Brian Scarbeau

Insights from a seasoned Computer Science Trainer
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There are 61 entries for the tag programming
Orlando Code Camp coming up soon
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...

Posted On Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:14 PM | Feedback (0) |

Where have the years gone by?
Would you believe the Mac from Apple is 25 years old? It's hard to believe the years went by that fast. Back in 1983, I left my job as Director of Educational Programs for a trade association to sell Apple computers in a large chain of computer stores. The Macintosh wasn't around at that time and I sold the Apple IIe pc. In fact, I was the #1 salesman at the AppleFest show that was held in Boston that year. Many of us started in the computer business working on these pc's. Programming them was even...

Posted On Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:06 AM | Feedback (0) |

What's the best way to learn things?
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...

Posted On Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:10 AM | Feedback (0) |

DreamSpark may not be a dud for high school cs students after all!
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...

Posted On Tuesday, September 30, 2008 8:18 AM | Feedback (1) |

One month later.... Still nothing on the XNA Creators Club Site for Academics
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...

Posted On Monday, September 15, 2008 8:35 AM | Feedback (0) |

XNA Curriculum Update
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...

Posted On Friday, September 12, 2008 8:56 AM | Feedback (0) |

CS teachers go to class
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...

Posted On Monday, June 30, 2008 7:04 AM | Feedback (0) |

XNA + ZUNE = FUN!
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...

Posted On Tuesday, May 06, 2008 11:34 AM | Feedback (3) |

XNA Game Development Class Update
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...

Posted On Thursday, May 01, 2008 1:20 PM | Feedback (2) |

Final day for me at the MVP Summit
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...

Posted On Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:13 PM | Feedback (3) |

Orlando DotNetNuke User Group Well Represented At The Orlando Code Camp
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...

Posted On Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:37 AM | Feedback (0) |

Bouncing X and Y Introduction to OOP
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...

Posted On Tuesday, February 05, 2008 11:48 AM | Feedback (0) |

Game class update Week 4
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...

Posted On Tuesday, January 29, 2008 9:05 AM | Feedback (0) |

Field trip to Ortronicon
All of my students went on a field trip today to visit the Orlando Science Center and participate in workshops that instructors from the Full Sail School in Winter Park, FL put on. The Instructors were extremely knowledgeable and had a great deal of patience answering questions from teenagers. The Science Center sponsored Otronicon over the weekend and the field trips were part of it. One workshop was on 3d modeling with Maya software and the other was on designing games using FPS Creator. Students...

Posted On Wednesday, January 23, 2008 3:24 PM | Feedback (0) |

Is your school a member of the alliance?
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...

Posted On Friday, January 18, 2008 8:52 PM | Feedback (2) |

What is it about Alice?
In my Honors Programming I class this semester I have 18 students. Ten males and eight females. I'm extremely happy because this is the largest amount of females that I've had in a programming class. We are starting to use Alice and already I can see the excitement of all students working with the software. Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching...

Posted On Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:29 PM | Feedback (1) |

The Theory of Fun
When doing research for my XNA Game Programming class, I came across a great site that Jay Crossler has that had lecture slides that I could download and use in my class. One slide deck on the Theory of Fun will be used soon with my students. The slides review why are games not fun and how do we think. In addition, there's a section on how people choose games and reviews Bartle Personality Types. Finally, demographics are reviewed, time spent playing games, occupational status, what do players want...

Posted On Wednesday, January 16, 2008 12:45 PM | Feedback (0) |

Beginning to learn about the BRIX Windows Game
In my game programming class next week, my students will be learning about C# data types and working with variables. I have several small programs for them to program so that they feel comfortable programming in C# and working with the IDE. These are console applications and will be easy for them to master. The students will start to learn how to program a basic windows game called BRIX. Here's a description of the game. Game Design Overview As its name implies, this is a Windows-based game named...

Posted On Sunday, January 13, 2008 1:38 AM | Feedback (0) |

Theme Programming
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...

