Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson

Friday Links 101008

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:09:00 GMT

I have a small backlog of interesting links so I decided to group some of them in this post. Some are different from what I usually post and some are more typical. But I think they are all interesting to someone who is likely to be reading this blog. I hope so anyway.

I don’t usually link directly to a comment on another blog but this is an exceptional comment. Alan Kay replied to a post by Mark Guzdial recently. In it he compared computer science and programming to Jazz and creating music. A remarkable thought provoking post to say the least. My reply to Mark’s series of posts is boring and unenlightened by comparison. There are some good comments on Mark’s first post on the subject as well.

BTW Robb Cutler weighs in with the whole “Computer Science Without Programming?” question on the CSTA blog. Well worth a read. That makes four CS blogs weighing in on the subject. If you know of more leave me a comment, send me an email and Twitter me at http://twitter.com/alfredtwo

Web hosting is a question I actually get asked about from time to time. A surprising number of students and even teachers what to know about hosting their own websites independent of their school (or others their business. Clint Rutkas has a post about what is involved in a post called “Web Hosting, what to do and where to get it” He wrote this in response to a student who asked him the question. From now on I am just going to point people to Clint’s blog.

I found this article in ComputerWorld that postulates that the current economic crisis may help drive more students into computer science and information technology. Why? Well because finance and investment banking doesn’t look so good as a way to get rich anymore. Interesting idea. The article circulated about the team I work with and Randy Guthrie lays out some of his thinking in a post titled “Financial Crisis May Be Boost for Computer Science/IT Education” Something to discuss in your class or Personal Learning Network (PLN a term I learned from twitter.)

Speaking of Twitter, also on Twitter I found a nice video called “Adding binary numbers explained in 2 minutes” that is just what you’d expect. A two-minute video demo on how to add binary numbers. Sure you can do it yourself in class but you could also link to this as a resource students can access for review or watch a couple of times until they get it down pat.

In Praise of Small Colleges

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:01:00 GMT

Following in the footsteps (sort of) of Bill Gates, Craig Mundie is making a fall college tour. He’s visiting Princeton University, New York University, the University of Michigan, University of California-Berkeley, and UC San Diego this week. YAWN! No, really, who cares? If any of the students at these schools need inspiration about computer science they should never have gone to those schools. Likewise any of them who need a visit from Craig Mundie to get them to think about going to work for Microsoft are clearly not bright enough for Microsoft to hire. Not that I am saying all the smart kids should come to Microsoft but they should all be evaluating it on its merits. So what’s the point? Public relations I guess is part of it. The local, regional and sometimes national media covers these trips. Truth be known I suspect that some people at some of these schools (but not the one *you* admire) consider this their due recognition. Personally, I would rather Craig visit small colleges and universities. Better still some rural and inner-city high schools.

I admit to a bias towards smaller colleges. I attended Taylor University in Upland Indiana. Never heard of it? It’s not so big and it is sort of in the middle of nowhere. It is a great school though! I’m on the CS department advisory board so I may perhaps be doubly biased of course. But it sure did well by me. While I was a student I heard talks by Grace Hopper and Ken Olsen (at that time president of Digital Equipment Corp). And yes, hearing Ken Olsen talk did influence me to think about working at DEC and I did work there for about 14 years. But more than that I was inspired to make a career in a field I was only starting to understand and which was much different from what it is today.

I sure hope that students at Princeton don’t need someone to tell them they can aim for the stars. Heck for a lot of people getting into Princeton is itself aiming for the stars. But I think that students at smaller schools need to know that they too can get to work at the big companies, create their own companies and otherwise make a big difference in the world. Yes, it’s true that many big companies tend to ignore the smaller schools when they do their recruiting. It may be a bit harder for students from these schools to get the jobs at Microsoft or Google or what ever. But they can get there. I’m working at Microsoft after all. :-) So I think that visits by top people can be more influential at smaller schools. The press will tag along anyway if only to ask “why this school?” No one is asking “why NYU?” trust me.

I also believe that bringing some attention to other smaller, fine schools will help recruit more students into the computer field. I doubt that Michigan or Berkeley are having trouble getting the message out that they have good computer science programs. But smaller regional schools could use the attention. A Rose-Hulman or a Harvey Mudd is a good compromise BTW. Their programs are incredible and are better known than most small schools but not as well known as they could be. But I’m sure that other small regionally known programs could benefit from some extra attention as well.

