recognize poor design when I see it. So what went wrong? Generally that old ready, fire aim mentality crept in to the process. You see I didn’t set out to write a great tic tac toe program. I set out to learn some Silverlight for Windows Phone development. So my focus was on other things than writing the best tic tac toe program I could write. In retrospect every tic tac toe program I have ever written was not written to write a great tic tac toe program but to either teach or learn some concept, tool, or idea. This is, unfortunately, all too often an occurrence for what I might call educational programming. I had a student complain once that the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam was one big set of examples about how not to program. It was hard to argue with him.

Sometimes this is ok. Sometimes doing it right means too much complication or at least too many lines of code for use in a test or as a simple concept example. Pro developer examples generally don’t go that route though. They are, usually, examples of exactly how to do it right. They’re great for professionals to learn from but too often are completely overwhelming for raw beginners. is there a middle ground? I’d like to think so. Finding it is the trick though.

I have a couple of example programs I have been using lately (Tic tac toe, Whack a Mole, and Pong) that are optimized for fast and easy creation in a demo or hands on lab setting. There is just a ton wrong with them. The tic tac toe and whack a mole could greatly benefit from some well designed custom object classes for example. The Pong (which in my defense someone else wrote but I have translated into VB fro the original C#) just takes too many shortcuts. All three programs look like they could have been written by a beginning programmer. What I have decided to do is to take some time and do all three of these game a lot closer to right. It’s a point of personal pride which I why I an posting this. I want people to ask me from time to time when they are going to see the results. You know – just to keep me on my toes.

Designed programs work better than hacked together programs. They are easier to debug, to maintain, to enhance and they look better. To me at least there is a feeling of satisfaction from a well designed and developed program that I just don’t get from something I have hacked together. I know that not everyone feels this way. I sure know that for some students just having a piece of code that compiles and meets the minimum standards is success. And that is fine as far as it goes. Other people pride themselves on hacking things together with at least the illusion of development speed unhindered by “wasted time” planning. That is just not me. Slapping things together today made me realize that I need more. I need that planning first. I need my code to be designed. I need to take the time to avoid coding bugs. No matter how much I tested today I just don’t feel as comfortable as I’d like that it is going to work in all cases. And that is not good enough.

DreamSpark and AppHub Sign Up

Alfred Thompson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:55:55 GMT

We’ve had some changes in the DreamSpark program lately and the web site feels all different to me. So what I decided to do was to step though the process of first signing up for DreamSpark for students with Activations codes such as you get in a high school Dream Spark program of if you get a code from someone at Microsoft. The first step is easy – head over to http://www.dreamspark.com and find the link (highlighted in yellow below) for how Dream Spark works for students.

Registration with DreamSpark

Clicking on that link gets you to this page where you find the sign up link (circled in red).

You will be asked to enter account information for your new DreamSpark account. Use the email address for a Windows Live ID (You can create one for free if you don’t already have one) Note that there are several options for verification. The Institution/School and ISIC Card options are for university students. If you are at a university and have a EDU email address you can use one of them. For most high school students we’ll be using the Activation code.

Pick a good password. The system wants letters, numbers and special characters so give it some thought. After this you will get an email to validate your address. Be sure and check the email account you used and validate the address before going further.

Registration with AppHub

Now jump over to the AppHub at http://create.msdn.com/en-US/ and sign up. Be sure to use the exact same Windows Live ID that you signed up to Dream Spark with. Why? Because AppHub is going to verify that you are a student who is allowed to register phones and submit apps to the marketplace for free. Free is good. You will get to a page like this one below. Be sure to select the right country and that you are a student. Also accept the terms and conditions.

Once you accept the system will attempt to verify you with Dream Spark. Assuming you validated your email and used the same Windows Live ID for both DreamSpark and the AppHub you should get the next screen to enter you personal details.

Be use to answer this all accurately. You may want to get paid for your software on the market place some day.

Next you pick an avatar and a gamer tag. The gamer tag is used for the Xbox market place and if you have an existing gamer tag you should use that. If not now you can create a new one.

The activation registration will be sending your email another activation link. Yeah again. Just trying to make sure people are using real working email accounts.

Once you verify your email address you will get this screen and know that your account is all set up.

Now if you have a Windows Phone (and if you don’t go get one!) you can register it as a developer phone for free. This will let you test your apps on the real phone and not just on the emulator. The instructions for this are pretty clear at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg588378(v=VS.92).aspx Just scroll down to Registering Your Phone to Unlock It for Development

Kinect For Windows Is Out

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:07:00 GMT

I know you have been reading me write about Kinect for Windows for a while now so why is this news? The reason for that is simple – new hardware and new software. Oh and a new license. What I have been writing about is using the Kinect for Xbox with a Windows PC. The new Kinect for Windows has some new features. We’re pretty excited about it at Microsoft. We think it opens the door for even more possibilities than the original beta releases. I’m pretty excited myself to see the applications that people find for it.

More information from the Kinect for Windows website:

Commercial ready

The Kinect for Windows SDK offers an installer, which makes it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployment.

Enhanced Sensor Capabilities

The Kinect for Windows sensor expands the possibilities for innovation with features like Near Mode, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the sensor. In addition, up to 4 Kinect sensors can now be plugged into the same computer.

Software Improvements

One of the many improvements to the Kinect for Windows SDK is improved skeletal tracking, which lets developers control which user is being tracked by the sensor. In addition, the latest Microsoft Speech components, along with an improved acoustic model significantly improve speech recognition accuracy.

Of course there is a lot more at the Kinect for Windows website and especially on the Kinect for Windows FAQ.

