Insights from a seasoned Computer Science Trainer
There are 160 entries for the tag
microsoft
If you are in the Orlando, FL area during the first week of May then you should head over to the Orlando DotNetNuke user group meeting. Nik Kalyani will be the speaker and you will learn a great deal from him. DotNetNuke Module Development with the MVP Pattern This session focuses on introducing attendees to the Model-View-Presenter pattern, support for which was recently introduced in the DotNetNuke Core. We'll start with a quick overview of the pattern, compare it to MVC, and then dive right into ......
Moodle is a free elearning content management software program. It does take a great deal of time to set it up because you need to upload your Office files to Moodle. Now, Microsoft has made that job easier with their new Office Add on. With it you can save directly into Moodle. Here are the instructions on how to use. Just change the URL you use for your Moodle site. 1. Go to this site and download and install the software. http://www.educationlabs.co... ......
What is something that is longer than a magazine article and shorter than a book chapter? Give up? It's a Wrox-Blox that Wiley has available online with some going for less than $10.00. Written by the best programmers in the their fields, Wrox Blox are short informational pieces and code that will help get you up-to-speed and keep you up-to-date. Build the knowledge you need quickly on a wide variety of topics. In the DotNetNuke world, there are several of these available for you to review and stay ......
Well if you are, you won’t be soon when Microsoft takes down the YouTube video clone site. I just received the official announcement today via e-mail. I had a couple of XNA games that my students created on the site. Here’s the official word: Attention Soapbox Users, MSN will no longer offer Soapbox, the user generated video service within MSN Video, as of August 31, 2009. Beginning on July 29, you will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox. People who have uploaded videos to Soapbox will ......
Today marks the day when the Orlando DotNetNuke User group officially has 200 members. It was a year and half ago that I started this group with about 7 members who came and met on a Saturday morning to discuss issues relating to the best open source web portal, DotNetNuke. Will Strohl was there along with a co-worker. Will has been a great member and now great leader of the group. More recently, Will was in charge of putting together the Day of DotNetNuke held last month at the Microsoft Office ......
Kudos to Will Strohl for the countless hours he put in to organize the Day of DotNetNuke held in Tampa, FL today. Thanks to the sponsors, speakers and volunteers who made the day a huge success. The official count for the day verified by Microsoft host Joe Healy was 138. Joe was a great host making everyone comfortable and he also was one of the speakers. Yes, Microsoft does love DotNetNuke! Joe would make a great WROX salesperson as he was trying to sell the WROX Professional DotNetNuke 5 book that ......
There have been a couple of builds already for the new version 5.1 of DotNetNuke. On the DotNetNuke site, there is even a thread for users to discuss any problems they are having with the builds and they are encouraged to log their problems or suggestions on their Gemini site. The current build is 364 and there's already changes from the previous build. For example, here's the new Admin Settings: One change from the previous build is that Google Analytics is now located here. You could find this ......
DotNetNuke Co-Founder, Nik Kalyani, has added some new webinars to attend. The most popular is a demonstration of DotNetNuke. Here's the webinar information on that one: DotNetNuke is the leading open source solution for website content management and web application development on Microsoft ASP.NET. Nik will demonstrate how easy it is to create and maintain your website using DotNetNuke. He will discuss the flexible open framework and show how easy it is to add functionality to your website by adding ......
ODUG President, Will Strohl, has been a busy guy lately organizing the Day Of DotNetNuke which will be held in Tampa, FL on Saturday, June 13th. There are 30 sessions planned for the day. Do you recognize any of these names as authors, Code Camp Speakers, Microsoft MVP's, Forum Contributors, DotNetNuke Leaders? Joe Brinkman Chris Hammond Stan Schultes Cuong Dang Darrell Hardy David Pablicko Gifford Watkins Henry Lee Jeff Cochran Jim Begley Joe Healy Mitchell Sellers Paul Scarlett Ralph Williams Ryan ......
Make your plans now to attend a huge DotNetNuke event scheduled for Saturday, June 13th in Tampa, FL. If you need to learn more about the features of version 5 of DotNetNuke then you need to be there. There will be sessions on installing DNN, Skinning, Administration, SEO, jQuery, DNN Architecture to name a few. Great swag gifts to be given out and organizer Will Strohl is planning a great after event get together in sunny Florida. All of the Florida authors who worked on the Professional DotNetNuke ......
DNN Leader and co author of Professional DotNetNuke 5, Shaun Walker will be speaking at the Ajax World Conference in June. Here's his session: Revolutionary Web Platforms - DotNetNuke and ASP.NET Shaun Walker - Creator & Maintainer, DotNetNuke This session will discuss how DotNetNuke leverages cutting edge Microsoft web technology to create rich, interactive, enterprise web solutions. Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, Shaun Walker ......
Last June, there was a big event at the Orlando Convention Center called DotNetNuke OpenForce. This June there is going to be a bigger DotNetNuke event called Day of DotNetNuke which will be held in Tampa, FL on Saturday June 13th. All the authors that wrote the book Professional DotNetNuke 5 will be speaking along with many other DotNetNuke pro's. There are two tracks being planned for the day. The Orlando DotNetNuke User Group is in charge of the event with help from Microsoft Evangelist Joe Healy. ......
First off, there's going to be a raffle for this: There will be things for the kids to do to: Many code campers have children and significant others we have decided to try and do a family activity the day of the code camp. If we can get 15 or more people we can get a discounted rate at the Central Florida Zoo There will also be over 500 in attendance which is great! Sessions: 65 Speakers: 49 Tracks: 11 Quick Contacts Sponsors: sponsor@onetug.org Speakers: speaker@onetug.org Volunteers: volunteer@onetug.orgPlus, ......
Here's some free curriculum to use for training which is not that bad to use but interesting that it would use a product that they discontinued as part of the training. Unlimited Potential Community Learning Curriculum The Unlimited Potential Community Learning Curriculum provides the foundation for teaching basic to intermediate technology skills in a hands-on manner. Designed to be used in community technology centers (CTCs) or telecenters, the curriculum provides quality content focused on real-world ......
Here's what's happening: Attendees: 428 Sessions: 73 Speakers: 49 Tracks: 15 Sessions: ASP.NET Make your Data Dance with ASP.NET Dynamic Databy Shawn Weisfeld + Show Description ASP.NET Dynamic Data is a framework that lets you create data-driven ASP.NET Web applications easily. It does this by automatically discovering data-model metadata at run time and deriving UI behavior from it. A scaffolding framework provides a functional Web site for viewing and editing data. You can easily customize the ......
Have you noticed the tiny graphic image aside of your address bar when you load up your DotNetNuke site in your browser that looks like this? By default, you'll have a file called favicon.ico located in your folder where you installed DotNetNuke. Many developers have learned how to change this ico file to another image that identifies your website and it's fairly easy to do. A favicon is seen by the browser aside of your URL. It's only 16x16 pixel square icon. Once you find the favicon.ico file in ......
The journey started seven months ago when I was asked by Wrox if I was interested or if I knew someone that was interested in writing the new DotNetNuke5 book. At that time, I put together an all Florida team with the exception of DotNetNuke founder Shaun Walker. The team consisted of Darrell Hardy, Stan Schultes, and Ryan Morgan. Everyone was committed to the writing of the book and all are extremely knowledgeable. We all have been speaking together at code camps in the Florida area about DotNetNuke. ......
