Teaching with ASP.NET

CS teachers go to class

Brian Scarbeau — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:04:19 GMT

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 Development using DotNetNuke. I've been using DotNetNuke in my web design class for a couple of years now so I was able to share with teachers how I teach my Web Design class. The room was full and only one person left during my presentation, so I think it was successful.

I was able to attend presentations by John Nordlinger who works for Microsoft Research. John has been involved with Game Programming and shared with us what colleges and universities were doing with game programming. I hope John's presentation will include several high school's that are teaching game programming in his next presentation because there are several of us doing that.

Leigh Ann Sudol who was on the Board at CSTA with me gave an interesting presentation on Teaching Technology with Technology. Leigh Ann does some interesting things with her programming students like having them blog, using a wikki, and a bulletin board in her class.

Chris Stephenson who is the Executive Director for CSTA gave an excellent presentation on the political landscape advocating for CS. Chris is extremely knowledgeable and stays current with state changes.

If you're a computer science teacher, you really should join CSTA and stay current with great periodicals that are mailed to you and you have access to a great website that is full of resources for you to use. Membership is free, so you have nothing to lose.

Technorati Tags: computer science education, computer scence

DotNetNuke Open Force Event Is Fast Approaching

Brian Scarbeau — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:27:58 GMT

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 will be there!

Make sure that you register to attend. This event is sponsored by the:

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke, Microsoft, Tech ED, Orlando, Developers

There is still time to sponsor the event and you can do that on the site. Hope to see you there!

Getting to Seattle for the Microsoft MVP Summit Day 1

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:36:17 GMT

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 plane and arrived in Seattle on time. It was a long flight and the last hour of this flight drives me crazy. I try to read, watch a movie, and do some computer work on most flights. I was able to sleep a little and ditched the computer on the trip.

Shawn and I shared a cab to the hotel and left our luggage there to head over the the Convention Center where we registered, missed lunch, and saw the tail end of Sean O'Driscoll's talk on Social Networking. Interesting to note as I was listening to Sean that many new versions of DotNetNuke will incorporate Social Networking.

Next, I attended what was called an Open Space Event. Basically, this meeting was run by an MVP and unstructured and had a topic and everyone in the room just added content to the topic. The one I attended was quite interesting on Building and Sustaining a Gamer's Community. Most of the topic surrounded parents responsibility in understanding the type of game their child was playing. Back and forth it went on that. There are some sites that explain this to parents but the video console has taken over the television as a baby sitter and parents are either too busy or don't care about the game their child plays.

I went back to the hotel to check in after 3 and I was quite surprised that I had to wait for a room. After a long trip and no lunch, this wasn't good. I waited 45 minutes and finally I was able to go relax a little.

I headed back in the rain to attend the Open Space on User Groups- Best Practices and Opportunities. Our Orlando DotNetNuke group is relatively small and probably will remain that way because it is a select group that uses that product vs having a group that uses all of Microsoft Dev Tools. It was interesting listening to leaders who have large groups and have either face to face meeting or virtual meetings. Everyone wants to get good speakers and there was much dialogue on that. This session was very worth it and I'm glad I went.

Microsoft is scanning your badge to track where you are going. Same as having members sign in to meetings but just electronically.

There was an hour before lunch to meet up with your MVP lead. Unfortunately, I tried to meet up with Mike Frosmire but he wasn't at the table when I showed up so I was with many of the Florida MVP's. I did meet up with Joe Brinkman from DotNetNuke Corporation and spoke to him about the upcoming DNN University we plan on having in Orlando on June 8th. I met Joe in Orlando at the Orlando Code Camp.

Richard Kaplan from Microsoft welcomed all of us and asked the new MVP to raise their hand and I was very surprised at the number of new professionals.

Finally, dinner and I was starved. I tried to find the Florida folks table but the room was enormous. I sat down and introduced myself to a new MVP from Grand Rapids Michigan. We talked about the program and some of the things he was doing. That's part of the fun of being here, meeting new people and learning more.

Today is a busy day with a bus trip to Redmond and learning more about XNA, Silverlight, ASP.NET.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Microsoft MVP Summit,DotNetNuke®,ASP.NET,XNA

DotNetNuke® Summer workshop in Orlando, FL

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:31:31 GMT

I'll be teaming up with Mike Webb from www.cybreze.com to train users on DotNetNuke® this summer in Orlando, FL.

Michael Webb has been building websites for large corporations, small businesses and individuals using DotNetNuke® since the beginning. His corporate experience spans over 24 years in sales and marketing with a focus on technology integration to allow businesses to provide top quality customer service and empower employees with the tools necessary to perform their tasks within their respective roles with the greatest efficiencies. Michael was born and raised in Tampa, FL, except for a 7 year period where his family lived in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina between 1971-78. He graduated from HB Plant High School in Tampa in 1979 and between 1980-81 attended Clearwater Christain College on a basketball scholarship. Michael owns and operates Cybreze Enterprises LLC in Vero Beach, FL. Cybreze Enterprises LLC business centers around building targeted business solutions based on the DotNeNuke® Open Source framework. Cybreze Enterprises LLC is the parent company of DNNSpired.com.