Posted On Thursday, January 10, 2008 5:45 PM | Feedback (2) |

Lab Preparation
So today was our first day back to school after our Christmas break. We had meetings in the morning and we get the rest of the day to get ready for the next semester. I have 20 new pc's in my room so I needed to windows update each one along with installing the software for the xbox controller that the students will use in my XNA class. Here's a picture of the lab. I was able to write my lesson plans for each class that I'll be teaching and put the finishing touches on the Honors Programming II class....

Posted On Monday, January 07, 2008 11:42 AM | Feedback (2) |

Game Programming Class Curriculum
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...

Posted On Saturday, January 05, 2008 6:31 PM | Feedback (0) |

Getting ready to XNA with my students
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....

Posted On Tuesday, January 01, 2008 4:28 PM | Feedback (2) |

Real world web game development for high school students
I Support Learning Inc. has some new curriculum that is worth looking at if you are interested in updating your web design class curriculum. I have always been a fan of simulated learning and this product fits into that category. Students are interns for a company called Ingenious Student Labs. As interns, they are given the task of creating a video game for CarbonAde, a company that produces and promotes healthier drink choices. There are 7 Phases of learning that the student will follow. Phase...

Posted On Thursday, October 04, 2007 3:12 PM | Feedback (1) |

Your first XNA game to teach your students
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...

Posted On Monday, August 13, 2007 8:25 AM | Feedback (0) |

Quick observation
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...

Posted On Friday, June 29, 2007 12:42 PM | Feedback (3) |

Lots of Alice books to choose
Recently, I blogged about Alice and since then I've been exploring the different books that you can get to use while teaching Alice. The book that I'll be using with my students is called Learning to Program with Alice by Wanda Dunn, Stephen Cooper, and Randy Pausch. ISBN 0-13-187289-3 Pearson Prentice Hall. The book comes with instructor resources and sample syllabi which I found to be very helpful. The book is broken down into 4 parts. Part 1 is an Introduction to Alice; Part 2 Object-Oriented...

Posted On Monday, May 14, 2007 10:08 AM | Feedback (1) |

Hooked on XNA, but more time is needed...
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...

Posted On Monday, May 07, 2007 11:54 AM | Feedback (6) |

So, what is Alice anyways?
Alice is a modern programming environment designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming. It allows students to learn basic computer science while creating animated movies, simple video games, where students control the behavior of 3D objects and characters in a virtual world. Although computer programming has existed in its modern form for half a century, it still eludes all but a small fraction of society. While programming is an inherently difficult activity, there are...

Posted On Tuesday, April 17, 2007 6:03 PM | Feedback (1) |

Alice Summer Workshops
Barbara Conover asked me to announce this workshop on my blog so here goes: Summer 2007 Workshops . Learning to Program with Alice . Alice and Media Computation Registration Deadline: May 1, 2007 (The workshops are free!) Led by the experts: Dr. Stephen Cooper, Saint Joseph's University Dr. Wanda Dann, Ithaca College And funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, these workshops are designed and particularly appropriate for instructors wishing to: Decrease the attrition among computer...

Posted On Tuesday, April 17, 2007 1:32 PM | Feedback (0) |

What to teach after the AP Computer Science Exam?
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...

Posted On Thursday, April 12, 2007 7:34 AM | Feedback (3) |

Calling all XNA developers!
I'm putting together a course for my advanced programming students and could use some help. My goal is to teach my students C# and then how to program a windows game and finally an xbox game using 2d. Hopefully, all students can complete their game and then deploy on an xbox. I have 18 weeks to do this. Any input you can give me that would help high school computer science students be successful in this course is appreciated. ps I have looked at a majority of tutorials that are online including a...

Posted On Saturday, April 07, 2007 10:31 AM | Feedback (0) |

Ready to GRAVA?
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...

Posted On Thursday, March 29, 2007 10:23 AM | Feedback (0) |

AP Computer Science Course
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...

Posted On Monday, March 19, 2007 9:32 AM | Feedback (1) |

AHOY! Getting ready for Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development
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...

Posted On Sunday, February 18, 2007 10:23 AM | Feedback (0) |

Annual Technology Night
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...