Yes, I'll admit, I'm a sucker when a new windows operating system comes out. After all, I come from the MS DOS era and witnessed the series of Windows products like version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 3.1 aka NT, 3.11, 3.5, 95 (remember the lines at the store!), 4.0, 98, 2000, XP, Vista and now 7! After the installation, I quickly noticed how fast the install was. Now, I know this is a BETA version and I was wondering if this was stripped on purpose without the extras loaded in a final copy for this quick install. ......
I am honored to receive this award this year. I heard the news on January 1. This is the fifth year that I have received this award and I have learned a great deal every year. Technorati Tags: Microsoft MVP,Microsoft ......
For the past ten months, I have been waiting and waiting sometimes patiently and sometimes not so patient for the DreamSpark program to be available to high school students. Back in February with a huge announcement by Bill Gates about the DreamSpark program, I have been waiting. So here's the program: The Microsoft DreamSpark student program www.DreamSpark.com makes available, at no charge, a broad range of development and design software for download. The program is now available to more than 35 ......
Learn how to make it better by attending next week's Orlando DotNetNuke User Group Meeting. Microsoft MVP Consumer Security (2004-2009), Janie Whitty, aka Calamity Jane, will be speaking about Malware and how it affects you and your customers. Janie is best known by her username Calamity Jane in PC Security circles. She specializes in HijackThis logs analysis and malware removal/prevention and PC security as an Independent Consultant for Lavasoft (makers of Ad-Aware SE) and is a Forum Administrator ......
First of all, as a computer science trainer for many years, I'm biased to classroom training. As a trainer, you can see someone's eyes and determine if your students are learning concepts that you are teaching. I will adjust my presentation if needed so that the majority of the audience understands. There's always that minority that needs more help. Also, as a student, getting one on one help is the best way to learn. However, as you might know, there might not be a class in what you need to learn ......
Rick Strahl from West Wind Technologies in Maui, Hawaii is sharing his presentation that he did at the ASP.NET Connections recently held in Vegas. His session on jQuery with ASP.NET includes his slide deck and several samples for you to view. His slide deck is very informative with how things work along with some do's and don'ts. Check it out to learn more about jQuery. Technorati Tags: Microsoft, jQuery, Visual Studio ......
There's a great line up of some Florida speakers coming to the MSDN Developers Conference next month at the Rosen Hotel across from the Convention Center. The line up includes well known Joe Healy and Russ Fustino speaking along with XNA, Silverlight expert Bill Reiss, my fellow co author of the DotNetNuke book, Stan Schultes, Academic Relations Manager for msft, Dan Waters. There are other Florida pro's like Bayer White , Christopher Bennage, and Joe Homnick that I hope I get to meet as well. Hope ......
No problem at all. Microsoft already has plans for a road show to bring the same content that was talked about at the Professional Developers Conference to your local city. They will be in Houston, Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Washington DC, New York, Boston, Detroit, Dallas, and San Francisco in the next couple of months. It's great to see that Orlando, FL is on the list. There are three tracks to choose from. One on cloud services, client and presentation, and tools languages and framework. ......
According to Joe Brinkman from DNN Corp, the new version of DotNetNuke will incorporate jQuery. Microsoft has already announced that jQuery will be in the next version of Visual Studio. The new version of DNN will include widgets which are JavaScript widgets. This is new to the framework and won't be available right away according to Joe. Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, jQuery ......
Well now you do! I found the Microsoft Student Experience site and on it was HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba products. The prices are discounted for students as well. In addition, you can find software, ZUNE, books, games, and storage devices. For some reason, someone didn't get the message about Frontpage being replaced by Expression Web because there's a link to it with training material being sold that is six years old. Technorati Tags: Microsoft, students, tablets, notebooks, ZUNE, Frontpage, Expression ......
Yes, you can save this much if you pre-purchase the Professional DotNetNuke 5: Open Source Web Application Framework for ASP.NET (Paperback) book by Shaun Walker (Author), Brian Scarbeau (Author), Darrell Hardy (Author), Stan Schultes (Author), Ryan Morgan (Author) The book is in the pre-edit phase and we all are wrapping up our final chapter. As you can see, Wrox already has the book up on Amazon's site ready to sell. It's worth waiting for. Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, Wrox, ASP.NET, Open Source, ......
I have been pursuing when high school students will be getting the free software that Microsoft promised with the DreamSpark announcement back in February. I finally have been communicating with the team that is in charge of this and I've been told not to announce the release date but only to tell you that it will be soon. Real soon! The distribution will be different from what college students have been doing. The high school computer science teacher must register. The high school administrators/faculty ......
Last February, Bill Gates announced a free software giveaway to college university students and high school students as well. Here is what was offered to them: Microsoft developer tools. Visual Studio is the Swiss Army knife of computer programming. These professional-grade products provide a security-enhanced and reliable environment, enabling students to program everything from a cell phone to a robot or to create their own Web page. Students will also be able to invent compelling new gaming content ......
Kudos for Microsoft to open up a Research facility amongst the brains that walk around Cambridge, MA. Microsoft’s other research laboratories are located in Redmond, Wash., California’s Silicon Valley, China, India and England. What is interesting is that the purpose of this lab is not to come up with widgets and products. It's going to be a place to think. No better location than in Cambridge. Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Research ......
So back in August, I blogged about this site because of my excitement for XNA and Academics. I was hoping to use whatever came on the site with my programming students. I was hoping that by now Microsoft either put content on the site or take it off and stop teasing us educators. To date nothing! Everyone is waiting patiently for content and I know one person who isn't waiting so patiently..... What gives? Technorati Tags: Microsoft, XNA, Academics, Creators Club ......
Microsoft MVP, Rob Miles has emailed all who are interested in reviewing his new XNA curriculum. I had a chance to look at Part 1 today and it looks good to use for any high school programming course that wants to introduce XNA into the curriculum. The curriculum will have a total of 8 parts: Part 1: An Introduction to ProgrammingPart 2: Controlling GamesPart 3: Displaying MessagesPart 4: Pictures and SoundsPart 5: A Complete GamePart 6: Creating GameplayPart 7: Complex Games Part 8: Multi Player ......
Microsoft MVP, Rob Miles is writing some XNA curriculum. YAAA! He write a good XNA book and he teaches at the University of Hull. His site called Very Silly Games made this announcement. Visit his site and send him an email to be put on a list. Technorati Tags: xna, curriculum ......
Microsoft has been lowering the price of the XBOX 360 in different countries recently and North America is the latest where there are price drops happening. You can get the low end version of the 360 for 199 bucks. That's an 80 dollar difference. The higher end sells for $399 and originally sold for $449. One has to question if another model is coming out in the distant future! Technorati Tags: Microsoft, XBOX ......
Last month, an editor from Wrox book asked me if I was interested in writing a book on the new version of DotNetNuke which is still in beta. I really don't have the time to do a complete book (who does?) so I asked Darrell Hardy from Hardy Consulting, Tracy Wittenkeller from t-worx, and Microsoft MVP, Stan Schultes to help write some chapters. We all have signed contracts, gone to the photographer for our cover picture, and are diving into the new version of DotNetNuke to write our chapters. Our ......
Microsoft just released some cool software to mesh photos together. After taking several photos, the array of photos stitched together to recreate the scene. in three dimensions. It's one of those deals where you have to see it to believe it. The product is called photosynth and you really need to think out of the box and be created to mesh your pictures together. The site has existing projects to view along with a blog. This information is from the site: You can share or relive a vacation destination ......
Starting in mid July, Microsoft will be selling Office by subscription. Including Office will be a security software program called Live One Care. The costs will be $70 a year. Even though Google has free web based programs that compete with Office, many students and teachers still prefer to use Office. This announcement is a win win and you can purchase the product at Circuit City. Technorati Tags: Office,Microsoft,Circuit City ......