Some Serious Fun With Kodu Programming

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:00:00 GMT

As regular readers know I am a huge fan of Kodu, the highly graphical, easy to program game development product from Microsoft Research. It is easy enough that an 8 year old can create some great fun games with it (and some smart younger kids have done cool stuff as well) so it is easy to take this software lightly. But as I play with it more and more I find that the opportunity for complexity and serious computer science is really baked into it. One of the members of the Kodu team recently discovered a Kodu soccer (or football if you will) game written by a middle school student. The game had an artificial intelligence but one that wasn’t all that smart. It basically played like elementary school kids are likely to play. In other words everyone after the ball and no one playing position. Still pretty impressive for a middle school student. Joe, our Kodu team member, worked on a serious soccer video game in a previous life so decided to up the ante a bit. His AI is smarter but he is challenging others to beat his by writing their own AI code. You can get the Kodu Soccer Game Jam v01 here:

Kodu Soccer Game Jam v01

Can you beat this AI....? The original AI was built by middle schooler, Juan G, from Kent Technology Academy. I thought what he had done was great and I was inspired by my time working on FIFA... FIFA uses a technique that allows the AI to see the pitch in terms of threats and opportunities; I wanted to see if I could reproduce this in KODU! Once you have an AI that beats mine; share it and post a message with a link on the kodugamelab.com forums. Let's keep JAMing on making better AI!!!

Read more about this challenge and how it came about at February Game Jam: Soccer AI Challenge And think about if you can do better! If nothing else I think you can learn a lot and get some ideas from reviewing Joe’s code. Let me know if you take this challenge on and how it goes.

No Room in the Inn–I Mean Schedule

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:32:00 GMT

I spent yesterday at Stevens Institute of Technology, an outstanding university across the river from New York City. The occasion was a high school computer science workshop for faculty and students. While the students were getting demonstrations on some of the cool technology that Stevens faculty and students are working on the high school teachers were involved with a panel discussion. I was on the panel along with Jan Cuny (NSF), Bob Slater (Alice/CMU) and Tara Canobbio (Google). We started of with some great discussion of pedagogy. Don gave us a preview of Alice 3.1 Alice 3.1 looks amazing though I suggested they need an interface with Kinect so that avatars could follow people’s movements in the real world and act on them in the virtual world. Now wouldn’t THAT be cool? I of course brought up the usual – Kodu, XNA game development and Windows Phone development. There continues to be a lot of interest in game development and mobile/smart phone development to attract students and we do have a lot of free curriculum resources for that. But after a while a bigger worry became the topic of discussion – there is too little room for computer science in the curriculum.

This is a complicated issue (I wrote some about it just last week at We Need A Wider Conversation on CS Education) but basically these are some of the issues:

Students have room for fewer and fewer electives because of increased mandates and CS is mostly an elective
Most states (42 of 50 including New Jersey) do not allow computer science to count as either a math or science so may not help towards graduation requirements
Students will often not take “hard” electives for fear of hurting their GPAs
Certification for computer science educators is a mess – I could write a lot about that but is should be sufficient to say that lack of a clear certification for CS teachers contributes to the problem

Teachers, for the most part, feel helpless to fix these issues. There are large and powerful organizations for teachers of subjects like math and even art and music. These groups have lobbied hard to get their subjects either increased inclusion as graduation requirements. The CS community has not been as successful. Now there are efforts to change this. The CSTA (PLEASE if you are a CS teacher join and get active) has worked diligently at the national level and through local chapters at the state level to lobby for more CS education. Getting CS Education Week though Congress was a big win; a good step in the right direction. But without computer science being in the common core we’re still playing come from behind. Computing in the Core, a partnership between professional agencies and some in industry (Microsoft is active) is working towards this goal. But ultimately education much like politics is local in the US. That means that decisions are seldom make at the national level (no matter how much some people which it were different). Decisions are made at the state and local level.

Some schools have decided on their own to make computer science a requirement. Some, Los Angeles for one, have at least worked hard to make it more available starting with grade 9 in order to give more students the opportunity to learn what CS is all about.

In the US we are not turning out enough of the high quality computer science professionals that we need. These are great, world changing jobs but we are cutting back – in many cases actively and deliberately for cost cutting reasons – on the education of the very people we need most to turn the economy around. Some special purpose schools (Software Engineering High School) are great as far as they go. In the long run though we owe it to all children to have the opportunity to be exposed to a real, engaging, and valuable computer science course.

Are You Applying for the 2012 US Forum?

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:43:00 GMT

Last summer I attended the US Innovative Education Forum in Redmond and came home quite inspired by the teachers and projects I saw. Dozens of teachers using technology to improve the quality and quantity of learning with their students. Microsoft Partners in Learning is now looking for this year’s crop of interesting, inspiring and innovative teachers and projects to attend the 2012 US Forum in Redmond, this summer. I’ve copied some of the information about this event below but I hope you will check out the 2012 US Forum page for yourself to learn about this wonderful opportunity for teachers. At the bottom of this post as links to some of my blog posts from this past summer’s event as well as some posts by teachers who attended it. Please read what some of these amazing teachers had to say about their experiences. And if you are doing interesting things with technology give some thought to applying. (BTW computer science teachers have been some of the top award winners recently.)

Showcase and celebrate innovative teaching

Show us how you engage students in problem-solving, inspire their creativity, and prepare them for life ahead. You could be selected to attend the forum in Redmond, Washington, July 31 – August 1. Winners there will proceed to the Worldwide 2012 Global Forum in Athens, Greece.

There is an extra opportunity for computer science, graphic design or technology educators who are selected – an Xbox/Kinect system.

Computer science, graphic design, and technology educators: You might win an Xbox 360 and Kinect for your school.
Here’s how:

Computer science, graphic design, or technology educators who are selected to participate in the forum are eligible to win an Xbox 360 and Kinect for their school.

When you apply online to the Forum, be sure to select which Microsoft web design or software development tools are used in your project.