And what about some large high schools that don’t currently have great computer science programs? Wouldn’t it be great (and helpful) to inspire hundreds of kids who don’t know that computer science is an option to demand courses in the subject? Or at least get them interested enough to start in college. The college CS majors are won over already. We need to jump start interest and demand in high school.

And speaking of attention, wouldn’t it be great if the next time Bill Gates thinks about donating $50 million dollars for a computer science building that he split the money five ways and built smaller buildings at five campuses? I’ll bet the student served per million would be a lot higher than all at one school. The incremental improvement in a small program would be a lot greater as well. Raise the tide for all boats rather than a big wave that helps one large boat.

Well that’s just my opinion and senior management has shown an ability to go their own way and even be successful without my advice. In the mean time, if someone from the bottom of the hierarchy (like me) can be helpful visiting your high school (especially in New England) let me know and I’ll see if I can work out my own tour.

Beginner Developer Learning Center

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 16:32:00 GMT

One of the questions I get all the time is “I have a student/child/nephew/daughter/etc who wants to learn programming on their own. Where should they go?” My answer is always the Beginner Developer Learning Center and from there to the Kid’s Corner. I may also recommend Popfly as a starting place because it is so much fun. But if they are interested in more than mashups and games, which many of them are, the Kid’s Corner is the place to start. Well this week the Kid’s Corner went though a complete re-design and re-launch and it is better than ever.

The same great resources that were there before are still there but there are some great new ones as well. One of them that I particularly love is a new video on classes and objects. This video is 10 minutes long and features a bunch of kids explaining objects, classes, inheritance, and more using themselves and cardboard boxes as examples. The language is suitable for students as young as middle school without losing the important parts of the concepts. It may be the best 10 minute explanation of objects and classes I have ever seen.

There is also a seven minute explanation of what the Internet is and how it works. This is also suitable for younger students. I can see it being used by a lot of computer literacy classes. I’m sending a link to it to my 83 year old father too.

Everything at the new version of the site is rated Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced to help people select where they should start. So for home schoolers, after school programs, individuals who want to learn on their own or even teachers looking for supplemental resources this is a great place to start. Of course teachers will also want to make sure they check out the resources at the Pre-Collegiate Faculty Connection site as well.

Note: Edited to correct a link.

How to Build an Academic XNA Game Development Laboratory

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:54:00 GMT

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has one of the best game development programs in the US if not the world. Recently the team there put together a document that explains some of there key learnings setting up a development lab for teaching with XNA Game Studio Express. This whitepaper includes set-up information, sample scripts, network ports that need to be opened, hardware information, version information and lots of other good stuff. If you are thinking about setting up a lab for XNA this is the gold standard. Even if you didn’t do it all this is a helpful paper.

This white paper (its about 28 pages long )has been loaded to the Academic Resource Center. Here is a link to it - http://www.academicresourcecenter.net/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID=7459.

Visual Basic .NET and C# Side By Side

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:59:00 GMT

Recently Clint Rutkas and I has some fun discussing which was better between C# and Visual Basic .NET. Truth be known I’m perfectly happy using C# even though my first instinct is to use VB .NET. I do believe that VB .NET is better as a first language but that is because that is personal preference more than anything else. But no matter which language one learns first I think it is very useful to learn both. VB .NET is widely used for programming with business logic and user interface programming. C# is used for other stuff. Probably some serious stuff but definitely XNA GSE game programming. :-) One useful tool I found was this list of VB .NET and C# language constructs shown side by side. (hat tip to Go To 100 – Development with Visual Basic)

Note that there are some of the newest .NET features missing from that list but for a lot of beginners it will be very useful.

BTW Clint and my earlier posts on this subject can be found at:

Clint:

Alfred:

Teachers, Trust, Teaching and Filters

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:18:00 GMT

So long time readers know that I am not a fan of filtering of the Internet in schools. My wife is a librarian who enthusiastically marks Banned Books Week every year for the chance to discuss censorship with her students so its a family thing I guess. We’ve both long embraced using student visits to “bad sites” as teachable moments – as opportunities to educate students. Alas that is seldom an option at schools who accept e-rate money – like the one my wife currently teaches at. But in my opinion the worst part about filters is not losing that teachable moment but that too often filters make it hard, if not impossible, for teachers to use Internet resources as the educational tools they are.

Recently Will Richardson wrote about filters getting in the way of his educational consulting and training. One superintendent told Will that he (the superintendent) could not get the IT department to open sites for him. Even if you accept the notion of filters for students (and Will does a good job of addressing that canard in his post) shouldn’t we be able to trust the adults in the building? I mean seriously. If you have valid reasons to think that an adult is going to abuse Internet access shouldn’t you run them out of the classroom on a rail? These are people we trust with our kids after all. Teachers and administrators (btw since when do superintendents not have authority over school tech support?) should be able to get to valid educational resources.