At the Marriott Hotel in San Antonio, TX, there were close to 200 teachers from across the world attending the annual Computer Science Teachers Association Symposium. I have been fortunate to attend this event in the past as an attendee and as a speaker and I always look forward to it every year. I enjoy meeting new teachers and talking to them about what they are doing in the class. I also enjoy seeing old friends and the opportunity to learn something new at this event. My presentation was on Web ......
Love him or hate him, Bill Gates officially retires from Microsoft Corporation today. It is both a sad day and a happy one as well. We all know he had a vision of the way technology should be used and we were always interested in learning more. We criticized him and the company when products were not released on time or when they didn't work right. He started a company that made a big impact in the world. Although he never graduated from college, he was a brilliant man who knew how to run a big company. ......
Close to 200 registered for the Sunday DotNetNuke OpenForce 08 event today that took place in between the Tech Ed events held at the Orlando Convention Center. Who ever said Geeks take Sunday off? DotNetNukers came from all over including Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New York and as far as Pakistan to attend this FREE event hosted by the local Orlando DotNetNuke user group. What's even crazy is that these people who traveled this distance weren't going to TECH ED but just coming for the DotNetNuke track ......
The Microsoft Community event had a great opening today at the Orlando Convention Center where Tech Ed has been going on all week. As I arrived and drove past the convention center, I noticed the lack of Microsoft advertising outside the building. In past years, you would see Microsoft plastered all over the place like on busses, light poles, and outside the building. I wasn't sure why. What was nice about this event was that Joe Healy, the Florida Microsoft evangelist, was all over the place making ......
Joe Healy, the Microsoft genius, who has planned this upcoming weekend In Between Events, asked for a head count from all of us who have planned events for this coming weekend. I was asked some time ago to head up the DotNetNuke Events for the day and we have 173 coming to that event. The room sits 210 so we have room for more! There will be over 1200 coming for the Saturday and Sunday events. Check out the inbetween site to see what's going on. This event is free and the only thing you need to pay ......
So, if you happen to be in town (Orlando,FL) for pleasure, business or for the Tech Ed event, you must put the DotNetNuke Open Force Event on your calendar for Sunday, June 8th at the Orlando Convention Center. There will be sessions on how to learn DotNetNuke, how to install, how to skin, how to secure your site and on the newest version of DotNetNuke aka Cambrian. Finally, get your questions answered by the developers of DotNetNuke. Yes, Shaun Walker, Nik Kalyani, Scott Willhite and Joe Brinkman ......
No, it's not another product or a new sales figure or them buying out another company. More importantly, the company has joined OLPC. OLPC is the one laptop per child program that Nicholas Negroponte started in 2005. The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the ......
Microsoft has released sales figures on the XBOX 360 and they have reached the 10 million sold mark. The Wii is close behind with 8.8 million sold.
Great opportunity for game developers!
If you liked Virtual Earth, then you'll also like the World Wide Telescope that Microsoft Research has for all of us to star gaze. WorldWide Telescope is a rich Web application that brings together imagery from the best ground- and space-based observatories across the world to allow people to easily explore the night sky through their computers. WorldWide Telescope has been eagerly anticipated by the astronomical and educational communities as a compelling astronomical resource for students and lifelong ......
Next week is the last week of teaching XNA Game Development to my students. My year long planning for the course has really paid off and I'm proud of the 2D games that my students created. All of the games were deployed on the XBOX 360 to show the game play. I've posted some of the games that they created and I hope you like them too. Here are some DO's and Don'ts when teaching XNA. Do's Stick with one version of XNA and use it for the Semester. Teach your students the art of game design. Prepare ......
Dan Waters , Academic Relations Manager from Microsoft Corporation, took the time out of his busy schedule to drive to Orlando today to speak to my XNA Programming Students about the new XNA Game Development Framework 3.0 that enables you to program games for the ZUNE. My students have been learning C# and XNA for this semester and are finishing up on their game development. Dan had the opportunity to answer student questions on Game State and he viewed the students games and made comments on each ......
At my local Starbucks, they have 2 tip jars and they often times have you select who you like. Obama vs Clinton, Dogs vs Cats, Microsoft vs Yahoo. With the recent discussions of Microsoft offering Yahoo a ton of money to try to compete with Google I was just wondering has anyone else been following this month long development that quickly ended on Saturday with Microsoft backing out on offering Yahoo any more money for the company. When I was at the Microsoft Summit a couple of weeks ago, I was asking ......
The Orlando DotNetNuke User Group had a geat meeting on Saturday. The morning started early when Mike Webb and Dave Dyer made the trip in for 10 am from Vero Beach to Orlando. Dave was going to update the older version of DotNetNuke that Lake Highland Prep had running on their server to the current version and he wanted to view everything first before he started the intallation process. Dave had started the install process and just ran into one problem regarding the new folder structure and was able ......
Joe Healy from Microsoft saw an opportunity to have a local event in Orlando, FL during the weekend of Tech Ed. This event is going to be big! It's being held at the Orlando Convention Center near the airport and all the local attractions. It's jam packed with technology events in just 2 days and best of all it's FREE. Joe asked me to head up the DotNetNuke track for Sunday, June 8th and I was able to get some great local speakers for the event. Mike Webb from DNNSPIRED.com volunteered to host the ......
Well, my advanced programming students finally have a 2d shooter game that they have almost completed. It's been fun watching the development of their games. Some students are tweaking their sprite graphic, some are adding different sounds. Dan Waters from Microsoft will be coming to speak to my students on Tuesday about the new XNA framework that will allow you to create a game for a Zune. Dan has a great blog on XNA and I used his resources during the semester. I have been experiencing deploying ......
Nearly 400 U.S. colleges and universities, including MIT and Carnegie Mellon, now offer formal training in game development, ranging from elective courses to full degree programs. The increasing complexity of computers and game systems requires teams of dozens of artists, producers, and programmers to create a game. "Twenty years ago, a game was made by one guy, or two or three people," says International Game Developers Association executive director Jason Della Rocca. "The games you see now take ......
Today was extremely busy and exhausting as well. The routine here is to wake up early, grab a boxed breakfast and coffee in the huge ballroom at the hotel and then run off to where the buses are parked to take you to the Redmond Microsoft campus. I scheduled meetings with some Microsoft personnel today along with poking my head into some of the sessions that were going on at the Conference Center. I continued to evangelize computer science education and spoke with interested people about the concerns ......
Well the weather in April is quite different than the weather in Orlando, FL at this time of year. However, I did notice that there is more color in the trees and plants even though it's cold. I spent most of the morning at an XNA workshop. Even though I'm an ASP.NET MVP, there are certain events that we can go to outside our area. It was interesting to listen to the XNA concerns that the MVP folks had. The speaker who is a senior manager mentioned XNA being used in colleges and that opened up the ......
I arrived early at the airport and met up with our Microsoft local leader Joe, Devfish, Healy. Joe was in high spirits banging away on his keyboard at 7 am! Joe drove from Tampa to Orlando to take the Alaskan Airlines direct flight to Seattle. Joe feels so committed to the MVP program that he makes sure he has money in his budget to go to this event and hook up with the user group leaders at this event. Shawn Weisfeld, a C# MVP and Onetug leader, was next to arrive at the gate. We all boarded the ......
Joe Healy from Microsoft came up with a brilliant idea which is to have a FREE Teched Tweener Weekend on Saturday, June 7th and Sunday June 8th at the Orlando Convention Center in Orlando, FL. These 2 days will be jammed packed with free sessions that you can attend. I've been asked to head up a DotNetNuke University for all day Sunday. If you are coming to Tech Ed and want to talk on that day, please let me know. Slots are filling up fast but I may have some available if you act now. More on this ......