Educators eligible to win the Xbox 360 and Kinect must submit a gifting letter.

Who can apply?

K-12 educators or teams of two educators who lead class projects that use technology to positively impact student learning
School leaders who direct programs and initiatives that use technology to enhance education throughout the school community

By teachers

By me:

Interesting Posts 30 January 2012

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:07:00 GMT

Wow! January if almost over. Groundhog Day coming up this week. I wonder if these is a fun computing project around Groundhog’s Day? Randomly choose if the groundhog see his shadow and we have an early spring? Or is it an early spring if he doesn’t see his shadow? I’ll have to Bing that. Starting off this week in New Jersey at the high school computer science workshop run by Stevens Institute. I come most years as there are just a wonderful bunch of high school computer science teachers from all over New Jersey and some from across the river in New York as well. More on that tomorrow perhaps. Have to remember to take pictures.

This week Microsoft announced that teams from Croatia, Ecuador, Jordan and the U.S. won the first ever Imagine Cup Grants These grants will help these teams further develop and deploy some potentially life changing applications. Better physical therapy solutions at lower costs, translating spoken language into sign language, a system that allows people who do not have use of their hands/arms to use a computer and point-of-care tool to diagnose malaria using an augmented Windows Phone application that has to potential to save a great many lives. What will this year’s Imagine Cup teams come up with? What will YOUR students come up with?

Nice new post by Cameron Evans @EDUCTO titled The America Within Our Reach Innovation and education can make a world of difference.

FRC Team 1912 driving a robot with code in LabVIEW and sensor information from a Kinect. Interested in developing with Kinect? Look no further, here is an awesome video beginner’s guide via @Ch9

You know I had more but I lost them. Not sure how that happened but I hope to have more and even better links next week.

Kinect Sweepstakes For Schools

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:04:00 GMT

Energize your classroom and get students moving!

Enter for a chance to win a Kinect^TM for Xbox 360® prize package for your school!

Learn more about Kinect.
Get activity plans for your school.

Inviting ALL EDUCATORS to share their GREAT IDEAS

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:15:46 GMT

I love sharing by educators. It is one clear way that I believe we can all make education work better. So this announcement seemed like something I had to share.

The NEA Foundation, Microsoft US Partners in Learning Seek Solutions

Using Technology to Engage Students in Learning

New Challenge to Innovate Query Offers $1,000 Awards for Educators’ Best Ideas

WASHINGTON, DC (Jan. 23, 2012) -- How can interactive technology and game-based learning help students learn? In its latest Challenge to Innovate (C2i) initiative, the NEA Foundation has partnered with Microsoft US Partners in Learning to encourage public school educators to explore, share, and discuss their responses to this question on the Department of Education’s Open Innovation Portal. The best 10 ideas, as judged by the C2i community on the portal, will receive $1,000 cash awards and recognition as their solutions are shared with educators nationwide.

“Nine out of 10 kids, between the ages of two and 17, play electronic games in the U.S, according to a recent national study. Should these new tools be limited to simple fun, or can they open new doors to learning?” said Harriet Sanford, President and CEO of the NEA Foundation. “The next great teaching frontier is light years away from chalk and erasers. If we change the classroom conversation from a one-way exercise to an engaging process that is constantly being renewed and refined, what would happen? Can gaming and education be combined in effective ways?”

Sanford said that the Foundation created C2i last year in partnership with the Department of Education to explore crowd sourcing as a way to exchange ideas and identify innovative solutions to a range of instructional challenges. With the help of an expert panel, the Foundation reviews the community’s top selection and gives cash awards for the best ideas. To date, more than 9,350 individuals have joined the C2i community.

Proposed solutions for the gaming challenge will be accepted from Jan. 23 through March 5, 2012. To submit or to review, comment, or vote on solutions, participants must register on the Department of Education’s Portal. For details on how to participate or for more information, please visit the Foundation’s C2i page.

We Need A Wider Conversation on CS Education

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:50:00 GMT

There is an active conversation going on in the UK about computing education. From the Royal Society report (Shut down or restart?: The way forward for computing in UK schools) to Op-ed pieces in newspapers to blogs people are asking “why are we not teaching students more computer science?” I see some of that conversation in the US as well. Andy Young’s piece on Why programming should be required in schools was Slash Dotted this week. The response on Slashdot is mixed. We have Computer Science Education Week now and some in Congress are talking about the need to do more. But far too little of this conversation is taking place outside the computer science education ghetto/echo chamber.

Computing in the Core seems like a good step and the organizations that are involved are the right ones.

Computing in the Core is a non-partisan advocacy coalition of associations, corporations, scientific societies, and other non-profits seeking to elevate the national profile of computer science education in K-12 within the US and work toward ensuring that computer science is one of the core academic subjects in K-12 education.

But other than Microsoft, Google and SAS there doesn’t seem to be much participation from industry. Frankly industry should have the most vested interest in participating. Where are the other hardware and software companies? Where are the tech bloggers for that matter? The answer I’ve gotten before is that “not my area of expertise” or “I’m focused on other things.” Joel Spolsky is one of the exceptions with his involvement with the proposed software engineering high school in New York City. He sees the need for more highly skilled and trained computer science people. Then of course he is not just a pundit spouting off but a practitioner who actually hires software develops for his company. It may be that smaller companies are feeling the shortage of qualified people the most. The Microsofts, Googles, Facebooks, HPs, Dells, and other really large companies get to pick from the cream of the software development crop after all. The big companies need the small ones though. That is one of the reasons Microsoft has programs like BizSpark to help startups and works to help increase the pool of computer scientists – so that our partners will also be able to find the people they need.