Posted On Friday, February 02, 2007 12:22 PM | Feedback (0) |

2nd week of Programming with Pocket PC Applications
This week marks the second week that I've been with my students in my Honors Programming class. First of all, it's great to see that I have 5 females taking the class and the class size is 16. I started class last week talking about the syllabus and grading. Students did have a chance to login to our school network and save a file to make sure everything was working correctly. I then introduced them to Visual Basic.NET and they did some console applications. You know "Hello World" kind of programs...

Posted On Thursday, January 18, 2007 12:11 PM | Feedback (0) |

New Semester coming up, New Ideas...
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...

Posted On Saturday, January 06, 2007 7:16 AM | Feedback (0) |

Time for a field trip!
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...

Posted On Thursday, December 14, 2006 6:46 AM | Feedback (0) |

High School Programming Contests
I have a team of 3 of my AP students who will be travelling to Stetson University in Deland, FL to compete at their annual programming competition. In past years, I've always had a team go and I really enjoy visiting the campus at Stetson. My oldest daughter, Erin, graduated from Stetson and it is a great school. The ACM students run the competition and the faculty are judges. Several years ago, our school placed third in the competition which was nice. Believe it or not, it really doesn't matter...

Posted On Friday, November 17, 2006 12:24 PM | Feedback (0) |

So what are you doing to celebrate Computer Science Education on Friday, December 8th?
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...

Posted On Friday, November 17, 2006 11:46 AM | Feedback (0) |

Teaching web programming to non programming students using Visual Web Developer
Yesterday I lectured to my web design students about web programming with Visual Web Developer and Visual Basic .NET. None of these students have ever programmed a computer to do anything before this class. I emphasize that point because I firmly believe that all students should be exposed to programming during their academic life to fully appreciate how the technology they use on a day to day basis was created. The students were using Visual Web Developer with the creation of the Comps Sci High...

Posted On Tuesday, October 31, 2006 6:49 AM | Feedback (0) |

Learning to create pages with dotnetnuke
Now that all sites have been installed properly in the lab our learning begins. Students started to work on the CompSci High portal using dotnetnuke. They started to create pages and today they will add modules to some of the newly created pages. The curriculum has students using modules that come with dotnetnuke and some third party modules as well. By the end of next week, I'm hoping that the CompSci High site should be completed. Our voyage will then take us to learn how to create modules using...

Posted On Friday, October 20, 2006 10:21 AM | Feedback (2) |

All in favor of high school programming contests say "I"
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...

Posted On Monday, September 18, 2006 1:08 PM | Feedback (0) |

Learn Internet Game Programming with Java
In my search to learn more about XNA programming, I came across a good site on game programming with JAVA. Now you might be asking what does XNA programming have to do with JAVA programming. Right? Well, what's nice about this site is that you can learn more about game design and learn about the basics of graphics as well. The section on the basics of sound was very good. The site is worth taking a look at if you're interested in learning about game programming...

Posted On Thursday, September 14, 2006 2:09 PM | Feedback (1) |

Using the new Microsoft XNA Framework to teach programming to high school students.
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...

Posted On Wednesday, September 13, 2006 8:42 AM | Feedback (0) |

Using Google Video with your students
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....

Posted On Friday, August 25, 2006 8:45 AM | Feedback (0) |

Teaching Programming
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...

Posted On Monday, June 05, 2006 7:19 AM | Feedback (0) |

What do you do for professional development?
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...

Posted On Tuesday, May 16, 2006 4:31 AM | Feedback (0) |

Changing Computer Science Education- It’s coming!
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...

Posted On Thursday, March 02, 2006 12:15 PM | Feedback (0) |

UCF Programming Competition Past Problems
UCF has a great CS department with some really smart students. Their students place highly in the programming competition on the college level. The department hosts a very good programming competition in May and they get participants from across the state of Florida. My students placed 1st in 2003!! Dr. Ali Orooji [orooji@cs.ucf.edu] is sharing some past problems to prepare for this years event. They will be celebrating their 20th year doing this contest. Kudos to them for supporting high school...