Of course there are teachers that do abuse the trust we place in them. The same is true in every profession. But honestly is a few people stepping out of line reason to treat school superintendents like children? We need educators to have reliable access to the Internet and we need to trust them to make good decisions. Filters do not make great decision makers. I’ll never forget the day my wife told me the school filter blocked her from getting to the American Library Association ethics page? We’re blocking pages that outline and promote ethical behavior now? Come on tell me that’s a good thing.

There is a lot of good on YouTube. There is a lot of good on Google Docs. There are even valid educational uses for teachers to use email tools like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and others. And Skype! What a cool tool for virtual school visits. But many of these sites are blocked by many schools. Preparing students for the 21st century? Let them learn that from their peers the same ways they learn how to get drugs, porn and sex education? Wouldn’t it be better to learn good practices in school? But how are we going to do that if we can’t or will not trust teachers to act like adults.

I have to also bring in a question of mission. What is the purpose of the IT team in a school district? Take a look at this blog post by Doug Johnson. Shouldn't everyone in the school and school district see education of students as their mission? It shouldn't always be about minimizing the amount of work they have to do.

BTW What are schools going to do about the really clever teachers and students who find their way around filters and even completely around the school network. Dave Briccetti wrote a post titled Goodbye Lame School Firewalls, I have a Wireless Modem Now. You can easily see what that means! Students are clever about getting around filters but teachers don’t always have the time or technical know how to do it even for valid educational uses. The increase of wireless modems is going to be a game changer though. Scary or exciting? Probably depends on which side of the “schools need to be censors” issue you stand on.

Maybe a wireless modem is something for me to give my teacher wife and teacher son for Christmas? Yeah I’m bad. :-)

Remembering Grace Hopper

Alfred Thompson — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:39:01 GMT

A good number of people I knew were at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing last week. By all reports it was a great event, some cases of altitude sickness not withstanding. Hilary Pike has been blogging about it over at Springboard. I especially enjoyed her experienced take on how to get the most out of GHC. Randy Guthrie wrote about what it was like to be one of the very few male attendees. Several other bloggers I follow have been blogging about the event as well. For example See Jane Compute! and Lynn Langit.

This all makes me reminisce about Grace Hopper herself. I was fortunate enough to hear her talk several times over the years. The first time when I was a student in the early 1970s. I believe she had just made Captain about that time. She was on the CS department advisory of the school (Taylor University) I was attending. Several of us students were able to have a casual lunch and conversation during her visit to campus. It was an unforgettable time. I remember one of my classmates asked her why she had joined the Navy. Captain Hopper looked at her, blinked a couple of times and said “why there was a war on.” as if that explained everything. Clearly it was enough explanation for her. She was as proud of being a Naval officer as anything else in her storied career.

Grace Hopper had a great way of explaining things to people. Most people are familiar with her use of pieces of wire that she called nano seconds. Later in life she talked about pico seconds and gave out samples of those. She acquired those samples in the cafeteria where they came in little paper envelopes helpfully labeled with the letter “P.” But I loved how she explained the need for attacking big computing problems with multiple computers.

She explained that back in the horse and oxen drawn plow days there were limits to how big one could breed horses and oxen. Eventually the answer was to add a second horse or ox. So to would we reach the limits to the amount of processing computer we could put into one computer. We would increasingly have to add computers. This was back in the 1970s were parallel computers were mostly a research idea. Smaller computers were starting to be used as front ends to handle communication as well. But mostly we were still trying to build faster and faster super computers as single processors. Timing and future developments aside this remains a great analogy as to why we need to work on multi processor systems. And just as tack had to change and improve for multiple draft animals so does software have to change and improve to handle multiple processors.

Most people remember Grace Hopper as this kindly grandmotherly person. And she was often that. He crew at the Navy called her grandma in an affectionate way. At the same time she could be as rough and as tough as they come. I talked to people are some of the companies that were trying to get their COBOL compilers passed through her office. They found her demanding and insistent. These people did not look forward to calls with Grace Hopper on the other end. She had a job to do for her country and she let no one and no thing stand in her way. It is quite fitting, and I’ve said this before, that the ship the Navy named after her is a real honest to goodness war ship.

She was an inspiration to me and still probably the most impressive person I have ever met. I can think of no one better to honor with the Celebration of Women in Computing.