Startups, who are also sucking up some of our best and brightest, are too small and too focused to get much involved. So it is the big companies we need to be involved for the betterment of the whole industry. The pundits in their blogs and social media outlets could be a powerful force in getting more companies involved. I just wish they would look around and get active. If they don’t they may all have to move to India or China to cover the software industry one of these days.

One Option for How to Teach Kodu

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:25:00 GMT

I recently ran some workshops to prepare students to be peer mentors and to mentor younger students with Kodu. The method I suggest is to have mentors show students some small steps and then let the students try. The latest version of Kodu has some really nice step by step lessons that students can do on their own or with a peer. After a lesson we encourage the students to try the same things on their own from where the lesson leaves off. For example adding a second character and having that character do something similar but slightly different from what was done in the lesson. I also encourage students to explore a little as well. They keep discovering things and sharing them with partners or others in the class. The general pattern of show a few things followed by experimentation with those things and repeat seems to work very well.

It can’t be all lecture/demo or students get bored. Kids just naturally want to try this stuff! On the other hand if you don’t stop and introduce new things students are likely to miss out on things. Although you can also count on some students learning things you didn’t know on a regular basis. Take those as teachable moments and use them to your advantage.

Students running into issues (bugs if you want) are an additional opportunity. This gives one a chance to talk about problem solving skills and how to look carefully at what is being asked of the program or not being asked. For example a common error when using additional code pages as sub routines is to forget to return to the original or other code page at an appropriate time. This is really an important programming concept that students can easily grasp using Kodu.

In our recent workshops which included high school and middle school students we gave the students a challenge list after the lunch break (we ran for three hours before lunch). That list looked like this:

Create a new world with mountains and water
Add several characters including some that move and some that don’t (like trees?)
Program the movable objects to move on their own
Keep some sort of score and act on it (e.g. win/lose game)
Make some object jump
Have fun!

Bonus:

Use two score boards
Use a path
Create and use a second (or third) code page
Make characters have a conversation (use When Hear)
Use a “creatable” (adds copies of things to the game as it runs)
Add intro text (background and/or instructions)

At the end of an hour we had students demonstrate and explain the projects they had created. I was amazed at what students were able to do in a short period of time. I can see creating a series of simple challenge lists for an after school program that would include both material that had been covered and some items for students to discover on their own.

There are also some curriculum resources at http://fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu (scroll down to the Kodu Classroom Kit for Educators) Also on that page you will find some introductory videos and a link to the Kodu community at KoduGameLab.com The videos can be particularly useful since everything in Kodu is so visual. It is easier to show something than explain it.

Interesting Links 23 January 2012

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:40:00 GMT

Last week really reminded me of how much I miss being in the classroom. Two all-day workshops with a mix of students and adults. Lots of good learning going on. It was wonderful to see people “getting it” and learning some new things. I need to get in front of more students more often. A lot of links to share this week. The first one is the big one.

Time Running Our for Proposals for the CSIT Conference
This message is brought to you by the CSTA member listserv.

The proposal submission deadline for the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) 12th Annual Computer Science & Information Technology Conference is January 31, 2012.
The CS&IT 2012 Program Committee seeks proposal submissions related to the practice of teaching and learning computer science and information technology in K–12. Proposals will be accepted for one-hour presentations or panels and for three-hour workshops. All proposals will be submitted through the online symposium submission system that can be found at:
https://www.softconf.com/c/csta2012/

I’m sure some of you are doing interesting things that more teachers should know about. Please consider submitting a proposal to present as CS & IT and get it in this week. Deadline is the 31st of January!

New last week is SkyDrive.com/students for teachers, students or anyone else There is also a blog post with 7 power tips for working with SkyDrive across a group with Macs and PCs and a detailed how to video. If all you know is Google docs you owe it to yourself to check this out.

My friend Tara Walker and my manager Bob Familiar have both written about the Big App on Campus event for college students. Check out either Want Fame? The Big Apps On Campus is the Way or Big App On Campus! Your Time to Shine! for more information.

Big App on Campus (BAOC) is open to US College and University students who build apps for Windows Phone. Each app created from August 1st, 2011 until February 14th, 2012 can be entered and students can submit multiple entries. Win big cash (15k) or a trip to South by Southwest. More Details: http://on.fb.me/wT7vSm

My friend Andrew Parson’s mother, a retired teacher is now tweeting at @moppyp and blogging at Everything I Learned About Learning!. I really liked her recent post - Can video and RP games encourage reading It’s an interesting question with some interesting opinions of the answer.

In an interesting coincidence, Mark Guzdial wrote Do badges get in the way of learning to code? at just about the same time Microsoft was releasing an add-on for Visual Studio to let developers earn Achievement badges for what they do while coding. Check out the Geek Wire Article The coding game: Microsoft's Visual Studio gets badges, achievements and leaderboard but don’t miss the official announcement on channel 9 about Visual Studio Achievements.

Where creativity meets technology – a fascinating interview with Jennifer Chayes who is the Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England. She talks a lot about the importance of STEM especially for girls.

Ken Royal is one of my favorite Ed Tech writers. He has just opened his new Internet home at Royal Reports Follow Ken at @kenroyal on Twitter as well

Time Flies When Learning Is Fun

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:30:59 GMT

I did some work workshops with the great people from Digital Wish again this week (see also Teaching Teachers and Students Together) We did a full day workshop on web development using Expression Web using the Heavy Metal Car tutorial workshop from http://expression.microsoft.com/education We were able to cram a lot of learning into one day and by the end of the day the students (high school students and faculty mixed) had created a web page that included quite a bit of learning. Actually it was a pretty crammed day but pretty much everyone was able to keep up with the fast pace. I think the fact that Expression Web uses a lot of the same sorts of icons, command ribbons and generally has a look and feel a lot like Microsoft Office has a lot to do with the fast learning curve. Day two was another Kodu workshop. Honestly I think we learned some things about workshops like this from the previous one and we covered more in less time and had more fun. In fact there was an interesting exchange just before the lunch break.