Posted On Tuesday, February 14, 2006 11:53 AM | Feedback (0) |

Who says programming can't be fun?
Imagine that you are the only one who can save a person, a city, or even a nation. And imagine that you must provide the right combination of strategy and programming skill to save the day. The Project Hoshimi - Programming Battle brings to life the world of Professor Hoshimi and his crew of scientists and programming experts in a fantasy of life and death. This competition uses a background story, comic-style graphics and coding challenges to test the skills of student programmers from across the...

Posted On Wednesday, February 01, 2006 11:53 AM | Feedback (0) |

Attracting females into computer science
The Boston Globe website has an article entitled In computer science, a growing gender gap Women shunning a field once seen as welcoming. As a computer science educator and father of two daughters I read these type of articles with great interest and wonder if everyone in this industry does their part to make females feel welcome in their class or at work. Are courses too male oriented that females feel unwelcome and leave? Do they get the same jobs as males or do they get the jobs that males don't...

Posted On Sunday, December 18, 2005 2:51 AM | Feedback (2) |

New Computer Science Department Server
Several years ago, my computer science students placed third at a local computer programming contest. They won a trophy along with a computer for the school to use as part of their prize. I beefed up the memory on the pc and turned it into a server for my dotnetnuke website and for student asp.net work as well. The server served its purpose and this month the computer science department purchased a new server because the old server was getting too slow for us to use. I had no idea how long it would...

Posted On Tuesday, November 22, 2005 5:00 AM | Feedback (0) |

Florida High School Programming Competiton
Today there are 24 high schools and 11 teams competing at the 9th Annual Stetson University ACM Programming Competition in Deland, FL. There are schools from around the state from as far as Miami and Sarasota. Deland is near Daytona Beach, FL. I have been coming to this competition since 1999 and I'm always impressed with the Stetson University students running the show. I'm equally impressed with the dedicated high school students who had to wake up early on a Saturday morning to compete at this...

Posted On Saturday, November 19, 2005 7:18 AM | Feedback (2) |

FREE--Visual Studio Express products for high school and college students and the rest of the world
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...

Posted On Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:32 AM | Feedback (4) |

Teaching with ASP.NET Day 11 and 12
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...

Posted On Wednesday, November 09, 2005 12:16 PM | Feedback (3) |

Teaching with ASP.NET Day 10
Several students were not finished with the task exercise for lesson 6. I spent today reviewing all of the activities in the student folders to make sure each worked properly. I then gave the students a print out of what was completed and what needed to get finished. This gave me an opportunity to review the important concepts in the lesson such as postback, state, and databinding. I have already introduced these concepts with my students and they have already completed one activity for the lesson...

Posted On Monday, November 07, 2005 12:15 PM | Feedback (0) |

Teaching with ASP.NET Day 6
Today was test day for lessons 1-3. At the end of each lesson, the students answer questions on that material and any other material I cover in class. My students did a good job on the test with 80 being the average. Next week we'll have another test on lessons 4-6. The students are completing the task for lesson 5: PurposeDemonstrate the ability to use ASP controls and event code.InstructionsYou are creating a page to show a quote and the favorite song of Maktub fans. The data will be coded into...

Posted On Tuesday, November 01, 2005 12:22 PM | Feedback (0) |

Teaching with ASP.NET Day 5
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...

Posted On Monday, October 31, 2005 8:01 AM | Feedback (0) |

ASP.NET Student Training Day 1
The first day of teaching students asp.net with Webmatrix or Visual Web Developer is a very important one. I try to give my students an easy exercise to do after I demonstrate loading the software, creating a file, looking at the different views in the software, reviewing the toolbox and dragging controls to the design page, button events and then running the webserver etc. This year for the first time I'll have my best students use Visual Web Developer and the other students Webmatrix. The lessons...

Posted On Friday, October 21, 2005 5:34 PM | Feedback (0) |

Teaching ASP.NET to High School Students
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...

Posted On Friday, October 21, 2005 4:57 AM | Feedback (4) |

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