It was nice to see that members of the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group were mentioned in the recent newsletter that Shawn Walker puts out. Under the section News Briefs you'll see Summer Training in Orlando Brian Scarbeau and DNNSPIRED owner teaming up for DNN training in June/July.. Also under User Activity you'll see that Will Strohl who goes by hismightiness is one of the top 10 posters on the dotnetnuke.com site. Way to go! User Activity Updated forum and registration stats from DotNetNuke.com: ......
There were a couple of hundred Code Campers on Saturday in Heathrow, FL at Seminole Community College. The day was jam packed with 56 sessions and 13 tracks. Kudos to Microsoft MVP Shawn Weisfeld for organizing the event and running around to make sure everything was working correctly. Another kudos to Microsoft DevFish Joe Healy for always trying to hook you up with someone he knows that would be a good network contact for you. I heard that the infamous Microsoft Guru Russ Fustino was there but ......
According to the Washington Post, industry executives fear there won't be enough new defense sector workers to replace those employees as they retire. The problem is that almost 60 percent of U.S. aerospace workers in 2007 were 45 or older could affect national security and even close the door on commercial products that start out as military technology, industry officials said. Another part of the problem is the fierce competition for a limited pool of math and science experts from all corners of ......
Yes indeed! If you are a member of the Computer Science Teachers Association your school can get this offer. We invite you to try Microsoft® Expression® Web, the next generation of Web development software – at no charge. We’ll also give you a tutorial and curriculum unit - that were designed by a CSTA member - and tested by teachers and students in 10 schools this fall. Microsoft will provide FREE Expression Web software for your entire school to the first 150 US high school teachers who respond ......
Thanks to Shawn Weisfeld for helping our group join the prestigious INETA community. Our group looks forward to working with organization. Here is some information about INETA: INETA: THE NEXT STEP IN USER GROUP EVOLUTION INETA provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups. Our mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft's ......
For the past several weeks, my students have learned C# and started to learn XNA by reviewing the tutorial that Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss put together on his site. Today, we reviewed how to put sound into the game. The XNA Creators Club has a good video on this topic. I would highly recommend using the Sound.cs file that Bill uses in his tutorial for you to create your own sounds using XACT. You just need to change the namespace to the project you are working on and then initialize the sound under ......
Big announcement at the GDC in San Francisco today. Microsoft has launched a community driven service that will let amateur creators build and distribute games via XBOX live. I was amazed to find out that XNA had been downloaded 800,000 times and there are more than 400 universities worldwide that are using the package. There are not that many high schools teaching XNA. I'd like to see more XNA training for faculty so that high school teachers would feel comfortable teaching it. Last summer, I took ......
I'm sure that Alfred Thompson from Microsoft will be blogging more about this free giveaway. Great news if you are a college student you can get Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, Expression Studio, XNA Game Studio 2.0 with a free year-long subscription to the XNA Creators Club, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition. When Windows Server 2008 is released to MSDN, it will be available to students as well. Bill Gates ......
Today in class, I shared with my students a video that Logan and Buzz did in their XNA online Programming class located at 3dbuzz.com. The training was excellent preparation for me to be able to teach my students game programing. My students have learned how to program in C# ,the basic concepts of decision making, repetition etc. and needed to see how all of this applies to game play so the Bouncing X video was needed at this time. There are 2 class files that are created in this application. One ......
Over at the creators club site is an online video tutorial entitled Beginner's Guide to XNA Game Studio Express that is new and will teach you how to create a 2d and 3d game. Charles Cox, a Developer Educator from Microsoft does an outstanding job at explaining how to code these two games. In addition, he reviews the hardware and operating system requirements of being able to run XNA Game Studio Express and how to install as well. What I liked was part of the Introduction steps you through how to ......
One day after my blog post on Yahoo cutting jobs, Microsoft makes an offer to buy them out! Apparently this talk has been rumor for some time now and Microsoft has finally made an offer of $44.6 billion. Is Yahoo worth that much? Should be interesting to see where this goes... Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Yahoo ......
Not much hoopla this year over the one year anniversary of Vista. In fact, when I was part of the Microsoft Foots program last year which allowed me to talk to customers at a popular Best Buy in Orlando, FL there was no excitement with customers when I showed them all the new features of Vista along with the new version of Microsoft Office 2007. I often wonder if Vista will ever get accepted at all. Sure all new notebooks have Vista installed on it but what about those PC's that could upgrade to ......
It's hard to believe that we started this class a month ago and we are moving along to finish the C# learning before we begin our adventure to learning XNA. Students are programming assignments utilizing the if statement. We reviewed the switch statement and how that is used as well. In addition, we covered webcast 3 overview of Game Elements that Digipen has available. This webcasts covers graphics, input, sounds and networks. My students only have time to program 2d games in XNA but I wanted to ......
Tech night 08 was a great success last night in the Lakefront room at LHPS. There were close to 50 students and parents in attendance to listen to Andrea Barr from Apple who talked about Podcasting. Etan Horowitz from the Orlando Sentinel talked about Tech Tips for students. Richard Connor from Laptop Plus dove into pc security and finally Dan Waters from Microsoft talked about the tablet pc and Onenote software. Lots of information in two hours time. Thanks to Microsoft for the donation of an XBOX ......
If you are teaching a web design class and if you want your students to learn how to create a web portal using open source software called dotnetnuke then there is some curriculum that you can have for free. There's even a forum to post questions and you can download videos of the lessons to use to learn dotnetnuke. The curriculum will have your students create a web portal for Comp Sci High School. They will create pages and add modules to those pages. In addition, they will learn how to skin modules ......
According to TechSmith, JING is a project and not a product. Whatever they want to call it, JING is an excellent communication tool where you can capture a screen, add your voice and voila you have yourself a movie file to share with anyone. In education, this is great. For example, I can use this on any of my powerpoint slides or software demos that I use in class and put them on my website for students to view as a review. What's even better is that you save on 200 MB of space provided to you by ......
I am trying to explore how I can expose my high school students to silverlight but I'm not sure what direction would be the easiest for them. For example, I realize that there are several versions of silverlight available at this time and that there are several ways to create applications with silverlight. JavaScript, Expression Blend and now the .NET Framework. What I don't know is what direction I should go so now I'm asking the experts. What should I be looking at and where can I go to learn. ......
The alliance that I'm referring to is the Microsoft Academic Alliance which allows any high school computer science department and computer science students to install Visual Studio. In addition, you get the following: Three Microsoft e-Learning Library (MELL) collections: General Programming Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Programming in Visual Basic .NET Teaching Tools CD Student Tools CD Teaching Tools Manual Student Tools Manual Introductory Kit Monitored Newsgroups MSDN Library Documentation Technical ......
Today, I purchased my tickets to go to Seattle for the MVP Summit which will be held in April. The MVP Global Summit is a four-day invitation-only event hosted at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. With more than 400 sessions and a variety of networking opportunities, the MVP Global Summit enables Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Regional Directors (RDs) to: Connect with other MVPs and RDs Engage with Microsoft ......
I was telling my students last week about my experience being a Microsoft MVP and a student of mine told me that his goal was to be an MVP. I told him about the two high school students that I met that were MVP's and what they were involved in. I was extremely happy that this student was motivated to learn more about becoming an MVP and I hope he pursues this. Nikita Polyakov who is a student at the University of South Florida and a Microsoft MVP blogs about his experience. The Microsoft Channel ......