The head of Digital Wish announced that we were going to take a lunch break and that we had been going at it for about three hours already. One of the students popped up and said “What? we’ve been doing this for three hours?” and looked at the clock. This was followed by him turning to his peers and saying “Guys we’ve been at this for three hours already!” This was followed by the students almost waking up from a trance. Honestly I have seen very few students engrossed in learning something as these students learning Kodu.

I’m not sure the students in the picture on the left even knew that I was walking around taking pictures. For some of these students Kodu was not their first experience with visual programming tools. Some had used Alice (from Carnegie Mellon) while others had used Scratch (from MIT). now I love both of those tools and I’ve seen them used with great effect. I do recommend them myself. But at least in my face these students were enjoying Kodu more. I see this as a statement of one size not fitting all more than as a criticism of those other wonderful learning tools. One of them would still rather use Game Maker for example for their own projects. Since the students in this workshop are going to be teaching other, younger students I’m glad they were enjoying themselves with Kodu of course.

The highlight of the day for me was one other comment from a student. I didn’t catch it all as he was talking to his peers but it was along the lines of “I thought programming was all dull and boring but this is really interesting and fun.” That to me is one of the real goals of using Kodu, and to a real extent some of the other visual programming languages. We want students to see some real success and create something meaningful to them. Once they have that success and realize that they can program and that they can create value they become much more willing do to the hard work that moving to more advanced programming entails.

I know a lot of students who really enjoy programming games using XNA for example. This is much more complex and difficult than Kodu. But knowing what is possible (Kodu is written using XNA for example) and knowing that they can have fun while learning is a great kick start. Students will work hard to learn things that interest them. They will also find it fun. Really that’s not such a bad thing.

Two New Imagine Cup Challenges for 2012

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:45:10 GMT

The Imagine Cup just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Today two more challenges were announced via the Imagine Cup blog (Microsoft Announces Windows Metro Style App and Kinect Fun Labs Challenges for Imagine Cup 2012). One challenge is specifically for Kinect applications while the other is for Windows Metro Style apps for Windows 8!

Kinect Fun Labs Challenge
The Kinect Fun Labs Challenge brings Imagine Cup into the living room and expands the role of Kinect in competition, inviting you to think about entertainment with a social conscience and solve the world’s toughest problems using Kinect technology for the Xbox 360 console and Xbox LIVE – an Imagine Cup first!

For the Kinect Fun Labs challenge the first 100 teams that advance to Round 2 will each receive a free Kinect sensor! Read more about this challenge at Kinect Fun Labs Challenge.

Windows Metro Style App Challenge
Windows 8 is coming and Metro style apps are the center of the Windows 8 experience. With this Challenge, you can be at the forefront of creating Windows Metro style applications!

The Imagine Cup Windows Metro Style App Challenge will test your team’s ability to prototype a Metro style app that takes advantage of Windows 8 features and Metro design styles to deliver an experience that solves one of the world’s toughest problems. We’re bringing the platform – you bring the ideas!

This is just the event to get you jump started into Windows 8 and the future of application design and development.

Complete details and applications are available on the Windows Metro Style App and Kinect Fun Labs Challenge pages. You can also stay up to date on Imagine Cup news by becoming a fan on Facebook and following the Imagine Cup on Twitter!

Software Engineering High School

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:52:52 GMT

It sounds like a movie title doesn’t it? Like Super Hero High for geeks. But in this case New York City gets a Software Engineering High School this coming Septembers for real. What’s it going to be like? It looks like Joel Spolsky and other software professionals including involvement from a number of major software related firms are involved from the industry side. From the academic side Mike Zamansky from New York’s Stuyvesant High School and Leigh Ann Jervis DeLyser are involved. Leigh Ann is someone I have known for a while. She was my trainer when I helped grade the APCS exam a bunch of years ago. She’s being doing CS education related studies as a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon the last few years after being a HS CS teacher for a good while. So it is not just all industry people and not just all education people but people who actually know what they are doing in both fields. That makes it sound pretty good.

One of the goals of this school is increasing the diversity of people in the software engineering field. With not entrance exam (NYC has a number of outstanding entrance exam high schools – I attended one) this one will be open to students with an interest regardless of tests. This should open a lot of doors. It has challenges as well but interest from students and good teachers can overcome that – I have faith in that! I do worry about recruiting though. How many middle school students know that they are interested in this area if they haven’t been exposed to some computer science (not applications use) in middle school? Perhaps students (or their parents) will be attracted by the career possibilities. I hope so. The software industry can be a great place to work and not just for the money but the chance to make a difference in the world. Joel Spolsky expects the school to be overwhelmed with applicants. I hope he’s right but I worry by nature.

Besides students this school is going to need great teachers. The board and principal (they still need a great principal) will have to work hard to find the right teachers. I am more optimistic about this. I mean seriously I would love to teach at a school like this. What computer science teacher who loves the subject and loves teaching wouldn't? Will this strip the other high schools in NYC of all the best CS teachers though? Or will it attract enough new candidates from outside the area to really build a CS education community in NYC? Now THAT would be an exciting development. I really hope that happens.

Over time schools are judged in large measure by their graduates. This school intends to be a rigorous academic environment. That’s a good thing. We, and by we I mean the software engineering professional and academic communities, need this school to turn out a diverse, motivated, and ready student body who will attend great universities and really move this country forward in the field. So the CS and the other academic areas need to be top notch. Sounds like that is the goal. Retention will be tricky. Rigorous means that some students who are not used to rigor will struggle. The faculty will have to help keep them motivated and moving. That’s what good teachers do of course. Environment is key though. I firmly believe that if the environment outside of school is not supportive the culture and environment inside the school becomes even more important. I like what I read so far (there are other articles on this school out there) though.