Technorati Tags: ghc,Grace Hopper

Education is a Journey

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:24:00 GMT

My Dad was and is a stickler for good table manners. he always insisted on them at home while we were growing up. One day I asked him if we couldn’t just be messing at home and do everything right when we were out in public. He explained that it was about creating good habits. If we did things right at home and got into the habit we wouldn’t have to try when we were out. It would just be natural and we would be less likely to get things wrong. It was a lesson I have never forgotten. It came to mind again while I was reading a blog post by Didith Rodrigo.

Students often do not use the tools we are trying to teach them to use. They don’t see the necessity for them in the small projects that we assign in school. Part of my comment on Didith’s blog was “they take the quick and dirty solution because they do not realize that the journey is as important as the destination.” Sure we want students to solve the projects that they are assigned but the purpose behind assignments in not just to get the answer but to understand the tools that are used to get the answer.

In math classes we were always exhorted to “show the work.” Many students assumed, not completely incorrectly, that this was a partial defense against cheating. But in reality teachers wanted to see how the answer was derived. It was also as much a protection of students from losing points for typos and simple arithmetic errors as it was against cheating. But the journey to the answer was important in and of itself. The same is true in programming assignments. The real problem is communicating that to our students.

Intersection of Computer Science and the Rest of the World

Alfred Thompson — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:31:00 GMT

What good is computer science anyway? How does it help anyone understand the world around them/ Good questions both. And in the last few days I’ve seen several good answers. Those are not directly the questions the blog posts I found were addressing but I think they are relevant. The first one was a post called Crafty and CS-y written by the Wicked Teacher of the West aka the Geeky Knitter. She points out that many patterns in knitting and quilting are digital. Reading that it made me think of the ASCII art and other line printer art we used to do back in the old days before modern graphic printers and monitors.

A recent blog post by Dan Reed uses a number of examples from real life to talk about computer science concepts. The post is called Driving: Integers and Reals as starts with an evaluation of how different drivers regard the lanes in multi lane highways. “Integers” see the lanes as discrete and specific lanes. “Reals” see the lines as guidelines and think of an infinite series of lanes. The whole post is interesting and thought provoking on several levels. While he’s at it Dan talks about set theory, famous names in computer science and historic computing projects. Good stuff.

And lets not forget about about things like the Fibonacci Series in nature, Mandelbrot fractals and other overlaps between math, nature and computer science. I’ll bet others reading this post can think of other examples to talk about as well.

How Central Is Programming to Computer Science

Alfred Thompson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:20:00 GMT

Computer science educators are fond of saying that computer science is a lot more than just programming. Programming has a bad reputation. And in some ways so do those of us who find programming to be a lot of fun and very interesting. So there are some good reasons to deemphasize programming to some extent. But can we avoid it completely? A couple of people I respect have taken up some form of this question lately.

Mark Guzdial has a great post on his blog titled Programming is central to Computer Science. Mark makes a good case for programming being a central notation system that is essential for computer science. The whole thing is worth reading and I can hardly do it justice in a summary. One the other hand, the Wicked teacher of the west takes a slightly different view on her post titled Is programming necessary? She riffs off of some comments by Robb Cutler (another really smart guy who I wish would blog) Robb “thinks we could teach introductory CS at the K-12 level without any programming at all.”

Well, yeah, I guess we could teach some computer science without programming. The CS Unplugged program is one great example of that. There is a lot of good computer science education there. But is it enough? I’m not convinced. Teaching computer science without computer and programming is like teaching physics without math and experiments. One can go so far but no further. I do think that it would be worthwhile to teach some computer science concepts without programming. Let’s get people to understand where the path leads. But taking them as far as they need to go is going to take some programming. There we need to make it more interesting and relevant.

This is a good discussion to have though. Where does the need for programming start and how far can one or even should one go before introducing it?

[Note: Please don't miss Mark Guzdial's reply to "Wicked Teacher" at Programming is central to Computer Science, and we can change Programming ]

Using Maps From Windows Programs

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:41:54 GMT

One of the areas that is seeing huge growth lately is geo-coded information. Applications that take location information and other data to create useful maps is a big deal. Clint Rutkas has written a demo application and a rather complete explanation of how do do this using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth over on his blog. The post is called Developing with Virtual Earth Web Services and it comes with sample code in both C# and Visual Basic. I suspect that most students who only know Java will not have much trouble understanding the C#. That makes this approachable for students who want to do something interesting with live/real data even if they are not C# programmers.

Of course since this is a demo program it is ripe for the sort of “look at existing code and tweak it to see what it does” sort of project I talked about in my last post.