I've only taught my Honors Programming II Game Programming class for 3 days now and I'm evaluating my students C# skills with various beginner programs. In addition, I am introducing Gaming concepts with my students using the free online book called The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. I am also using some the Video Gaming Webcast that Microsoft has available with Matthew Mead who is a Computer Science Instructor from Digipen Institute of Technology. The Webcasts does not cover XNA ......
Here is an outline of the Honors Programming II class that I'll be teaching next semester which begins next week. The curriculum that I'll be using for C# was written by Digipen and Microsoft. Introduction to C# C# Types & Variables C# Input & Output C# Expressions & Operators C# Functions & Flow Control C# Classes C# Arrays C# Structures The curriculum that I'll be using for some of the XNA training will come from Bill Reiss and Blue Rose Games. Introduction to XNA Getting Started ......
For over a year now, I've been busy learning XNA and then try to put together some curriculum for my Honors Programming II class to use. 3dbuzz has an excellent online class and. I would highly recommend their training. I am using moodle class management system with my students and it is a very convenient way of organizing a course. I'll be doing weekly blogs on the progress of the course . I am hoping more high school teachers would teach XNA to their students and we all can share games together. ......
Five years ago is when our school had the first Tech Night. It seems like yesterday. Tech night was sponsored by the US Computer Science Department and it was a night to discuss technology. Microsoft has always sponsored the event and sent lots of swag to give out to students and family. An XBOX was donated and given out as a door prize. This year we have scheduled our Tech night for Thursday, January 24th from 6:30 to 8:30 pm on our campus in Orlando, FL. The speakers will include: Dan Waters from ......
Mainfunction.com was the site to go to when you needed resources or help if you taught computer science. Alfred Thompson and Pat Phillips did a great job making the site new and answering any questions you might have. Any teacher could post a question in the forum and that teacher would get some type of answer within 24 hours. The site has gone away and a new site called Pre-Collegiate Connection has taken its place. The site has everything the old site had but the Forum. Hopefully, that will be ......
Dan Waters who is the new Microsoft Academics Relations Manager for the Gulf States has a nice blog entry on creating your first XNA game that I plan on using with my high school programming students. Dan walks you through in his tutorial on how to create his version of a pong game. He does a good job explaining the code and how he used collision detection with his sprites as well. What I liked was a nice powerpoint presentation that you get when you download the source. Dan spent some time creating ......
It is great to see that Microsoft has selected some worth projects and has awarded lots of money for continued research on these areas. Here's the announcement: Microsoft Research announced on Monday that Microsoft will award almost $6.5 million in grants to colleges and universities across the United States to supplement research, research faculty, and research facilities. Microsoft Research's Rich Rashid said computer science impacts all types of work and industries, and investing in academia will ......
Back in February I blogged about me going to the Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development which was held in Orlando and on the Disney Wonder Ship which took us to the Bahamas. Several of the speakers have put up their slides from their presentation on the Academic Resource Center site. You can search for other information on the site as well. It is categorized like this: Special Collaboration Areas Compilers, Languages, Runtimes Robotics Embedded Systems Sensor Networks Gaming and Graphics Software ......
Debbie Carter who teaches AP Computer Science at Lancaster Day School in Lancaster, PA has put together an excellent resource book for AP Computer Science Teachers. You can get the book at apcentral.collegeboard.com. I've worked with Debbie as a member of the now defunct Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board and presently as a Board Member for the Computer Science Teachers Association. The book contains information that will help both a beginner teacher and veteran teachers as well. It has five chapters ......
Yesterday I attended the Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium that was held at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. For the past several years, I've been a speaker at this event and this was the second time that I've attended as a registrant. I always look forward to this event because it gives me a chance to see some old friends and to meet new friends as well. In addition, it helps me learn new ways to teach computer science education. I attended sessions on robotics, the Grid ......
Well, lets start with the weather. Some of the participants are complaining that its hot. Well this is Florida and it is hot! Of course I'm use to it and I golf in the early afternoon when the course is empty. It takes getting use to and hopefully the afternoon rains will come by and cool things off. If you're interested in logistics then there is a nice video to see how they put tech ed together. The events planners do an excellent job registering, feeding, moving 13000 geeks. I ran into Brian Keller ......
This morning started out a little crazy for me as I got up, fought the traffic getting to the west side of Orlando, parking , registering and getting going. I missed the keynote this am but I heard it was good from my lunch companions. I'm writing this on one of the many HP computers that are available to check your schedule, answer e-mail etc. What is funny is the number of folks who choose to bring their laptop and are sitting against the wall working on them. They look very uncomfortable. I'll ......
Well, I just got back from the Peabody Hotel which was the site for the MVP Welcome Event sponsored by Microsoft Corporation. It was a good chance for many of us to see our MVP lead and to see other MVP's that we have been in contact with but have never met. Connie Rennie & Nestor Portillo from Microsoft gave us a hearty welcome and Nestor outlined the benefits of the MVP program and some changes for the up coming year. One thing that I learned very quickly after the presentation was how passionate ......
So my blog has been officially accepted into the Tech Ed Community of bloggers for this week. They just need to get the correct url and off we go. Tech Ed starts early for me. On Sunday, there is a special day for Microsoft MVP folks at the Peabody Hotel which is located on International Drive near the Convention Center. This will be a half day session and we'll be fed and then have an opportunity to listen to product leads after. Not sure what I can blog on but I'm sure some it should be ok because ......
As a kid, I always had fond memories of my Dad throwing me a popfly ball and catching it. That was fun! Even with my own kids, I enjoyed throwing a popfly ball to them and smiled when they caught it. So, when I was invited to join up with Microsoft Popfly, I had a hunch it would be fun and it is. Popfly Space is a social network designed to connect the millions of non-professional creators in the world who work on everything from mashups to game development to hardware hacks. Users can build and ......
Next week, the streets of Orlando will be filled with Tech Ed registrants. Microsoft has held this event before in Orlando and I was able to get myself a free ticket from a friend in Redmond. I volunteered this year to be at one of the booths answering questions on IE7. I'll still be able to attend some of the sessions at Tech Ed and I'll be able to meet people as well. I'll be blogging about my days at tech ed and sharing what I'm learning there. Stay tuned... Technorati tags: Microsoft, Tech Ed ......
I blogged about what AP teachers can do with their students after the AP exam but I found something else that I'll be doing with my students. Several years ago, Microsoft put together a half hour long reality game show called THE CODE ROOM. The show is hosted by Jesi Knapp. There were only three episodes that were created and the first show features Russ Fustino from Microsoft. Russ is giving his ASP.NET talk at a local theatre in Texas. Three participants volunteer to participate in a e-commerce ......
My digital imaging students have learned how to use Photoshop during this semester and are putting together a presentation using a free product from Microsoft called Photostory. Here's some information about Photostory. Photo Story 3 includes features that enable you to create a slideshow with your digital pictures, edit your pictures, create your story with original music, add narration, and share them with your family and friends. Create a photo story. You can create a photo story that includes ......
I finally put the finishing touches on the course that I'll be teaching next school year on game programming. This will be an 18 week course for students who are experienced at programming and have taken our Honors level Programming course. I plan on using the online book The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. The book is a short read but covers some key points such as: What is a Game? Why do People Play Games A Taxonomy of Computer Games The Computer as a Game Technology The Game Design ......
There is always some time left after the AP exam to teach our students more before we leave them for the summer. In Florida, we have a couple of weeks to learn more and if you’re from different parts of the country you may have even more time to teach students something new. I am really sold on having students learn about creating games so that’s what I’ll be doing with my students. There are several options available for you to do with your students and several languages to use as well. If you want ......