Personally and professionally I hope to get involved in this school. I’ll want to make sure they are able to take full advantage of the new improved DreamSpark program for example. If you are familiar with MSDN Academic Alliance that is being upgraded to this new version of DreamSpark Premium with institutional subscriptions. And of course make sure they know about all the free curriculum resources at the Faculty Connection site. And we’ll see what else we can do to help over time. It’s going to be an interesting experiment. If it works it may be a model for more schools around the country. Wouldn’t that be something?

Interesting Links 16 January 2012

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:10:36 GMT

Sorry this is late today. Not a good weekend or morning either. Should be close to 100% for the workshops I am presenting in Vermont on Wednesday and Thursday though. More of what I did last week (Teaching Teachers and Students Together) This week Ed Donahue is joining me for an Expression Web workshops. Should be fun for sure. Now off with some links that I hope you will find useful and/or interesting.

First off the bat Lee Stott @lee_stott writes about the amazing Windows Phone Curricula Resources DVD and Online resources a huge number of resources for anyone who wants to learn or teach Windows Phone development.

The amazing Angela Maiers @AngelaMaiers wrote about her experiences at the Partners in Learning – Global Forum this past fall.

New York City gets a Software Engineering High School this coming Septembers. Joel Spolsky writes about it in that link. Joel is on the advisory board. So is my good friend Leigh Ann Jervis DeLyser. The school is largely the dream of Mike Zamansky @zamansky from New York’s Stuyvesant High School. Most people call it an “elite” school but since I went to rival Brooklyn Tech I can’t bring myself to do that. ) BTW I just added Mike’s blog at cestlaz.blogspot.com to my Computer Science Education Blog Roll. Not sure why it took me so long to find Mike’s blog. Let me know if there are others I should be following.

Audrey Watters @audreywatters who is rapidly becoming my first source for technology education news wrote Should ALL college majors (not just CS majors) learn to code? I think so but apparently not everyone agrees. Imagine that!

Interesting look at an Imagine Cup team: UW students utilize the Kinect to teach math on GeekWire I love the whole idea of learning that involves people getting up and moving around. I think that makes people’s brains work better. Bodies too!

Teaching Teachers and Students Together

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:46:00 GMT

The other day Chris Bowen (that’s Chris working with students below) and I gave a Kodu workshop for a group of students and teachers in Vermont. This was a train the trainer sort of work shop and the students will be acting as peer tutors as part of after school programs in their local schools. Some of the adults were teachers from the same schools while others were teacher trainers from the Digital Wish program who organized the workshop.

Having both students who ranged from about 6th grade though high school and adults in the same workshop was pretty interesting. Generally speaking the adults asked more questions. The students tended to try more things before asking. One might expect adults to hesitate about asking for help in front of students but that was not the case. These adults were there to learn and if asking questions helped they were ready and willing to do so. In fact stopping teachers from asking questions seems just about impossible in my experience. It is one of the things I love about doing workshops for teachers.

As I said before the students were rushing ahead to try things. They also wanted to learn but at their age discovery and trial and error appear to be the preferred way to learn. And learn they did! Kodu is one of those wonderful tools where you can point students in a general direction and get out of the way. We had some of the students demo projects at the end of the day and I must say I was impressed with how much they learned. It was more than I was able to teach them. I call that success!

The adults learned a lot as well of course. It was interesting to see that while the students didn’t pay a lot of attention to what the adults were doing the adults were positively energized by watching the students. This is not really surprising in either case. Kids are notorious for not being able to see beyond themselves. Teachers are well known for thriving on the success of their students. It is the ability to push students forward and enjoy their success that makes people good teachers (among other things of course).

My last big observation is that the teacher’s minds were racing with a different set of ideas than the students. The students were interested in “playing” while the teachers were seeing things like:

Problem solving
logical thinking
debugging
story boarding
teamwork

And all sorts of other things students were and would be learning through the process. It’s as if mental light bulbs were going off all over the room. I can’t wait to see what all of these students – adult and school age alike – come up with in the coming weeks and months.

Microsoft Stores Thrilled to Become FIRST Sponsors!

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:42:03 GMT

In an exciting new partnership, Microsoft Stores across the country are teaming up with FIRST robotics teams to provide Kinect hardware and software development kits along with technical support. “It just seemed like a perfect fit,” explained Steph Ramsey, a Community Development Specialist at the Mission Viejo, CA Microsoft store. “We are thrilled to be able to use our resources to sponsor and support teams that are as passionate about technology and technology education as we are.” The 14 Microsoft stores are deeply committed to community engagement and promoting technology education to students. As Steph put it, “These kids are the future engineers and scientists and by supporting their curiosities we are enabling them to grow towards their full potential.”

The partnership will focus on Microsoft Stores providing both Kinect hardware and Kinect software development kits to FIRST teams as well as a space for teams to develop and display their robotics creations. In addition, Microsoft Stores will be able to use their technical resources and know-how to both assist and challenge the teams as they create and develop their technical skills.

Developed in order to better engage with technology enthusiasts, the first Microsoft Store opened in 2009. Determined to engage with the local community, the stores have already developed partnerships with several teams such as Code Orange (FIRST Team 3476). As seen in the photos, the Mission Viejo store was transformed into a robotics fanatics’ playground on December 10, 2010, when Code Orange team members shared their experiences with customers and store patrons. “We loved the opportunity to work with the local Mission Viejo Store, it was a perfect opportunity for our team members to engage with others passionate about technology in a space designed just for that purpose” noted Dr. Shelley Nordman, mentor of Code Orange.

If you are interested in partnering with a Microsoft Store to learn more about Microsoft technologies or spread the word about FIRST please find the store closest to you and e-mail skills@microsoft.com!