Sample Code For Students

Alfred Thompson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:48:00 GMT

One of the key reasons behind the case study in the Advanced Placement Computer Science curriculum is to give students some experience modifying an existing piece of code. In this case the case study is also a fairly large (by school project standards) piece of code so there is lots more that students can learn from it. There is specific value is just having students read a good hunk of code written by someone who really knows how to write code. I was recently reminded of how smaller pieces of code can be useful as well.

Last week I read a post on Programming Turtles as in the Logo sort of turtles written by “Rich Skyline.” One of the things he is doing is providing a working program for his students and inserting a number of comments that suggest things they can experiment with. For example a comment might suggest that students try different variable settings. Rich provides several samples and encourages his students to learn by tinkering. I really like this idea.

I can think of several things that would be useful. Take nested loops as an example. Have students try reversing the order (use the inner loop as the outer loop) – probably more interesting when the terminating values are very different. Graphic programs like the random turtle Rich blogs about are always interesting to students. One could also give students some code that pastes disks where the user clicks and ask them to modify the program in some way to made the disks move about the screen. Leave the algorithm up in the air to see what students come up with.

A lot of students naturally love to tinker but others want to have a script laid out for them. Comments with suggestions of things to try, even if they do not suggest actual values to change, allow the latter students to get involved more comfortably. They will still have to read through the code and they will still learn by manipulating the code but they will not be pushed too far beyond their comfort level (hopefully). And with any luck at all this will be a confidence builder to help them experiment more broadly. The natural tinkerers will just fly through the sample suggestions and go their own way. In the right environment (a louder classroom than some teachers are comfortable) they will share their ideas with others and a lot of valuable peer teaching may just break out. And that is usually a very good thing.

[Edit: Fixed typo of Lego to Logo thanks to a comment from a reader.]

Computer Science Is Everywhere

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:39:09 GMT

Earlier this week Microsoft Research had a special opening symposium. I really wanted to go. But alas other work commitments kept me from going. Fortunately for me and for many others the talks were recorded and are now publicly available at: http://research.microsoft.com/conferences/msrneopening/agenda.aspx

One of the talks I thought would be of particular interest to my readers is this one:

· (Theoretical) Computer Science is Everywhere by Erik Demaine

He’s got a lot of interesting and unexpected places where computer science is important. Highly recommended.

A lot of you who are interested in Web 2.0 both in general will also be interested in Understanding Socio-Technical Phenomena in Web 2.0 Era by danah boyd. I’m pretty excited that danah will be joining Microsoft Research in January. I’ve been following danah boyd’s blog for a while and she knows a lot about how young people use the Internet.

Microsoft Campus Tour Video

Alfred Thompson — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:33:45 GMT

I’ve been taking a short blogging break this week. Frankly I’m just flat out with other work lately. Yesterday was meetings and preparation for a talk I gave today at Nashua Community College. I had a great time there because both before and after the talk I had a chance to talk to students in a casual environment. And well yes there was pizza too. One of the questions that often comes up when I talk to students, and a lot of adults as well, is what is it like to work at Microsoft? My work situation is a little less common than most but not as unusual as you might expect. Microsoft has a lot of people who work remotely where remote means from their own homes.

But most Microsoft people work in more traditional offices. These offices are literally all over the world and Microsoft has offices in a lot more places in the US than most people think. But the largest share of Microsoft employees work in the Seattle Washington area. Calling some of those buildings traditional may actually be a bit of a stretch though. Recently the Amazing Max (Agent 008) filmed a video tour of various buildings and campuses that Microsoft has in the Seattle area. Sure it is a recruiting sort of video but it really gives a view into what the Microsoft campus is like. I’ve been to most of the buildings Max tours and what he shows is how it is.

Check it out. I found it interesting, entertaining and informative. If you want to know what office conditions are like at Microsoft look here.

New Teaching Ideas and Resources Blog

Alfred Thompson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:38:00 GMT

It looks like a couple of members of the academic team in the UK have opened up a new blog for teachers. Kristen Weatherby and Stuart Ball are both former classroom teachers who now work with Microsoft’s UK Innovative Teachers Network which is part of the worldwide Innovative Teachers Network that is part of Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Program.

One of Stuart’s first posts is all about the Innovative Teachers Network BTW.

It looks like this blog is shaping up to be a good resource for teachers who are interested in both teaching ICT (information & computer technology) and in using ICT skills to teach other subjects. Do check it out.

And welcome to the Education Blogosphere Kristen and Stuart!