In preparation for the gaming course that I'll be teaching next school year, I came across these interesting facts about the industry that is put out by the Entertainment Software Association: TOP 10 INDUSTRY FACTS US computer and video game software sales grew six percent in 2006 to $7.4 billion – almost tripling industry software sales since 1996. Sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play computer and video games. The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games ......
At the MVP summit, I learned about Grava. This new educational product from Microsoft is both an authoring and developer tool. Here's an example of what I mean: If you've been in the education market for long you can see that this application looks like an application created with Hyperstudio. What's different about Grava is that the product has its own SDK built on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and provides a programming model and tools for building rich educational experiences. I learned ......
On Saturday, there were close to 500 people at the Orlando Code Camp. The local INETA group did an outstanding job organizing this event. This group volunteers countless hours to make sure local developers get a first class experience of learning. The registration went smooth and directions around Seminole Community College got everyone to where they should go. Carl Franklin gave an amusing keynote about his background and there were several great speakers during the day. I had the opportunity to ......
Today, I'll blog about Multipoint which was demonstrated at the Emerging Technologies session at the MVP Summit. As everyone knows, students love to use technology. Notice the keyword everyone! However, not all schools in different countries can afford to have a computer for every child so they have to share. As a classroom teacher, I remember the days of sharing pc's and I was like a traffic cop getting kids equal time on the computer. I did my best to make sure each student was able to use the ......
Hats off to Shawn Weisfeld and his crew for organizing what seams to be a great upcoming code camp this Saturday at Seminole Community College in Sanford, FL. Shawn is a Microsoft MVP and INETA leader and I saw him in passing last week in Seattle at the MVP Summit. He was chanting code camp, code camp in the halls! To date, there are 478 coming to a great event. There will be 52 Sessions, 38 speakers including 16 MVPs and 9 Authors. Where else can you get that kind of education for free. Here's the ......
I got permission from the speaker at the MVP Summit last week to blog about some of the things that I learned last week at the Microsoft MVP summit. The session that I attended was on emerging technologies in education and they talked about three products. The products covered were multipoint, steady state and grava. Today, I'll write about steady state which is also called shared computer toolkit. Computer teachers in computer labs, libarians who manage computers and school IT department will like ......
Alfred Thompson, a former high school computer science teacher and now a Microsoft employee, blogged today on taking a look at AP Computer Science. Quite timely I thought even after I posed this question last week to Microsoft boss Bill Gates, "Is computer science education dead". Quite timely indeed even after I said something to my Associate Director here at school on Friday about how frustrated I am teaching AP Computer Science and that when our school hires another Computer Science Teacher next ......
At the Microsoft MVP summit today, Bill Gates gave the keynote to 1800 MVP award recipients from all over the world. Before the session, many people were already in line. My thoughts were to eat breakfast fast and then get in line to get a good seat. In line it was a great experience for me to be able to be with people from all over the world. In front of me were a group from Brazil and they have a great sense of humor even though I had no clue what they were speaking in Portugese. To my right side ......
This weekend, I'll be travelling to Seattle to attend the MVP Summit which will be held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle. The summit is an enormous event and there will be close to 2000 professionals from all over the world in attendance. This will be the 2nd summit that I am privileged to attend. I was unable to attend the last summit because I was at another meeting held at Microsoft campus and I couldn't be out of school for that length of time. The keynote ......
By SETH SCHIESEL Reaching out to millions of aspiring game developers around the world, Microsoft plans today to announce a contest that will award $10,000 and the opportunity to entice millions of eyeballs to the next great digital diversion for the company’s Xbox 360. In addition to the game console’s snazzy graphics, the Xbox Live online service has been the most important component of the Xbox 360’s success since its debut in 2005. And perhaps the most popular aspect of Xbox Live has been the ......
Sixty seven of my students have successfully passed the Digital Literacy Certificate exam that was sponsored by Microsoft Corporation.
The students had online lessons in the following areas:
Computer Basics
The Internet and World Wide Web
Productivity Programs
Computer Security and Privacy
Digital Lifestyles
Students were required to take an exam that tested their knowledge in these areas. Congratulations!
Alfred Thompson who works for Microsoft invited me to go to this event. Alfred is a former high school computer science teacher and I worked with him on the Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board. He works hard promoting high school programming for his company. So why the AHOY? Well, this event is on the Disney Wonder Ship and it sails to Nasseau, Bahamas and the Disney Castaway Island. I'm sure you think that I'll be getting a good tan during my time there but the agenda is packed with interesting speakers ......
I'll be speaking at this very popular code camp on Saturday, March 24th at Seminole Community College. My session will be on Best Practices to Learn Dotnetnuke. This session is geared toward helping you learn Dotnetnuke. Learn first hand how this Microsoft MVP was able to create a web portal for his students to use. He then developed curriculum for Microsoft Corporation. This curriculum is being used by high school and college students and is available to developers as well. Attend this session and ......
This week several Microsoft MVP’s volunteered their time to help Microsoft promote VISTA in different retail stores. We were all part of the FOOTS (FEET ON THE STREET) program. To prepare for this event, we all received the necessary training material that was needed so we can review in advance. There was also a live webcasts that we could attend and a chance to ask any questions we might have. A large package was already delivered to our store with the label Hold for Microsoft Trainer. When the ......
Tech night 07 was a great success at Lake Highland Prep. There were close to 50 students and parents in attendance to listen to Tom Carbone who is the Technical Director at the Florida Interactive Academy in Orlando. Tom has many years of game programming experience working for Microsoft and Electronic Arts and other companies as well. He spoke on how math and science are used to create video games. Tom spoke about mathematics and the skills programmers must have to create games. His emphasis on ......
Microsoft is making its way across the country to announce the new VISTA operating system, Office 2007 and other products for businesses to use. Twenty Lake Highland programmers went to the event at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, FL and made Microsoft history.
There were over three thousand in attendance at this event which was a larger crowd than in New York city. Way to go Floridians. We're ready for a change!
Alfred Thompson wrote in his blog about a Digital Literacy Curriculum program that Microsoft had on their site. I checked out the site and it covered 5 areas of study: Computer Basics The Internet and World Wide Web Productivity Programs Computer Security and Privacy Digital Lifestyles Each unit has an assessment test and then at the end there is a test that you can take and then print out a certificate when you finish. This semester, I'm requiring all my students to take this certificate exam. As ......
This handy device will keep track of your photo locations and dates easily with satellite precision. The GPS-CS1 calculates and records position data. When used with the supplied GPS Image Tracker software, the GPS-CS1 allows you to match the time and location data in the device with your photos. And by using the Picture Motion Browser software, supplied with certain Sony cameras*, your photos will be shown on an online map, giving you a whole new way to organize, manage and enjoy your pictures. ......
The 2nd semester of the school year starts next week after a two week hiatus to rest, relax, and be with family. Most of my classes are semester long classes so I get a chance to meet new students when I go back to school next week. My AP students will be the same and there's always pressure with that class to meet the goals of the AP curriculum and prepare them for the AP exam in early May. They have much more to learn in OOP like inheritance, polymorphism, and they need to learn about recursion ......
I'm planning on taking 25 programming students to the Microsoft America Launch Event that will be coming to Orlando, FL on Thursday, January 25th. It's just a coincindence that our school is sponsoring our annual technology night that evening so it will be a busy day indeed! Several years ago, I took my AP students to an evening event that Microsoft sponsored which was on mobile commuting and the students enjoyed it a great deal so I made my decision to take them to this event as soon as I heard ......