Interesting Links 9 January 2012

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 12:48:25 GMT

Wow! What a weekend I had. Microsoft was pretty involved with the kick off of this year’s FIRST Robotics Competition. We gave each of the 2,200 or so teams a Kinect to use to control their robots. I was able to attend some of the kickoff events including presenting a workshop on Kinect for FRC and the Founder’s Reception at Dean Kamen’s house the night before the unveiling of the game. What an exciting game this looks to be. Ok there was ore to the week and I do have some links to share. I hope you find at least one of them useful.e

Last month I posted about Microsoft Kicks Off Cloud Fundamentals Video Series The newest video, “Cloud Computing Requires Transparency,” features Mark Estberg, senior director, Microsoft Global Foundation Services, speaking about the need to have a partnership between customers and cloud providers to ensure transparency. The video is showcased on Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing (TwC) Blog:

Big App on Campus is now on Facebook.

Windows® Phone is giving you the opportunity to create and publish your dream app. In doing so, you could win Big, a 4-day trip (for you and a friend) to the 2012 SxSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas. There are two categories to enter - free apps and paid apps. You choose. Then let your mobile app's creativity and popularity deliver the ultimate prize, 15,000 U.S. dollars.

New from Coding 4 Fun @coding4fun: Using the Kinect to build a NUI E-Book It's not an e-book about the Kinect but with the Kinect!

From the Anita Borg Institute I found this great link. "What may happen in the next 100 years" from The Ladies' Home Journal, Dec 1900. It is really interesting what they got right (not much) and what they got wrong (quite a bit)

From the Kodu team @koduteam: Remarkable Asteroids game programmed in Kodu by a student in the UK.:

Student developer of the week: Kyle Orth, Australia. Kyle already has five Apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace

Last but not least, please remember the 12th Annual Computer Science & Information Technology Conference. - call for participation

Kinect for FRC 2012

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:57:00 GMT

Tomorrow is the official kickoff for the FIRST Robotics Competition. One of the things that means is that today is a day of workshops at FIRST Place in Manchester NH. I started my day here by presenting a 45 minute workshop on how the Kinect is used with FRC robots this year. There were some things I could not cover because the full game details will not be released until tomorrow of course. But I was able to provide some context and some architectural information that I hope was helpful to the 60 or so attendees who were present and how ever any people were watching the web cast. I am told that the talk was recorded and I will link to that once I know where it is. But I did want to share a few pieces of what I talked about via my blog post. Sort of speaker’s notes as well as hyper links to the resources I talked about. You’ll find those links at the bottom of this post.

A Kinect sensor is supported by a great software development kit (Kinect for Windows SDK) which is a great place to start. Programing expertise among FIRST teams is sort of all over the map. much of this is a consequence of there not being enough computer science in the curriculum but let’s not get into that now. For now, know that there are some additional resources that are being supplied for FIRST teams this year. Specifically the wonderful people at the WPI robotics program have created some libraries that have been tuned a bit by some of the FIRST staff. The diagram below (created by Kevin O'Connor of FIRST shows the general architecture.

The Kinect device is connected though the Kinect SDK to an FRC Kinect Server program. This program, written in C#, may be modified by teams in any number of ways including adding their own custom gestures. The server passes on a lot of information to the Driver Station diagnostic and dashboard software. This includes:

Raw skeletal Data
Diagnostic data
Default Gesture data

The server defines 9 different gestures by default. These gestures can be passed to the robot as if they were joystick or other controller data. This allows teams to use the Kinect out of the box without having to write Kinect specific code. Teams can also pass the skeletal and diagnostic data to the cRIO (an control device made and donated by National Instruments for the robots) and write code on the cRIO using Java, C/C++ or Java. This gives the teams an enormous amount of flexibility.

I am really REALLY quite excited to see what FIRST Robotics teams do with the Kinect this year.

FRC Kinect Resources

FRC Beta Kinect Forum – the place to go for FRC help related to the Kinect

Getting Started with Microsoft Kinect for FRC document (PDF)
Kinect Server Code Walkthough (PDF)
Using the Kinect Kiosk (PDF)

Official Kinect for Windows Website – get the Kinect SDK for everyone

Kinect SDK Quickstart Video Tutorials
Coding4Fun Kinect Toolkit
Coding4Fun Kinect Projects
Visual C# Express – teams who want to modify the WPI server will want to grab this free download
Kinect for Windows SDK Beta Forums – the general public forums for Kinect support. Not for FRC related questions but often a good place for technical Kinect questions

All of the 2012 FIRST Kickoff workshops were recorded and are posted on the FIRST ThinkTank here: http://thinktank.wpi.edu/tag/1006

CS & IT 2012–Participate Actively!

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:38:33 GMT

Back in the end of November I posted the call for proposals for the 12th Annual Computer Science & Information Technology Conference. Did you see it? Have you been thinking about a proposal? have you submitted a proposal yet? The deadline is rapidly approaching (January 31st 2012 is the deadline) So you still have time but you do need to act soon. Ok so you ay be thinking “what could I present on?” or perhaps “I’m not a professional presenter? or even “I’m not good enough to present to that audience.” If so the only thing you really have to worry about is picking a topic. Let me give a few suggestions before I tackle the other concerns.

Are you doing something different than what you have heard about from others and finding it works for you? Bingo! Great topic. Everyone is looking for new ideas. That is far better than rehashing the same old ideas.
Are you teaching a new programing language, development tool or IDE? Great! People what to learn about new things from people who use them.
Are you doing special things to attract more students? Especially girls and other underserved populations? Super! We’re all looking for ways to do that.
Have you gone against the grain in some way – dropped APCS, added gaming, or media, or mixed in art/music/social studies/what not with CS? Love to hear about it. multidisciplinary things are the future!
Are you playing with hardware? Kinect, robots, remote sensors, something weird and off the wall? Tell us about it. We need ideas for connecting the real and virtual worlds for students.
Nothing on this match what you are doing! Best answer yet! Out of the box is in fashion.

Now for the rest. If you are a classroom teacher you ARE a professional presenter. Period. End of story. If you can hold the attention of a room full of fidgety middle or high school students you can hold anyone's attention. You’re good to go. And for this audience nothing resonates like actual classroom experience. The audience at CS & IT is the most open and supportive audience a computer science or information technology teacher can have! This is fun people. The questions will be good ones and be respectful in nature. People are there to learn and that is the best sort of audience of all. You can do it. And we all want to see new faces and hear new voices. So go for it.

If you are still not submitting a presentation you can also be active in other ways. Help Shape the CSTA Annual Conference: Be a Proposal Reviewer IF you’ve ever asked yourself “who approved that talk?” or “why are their no talks on <foo>” then this is your chance to influence the paper selections. We want in fact need the community to be a part of the review process. We all want the best papers to be excepted and that requires multiple fair and honest reviews by practitioners – ie. people like the teachers who attend CS & IT.

And lastly don’t forget that the 12th Annual Computer Science & Information Technology Conference will be held July 9-10 2012, in Irvine, CA (Orange County). Hope to see you there!

Microsoft Bliink 2012 Illinois Web Design Competition

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:32:00 GMT

Registration for the Microsoft Bliink 2012 Illinois Web Design Competition is now open.

Bliink (http://bit.ly/Bliink) is open to Illinois students ages 13-19 participating in teams of two to four.

This year’s competition is co-sponsored by Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois Technology Association, and the Chicago Public Schools. We hope educators will include Bliink in their lessons this winter and excite their students with this engaging, real-world team project and the cool prizes they can win by designing websites with Microsoft Expression® Studio.

Students will:

· Receive Microsoft Expression® Studio professional software at no charge
· Work hard to earn prizes that include Xbox 360 and Kinect

Teachers will:

· Receive Expression Studio professional Web design software for their school at no charge
· Engage students with big ideas and meaningful problem-solving activities using the free curriculum resources

Students can submit projects created in or out of class.

Visit http://bit.ly/WebTutorials for free Expression Studio learning resources.

Inquire about receiving Expression Studio software free of charge for your school: innovativeteachers@microsoft.com

Students can download Expression Studio free of charge for their personal PCs at DreamSpark after they register.

Complete details are posted on the Bliink Contest website.

Important Dates:

Registration deadline: February 28, 2012
Project submission deadline: March 20, 2012

Questions? Email Pat Phillips at innovativeteachers@microsoft.com.

Please distribute this message to the individuals, schools, and educational organizations that will value this opportunity for their students.

Computer Science Orphans

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:53:00 GMT

I had a conversation with one one of the senior managers of the FIRST Lego League challenge. FIRST Lego League or FLL is a robot related competition for students in grades four through eight. I mentioned that I had been to the Maine State FLL championship recently (Creating Engineers One Student At A Time) and found that there were many more FLL teams than there were high school FRC or FTC (FIRST Robotics Competition or FIRST Tech Challenge) teams for them to join when they moved up to high school. Apparently the FIRST people see this as a problem of FLL orphans – students who get excited about robotics in middle school and have no place to continue with this in high school. I recently reviewed a paper about a computer science outreach program for middle school students that shows some really wonderful results. Unfortunately some of those students, many in fact, will go to high schools with no computer science programs for them to continue with. There are some cases of high schools being drawn into adding computer science courses to meet the demands of the incoming middle school students. The same is true to some degree of FLL students helping to create new teams in high schools. But this sort of thing is still an uphill climb.

Middle school is an important time for students. It is a tie when they are really starting to figure out what they are interested in doing with their lives. They are deciding what is fun, what is within their reach, and what they are motivated enough to do with their talents. They may decide that computer science (or math or science) is “hard” or “Boring” or both! Or they may discover that computer science is fun, interesting and even cool. Getting students interested in middle school is a great thing. But what will happen when they get to high school? Will they lose interest in computer science or robotics? If they do keep their interest how will they keep learning and developing? It can be hard for them. This is why I get requests for information about summer camps every spring for example. Or after school programs. Or just other ways that students can learn on their own. I wish there were ore high school computer science programs. But until there are we need to help those students who want to learn on their own do so.

This is part of the motivation (an important part) behind programs like DreamSpark and why it includes students who are not in university yet. It is why there are a lot of other resources for people to learn on their own such as:

Visual Basic Development for Absolute Beginners
C# Development for Absolute Beginners
Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners
Kinect Quickstarts
ScriptTD: a tower defense engine for Windows Phone 7 – Andrew Parsons has some great help with that on his blog at Create and publish your own Tower Defense game

There is also Pex 4 Fun (http://pex4fun.com/ ) which is a set of coding puzzles that students (anyone really) can use as learning exercises.

It is always why I encourage high school students to work on their own to enter the Imagine Cup especially in the Game Design Xbox/Windows, Game Design Window Phone, Windows Phone Challenge and Information Technology Challenge. It’s not first about winning. Though we have had some high school students do very well. It is about using a project as an internal locus of control motivation to learn – to strive – to keep going and to do new things. Sure it looks good on a resume for college or for internships or part-time jobs. And yes it would be (and has been) awesome to earn a trip to the US finals (often at Microsoft HQ in Washington state) or even the world-wide finals (Australia this year). But win or lose working on a project that means something and has a tight schedule can act as a wonderful learning experience. If you don’t have a real computer science course to take and force a schedule it can be hard to keep up the learning on ones own. But a contest can help. Actually it can help even as part of a formal course. I know teachers who use the Imagine Cup as a project as part of existing courses. Every little extra incentive helps.