At Lake Highland Prep in Orlando, FL, we'll be celebrating Computer Science Education in a couple of ways. I have some outstanding guest speakers that will be visiting our school and talking to our students. Scott Faris will be talking to my AP class about his company. Mrs. Frank who runs a very successful online business selling childrens clothes will be coming in to speak to my Web Design class. Finally, Joe Healy, from Microsoft will be bringing Bill Reiss from Tampa to speak to my Honors Programming ......
Yesterday was the first day that I introduced dotnetnuke to my students. I'm using the curriculum that I wrote for Microsoft with them. I've discovered that there already are some changes in the dotnetnuke starterkit that was not there when I wrote the curriculum. The change is a good one because it makes an install to be a breeze without any modifications at all. In any event, I'll be blogging about the web design class that will be using the curriculum. The first day we talked about portals and ......
Well Joe Healy from Microsoft will be coming to our annual Tech night to talk about Cool Features of Vista to our students and parents.
Joe will be bringing an XBOX 360 to donate as a doorprize as well.
Thanks Joe for participating.
For the past several years, the Lake Highland Upper School Computer Science Department has sponsored a Tech night for students and parents. In the past, we have had some very good speakers and a good crowd as well. This year we plan on having our tech night on Thursday, January 25th and we have an outstanding speaker as well. Tom Carbone who is the Technical Director for the Florida Interactive Academy , Orlando, FL, will be our speaker. His talk will be about how Math & Science are used to create ......
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is the world's oldest and largest educational and scientific computing society. Since 1947 ACM has provided a vital forum for the exchange of information, ideas, and discoveries. Today, ACM serves a membership of computing professionals and students in more than 100 countries in all areas of industry, academia, and government. I have been a member of this association for several years now and have met colleagues at the annual conference sponsored by SIGCSE ......
What is it about new things that aren’t out yet and you want to talk about them anyways? I’ve been thinking about the new features in Vista and how students can use them. I’ve also been thinking about school’s technology departments and how they will like or dislike Vista. Students will like the new interface. Who wouldn’t? They will also like the photo gallery to keep their pictures organized. It’s amazing how many pictures teenagers take! Many already use Flickr ......
FREE XNA Book by Mike Fleischauer Another good resource is learnxna.com. They have some video tutorials to review along with a book that Mike Fleischauer is writing and posting chapters on the site that he’s written along with code samples as well. The book is an easy read with less than twenty pages each chapter. The first chapter reviews the basics of XNA and is a good introduction to using Visual C# Express. Chapter 2 reviews graphics and sprites. He does an excellent job reviewing transparent ......
There are several high school programming contest in the state of Florida that my students can participate in. There is one in November sponsored by the ACM student chapter of Stetson University in Deland, FL. Stetson is a small private school located north of Orlando, FL and they will be celebrating their tenth year of sponsoring the contest. Kudos to the students and faculty who put in the time to sponsor these types of events because the high school students really like going. For those of you ......
Let me start by saying that I'm always a sucker to new techniques, platforms, and ideas to teach my students about programming. I'm also trying to increase my enrollment as well. I have used web programming for a couple of years including web services. I introduced them to game programming using Gamemaker and Blitz Basic several years ago and now this new XNA framework is available to use in the class. I have downloaded the framework and just started to look at the code which is in C#. A good start ......
Even after teaching for more than 25 years, I'm still looking for ways to engage my students in their learning. Google has a new service where you can search for videos online. There are several videos they I can use with my students that will be helpful to their learning. I started to look at the videos for programming and there are some interesting videos from a developer at Smalltalk talking about OOP to a video put together at a high school programming competition that was interesting as well. ......
So here I am in Maui at a beautiful ocean front condo celebrating my 30th anniversary with my bride and I was thinking about last year when I was fortunate enough to be at TECH ED in Orlando, FL. My first reaction is wow this year went by fast because we've been planning this trip for a year and we're already here in Maui. This year as you all know TECH ED is in Boston which is where I went to school at Suffolk University which is located behind the state house. Being an MVP allows me to get access ......
I often receive e-mails from computer science teachers asking what I do in my Programming class at my school so I thought I'd share my response to a teacher in New Hampshire who recently e-mailed me. You ask an excellent question and I’ll try to answer as best that I can with the experience that I have on teaching programming to students. (21 years, 5 college and 16 hs). The first thing you need to know as a teacher is the math ability that your students have coming into your class. Also, what standards ......
As a teacher, I've always felt that I needed to always learn more about computer science to make me a better teacher and to share that knowledge with my students. My students often times teach me things sometimes relevant to what's going on in the class and sometimes it's not. Summer is the only time to get some professional development. There are some free workshops that I could go to but it costs money for travel and lodging so I need to limit where I can go and choose wisely the event that I'd ......
My idea about celebrating Computer Science Education Day on December 8th and with Daryll McDade's idea to celebrate Grace Hopper's Birthday seems to be catching on. I will be working with my colleagues at the Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board to help me organize activities that can be held that day for students. I'd like to have a poster contest of Grace Hopper's accomplishments along with an essay contest. I'm trying to get the Computer Science Teachers Association to support this idea as well. I'm ......
As I was walking past our school library this week I noticed that it’s Latin week. During the school year at Lake Highland Preparatory School we celebrate many events that has to do with different disciplines and I’m sure your school must as well. Days like Cinco De Mayo, Chinese New Year, etc. so I was thinking that we should do something school wide to celebrate Computer Science Education. As a member of the Faculty Advisory Board for Microsoft Corporation, my first thought was to send the group ......
A code camp! That's what was going on yesterday at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. This Microsoft event brings out developers from around the state to meet for a day and just talk about technology. There were several tracks to choose from and plenty of time to mingle with colleagues during the day and at night if you wanted. I had an opportunity to speak during one of the tracks on dotnetnukes modules. It was a lot of fun for me to do this. More importantly was the fact that I met ......
I read with great interest in the ACM Communication magazine, a letter from the President David A. Patterson. The article is entitled “Computer Science Education in the 21st Century.” His letter is based on his position statement for a workshop on the preparation of IT graduates for 2010 and beyond. His opening paragraph starts off by admitting that in the past we created obstacles to reduce the number of CS majors and he states” we should take advantage of reduced pressures from ......
So today is March 2nd and the new ultra mobile PC codename Origami from Microsoft is suppose to be announced but according to their official/unofficial site at http://www.origamiproject.c... more information is coming on Thursday, March 9th. It's always nice to anticipate something that's geeky and the competition is heating up for this type of device. According to different sites, these devices can play back music, connect to WiFi networks (and possibly Bluetooth devices), and has enough power ......
The Microsoft Campus Connection rolled into Orlando last night at the University of Central Florida. This program is geared toward college students and there was a room full of eager students in the room. The program starts off with an introduction to Vista. Blain Barton from Microsoft gave this presentation. Vista has many features that the college crowd liked but I think everyone is dissapointed that they can't use it now and have to wait for the OFFICIAL announcement which might be by the end ......
With the new version of ASP.NET 2.0, I've been quite impressed with the variety of training material that is available to use to learn. There's webcasts, online tutorials, video lessons, online books, virtual labs and books from Wrox or Microsoft. There's nothing like getting your hands dirty after you learn something new and work on a small project to make sure what you learned works for you. For me, I like the Wrox books to learn new things. Presently, I've been reading Beginning ASP.NET by Chris ......
A Code Camp is basically an all day developer geekfest. There have been several of these CodeCamps in Florida and across the US. I had an opportunity to speak at a Code Camp that was held in Ft. Lauderdale last spring. It was a fun event usually held on a Saturday and its a FREE event too! This year there will be a Code Camp held on Saturday, March 25th at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. Joe Healy from Microsoft has been the leader of the Florida events and the agenda has always ......
I took a virtual lab today on What's New with Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0. This type of training is ideal for classroom teachers who want to introduce new concepts to their students without having to install the software in their lab. Many teachers that I've talked to always tell me that they would love to train their students on new technology but their computers are slow or the technology department will not allow them to install new software in the lab for some reason. These frustrated ......
Today I had some time to install the latest version of dotnetnuke which uses ASP.NET 2.0. The installation was on a local pc and I must say it really was a breeze to install. I used the new starter kit that comes with this version and with instructions from Shawn Walker who is the leader of this open source project. Using Visual Web Developer is another plus especially for teachers who want to teach their students about web portals. You don't need to install IIs on each pc in the computer lab because ......
Everyone knows what the criteria is to get in to a good college. High gpa, high SAT scores, active in high school, community service hours etc. However, there is no documentation that I have found that will list the technology skills that are required for high school students to be successful in college. In addition, high school students have no clue as to what technology will be used in their college classes. I know that it depends on the students major and the college that they choose to go to ......
I am always up for doing things for the first time. Yesterday was the first time that I have ever instructed on a webcast. I am doing a series of six that I've blogged about before and it was an interesting experience for me. First off, I had no clue who was going to register for the webcast. Originally it was scheduled for high school computer science teachers and then Microsoft put it on their MSDN site. There were 125 who participated and stayed for the hour I was with them. I only wish I could ......
LEARNING HOW TO CREATE PORTALS USING DOTNETNUKE Brian Scarbeau Brian.Scarbeau@gmail.com The future of internet applications is based on the creation of portals to deliver web based services. Organizations that have a great deal of information are centralizing their applications by an information portal. More specifically they are solving their problem by creating an Enterprise Information portal to share information on databases over the web using applications that are created with object oriented ......
What would you do with $1000? To find out, enter the Games 4 Girls game design competition! All you have to do is get together with a few friends and create a computer game that is FUN for middle school or high school girls. Submit your game to the Games 4 Girls contest, and if our panel of high school girls, game design professionals, and UIUC computer science faculty thinks your game is the most FUN (and original and creative and technically interesting) then you and your teammates each win $1000! ......
The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides several features for exploring and understanding Web pages. These features enable you to:-- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.-- Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.-- Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.-- View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.-- Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.-- ......
The final week of the semester is finally here. This semester has been a good one so far and my web design students have learned a great deal about web design. I hope they continue studying about web design and take my advanced class where we learn about portals and work with dotnentuke. I will be working on web services for this final week. Some of the advanced students will complete all of the lessons in the CurliQue curriculum and some are only three or four lesson behind. I will introduce my ......
If you tuned into the NBC show called Three wishes that was aired on Friday night you would have the answer to my question. The show is about how people send in their wish and the night of this show there was a young man who wanted to be an astronaut so his wish was granted and he went to Huntsville, Alabama for some training. A young woman was granted her wish to be an actress so off to Hollywood she went for acting lessons and a chance to try out for a small acting role which we got. Finally, there ......
The semester is rapidly coming to a close in a couple of weeks. After looking at what’s left to do in the Curlique lessons I will probably eliminate some of the required lessons and have them spend some additional time on web services. The lesson has a good application using Amazon and I also have an application that I created that uses Pig Latin. Udentsstay avehay unfay ithway isthay essonlay. You can go here to translate if you want. On average it takes about a week to cover two lessons. ......
Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) which was held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. This convention is not open to the general public and over 250 high school students from Central Florida were invited to attend along with their teacher as chaperones. The last time I attended this event was four years ago and lots of technology has changed as you know in that time period. Some of my students ......
Last week, I purchased the new Wrox Publisher ASP.NET book called Professional ASP.NET 2.0 by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman, Farhan Muhammad, S. Srinivasa Sivakumar, Devin Rader. The book was mentioned on Brian Goldfarb’s blog. Brian works with ASP.NET at Microsoft Corporation and he’s bright and super energetic. I’ve heard him talk on a couple of occasions and more recently heard him on a webcast that he did on stage with Steve Balmer at the VS Studio event in San Francisco. A couple ......
This morning I received an e-mail that was kind of cool and quite frankly woke me up as I start to read my e-mails at 7:00 am. I'll share: Dear Brian Scarbeau, Thank you for being a great contributor to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. You have been nominated to receive the Award for Customer Excellence. This award recognizes your extraordinary contribution to the Visual Studio 2005 product and will be shipped to you without charge. The Award for Customer Excellence (ACE) program was created to reward ......
Get Ready for Visual Studio 2005 with Free* Microsoft E-Learning Courses and Clinics.Whether you are interested in creating Windows forms, building Web applications, implementing Data Access, or finding out about Visual Studio Team System, you can access the E-Learning topic you want, when you want it, and learn at your own pace. Each lesson includes hands-on virtual labs and offline functionality. These courses, valued at $99.00 each won't be free forever, so sign on today.https://www.microsoft... ......
I have been using the beta version of these products for a couple of months now and I must say that I'm quite impressed with the product and the price. The product includes for web developers Visual Web Developer and students can create asp.net web pages that includes a local server so you don't have to install IIs on all the pc's in your lab. In addition, you can also use SQL Server 2005 Express with your web development. On the programming side you can select J#, Visual Basic.NET, C# or C++ Now ......
Lesson 7 contains an introduction to some programming concepts that my students have never heard of especially arrays. As a teacher, you'll need to spend a little bit of time explaining how this will work on their asp.net page. The students will be creating an array of pictures on the page and then with a button click advanced to the next picture and then a previous button will take them to the previous picture. I had an assignment that I've used with my students before using the Curlique lessons ......
This reminds me of the EF Hutton commercial when everyone stops what their doing and listens attentively when EF Hutton talks. Here's the story: On my way from school on Monday afternoon, I was travelling down the street at an intersection and the light was green and bam all of a sudden I find myself facing the same direction that I came. I drive a Toyota Tundra truck and the driver of the vehicle that struck me was driving a Honda. Needless to say, I was in shock that I got hit and that the impact ......
Today in class we reviewed the test that the students took yesterday. In addition, we talked about important concepts that students will be using in lesson 6. Students like to do the hands on part of my course and often times neglect to study new terms and concepts in computer science. Needless to say those are the students who scored below average and will need to buckle down and study harder for the next test next week. Lesson 6 reviews the following concepts: State, Postback, IsPostback, databinding ......
If your following along with the lessons that my students are working on then I'll report that the majority of students are working with Lesson 5 Interactive Ban Bio page. In this lesson, students learned how to create a drop down list and checkbox web controls. For these non programming students, they found that the use of the if statement was very easy to follow with this code: if dropdownlist1.selectedindex=0 then panel1.visible=true panel2.visible=false panel3.visible=false textbox1.visible=true ......
I'm a high school computer science teacher that teaches programming, web design and digital imaging to interested students who want to learn at Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando FL. In addition to teaching for over 25 years, my career included working as Director of Educational Programs for the Printing Industry of New England, selling personal computers in a computer store (Apple, IBM, and Kaypro), Director of Computer Services for a large CPA firm, Network Manager for a chain of Title ......
For those of you who may be teaching web design or programming to your students I'll be posting on what I'm doing with my students with ASP.NET aka WebMatrix as I'm working with my students this term. I was teaching web design for ten years and realized that I have been teaching the same curriculum to my students. Web design has changed during that time which included css, dhtml, asp, etc but I wasn't teaching that to my students. After seeing ASP.NET three years ago I started to write some curriculum ......