This hands on 2 day workshop will cover installing DotNetNuke®, building pages, installing modules, creating modules, creating skins and containers, and working with permissions and security. You'll be creating a working website during the two day session.

Come to Orlando, FL and learn from experienced trainers who not only know how to teach but have the working knowledge of using DotNetNuke for their own portal applications. The two days of time you spend with us will be well worth it.

Not only will you get top notch training, but you will get a flash drive full of resources that will help you build and maintain your portal.

Hope to see you there!

Technorati Tags: DotNetNuke®,ASP.NET,Training,Education

Orlando Dotnetnuke User Group Meeting Update

Brian Scarbeau — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 19:51:02 GMT

There were eleven enthusiastic dotnetnukers who attended the first 
Orlando Dotnetnuke User group meeting at Lake Highland Prep 
School in Orlando today.

Everyone has a different background of using dotnetnuke and all are eager to
learn more. 
The 1 1/2 hour meeting went by fast and after introductions we all agreed to meet on a
monthly basis.

Next month, on March 1, Mike Webb from DNNSpired.com will talk about the custom modules that his company has created. In April, Will Stohl will do an introduction to skinning.
All in all, it was a very productive meeting. Hope to see you at the next meeting.

Technorati Tags: dotnetnuke,skinning,modules

What to teach after the AP Computer Science Exam?

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:34:00 GMT

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 your students to continue to learn about JAVA then there are two game opportunities that are pretty good. One is robocode which I’ve used with students in past years. Robocode is a fighting game with robots. The Robocode's battles take place in an arena, where small automated 6-wheeled robots fight it out until only one is left. You can compete with individual robots or with a team of robots. Students create their own robot and code the robot to survive in the battlefield.

The other game is a space invader game. This tutorial comes with all the sprites and sounds to create this game with some good instructions on advanced JAVA concepts that are not covered in the AP course.

Another good project is in J# and it’s called Hunt the Wombat. You can have your students learn a different IDE and they can experience intellisense when they code.

Hunt for the Wombat is a 4-6 week project designed to give AP Computer Science students the opportunity to apply their programming skills, gain broader awareness and understanding of the software development process and have fun along the way. By participating in a "real world" scenario where they build a computer game, students can gain experience with project teams, methodologies and core development phases: Discovery, Design, Development and Deployment.

There’s opportunities for your students to use their Visual Basic.NET skills by working with the Black Jack Card Game The Card Game Starter Kit is a fully-functional blackjack card game. It contains a reusable framework for building your own custom card games!

For C# fans there is Space Blitz by Andy Dunn from Zbuffer Games. Andy is a Microsoft MVP and I was fortunate to have lunch with him and new Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss at the Microsoft Summit last month in Seattle. Space Blitz has a video to download as well as a 2d Primer.

There is also rocket commander. The Rocket Commander tutorials will show you how you can create visually stunning 3D games in a series of 30-minute videos.

If you want your students to get really excited then you can introduce them to XNA game express. Why? Because the games that they learn how to create can be deployed on their xbox at home and with the xbox creator club, the game can be shared with friends.

XNA is based on Visual C# Express Edition and allows you to create games for both Windows PC’s and the Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following:

The XNA Framework, a set of managed code development libraries that make it possible for game developers to be more productive when creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360.
The XNA Framework Content Pipeline, which is a set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games.
XNA Game Studio Express also contains a full set of documentation, how-tos, and starter kits that demonstrate how best to use the content pipeline and XNA Framework.

XNA comes with a starter kit called Space war. Students can bring in their xbox controller and connect to a pc and view the code to see how the game is created. They can modify the game as well to make things run faster, slower etc.

All in all, there is plenty of material available for your students to have FUN! Why not, they deserve it after studying hard for the AP Computer Science Exam.

This is when learning takes place!

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:18:00 GMT

Yesterday in my web design class I overheard my only female grade 9 student tell her classmates that she was able to help out her older brothers myspace web page by remembering what she learned in html and applying that knowledge by fixing his page. She was very proud of herself when telling this story. Needless to say, her teacher was very proud of her too.

How to ask a billionaire a question....

Brian Scarbeau — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:25:00 GMT

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 were two men from Italy and to my left was a group from Japan. The atmosphere was very electric for the start of a great summit. Bill Gates was introduced and immediately a standing ovation. He spoke about the past and getting the company started and eventually spoke about the future. If you've read any of his speeches before then you'll get an idea of what he said because it was a pretty standard talk. After the presentation, there was a question and answer period and I immediately got up to ask him a question. What I didn't know was that I was going to be the first one to ask him a question. I iintroduced myself to him and then asked him if Computer Science Education was dead! I then told him that I was part of the Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board which is now defunct because of budget. I also told him that I wrote curriculum for high school teachers to use and I also trained teachers as well. All these are not being done at all because of a budget cut. His reply to me was that he was not aware that Microsoft was not doing these things and that he'll look into it. He also addressed the question of Computer Science Education being dead by saying that we need to do a better job of getting the brighter students into our classes. Hopefully, he'll look into that as well. Needless to say, it was an exciting day for me to be able to ask a billionaire a question.

2nd week of Programming with Pocket PC Applications

Brian Scarbeau — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:11:00 GMT

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 to write. They had success so I taught them how to write a gui calculator with a windows application. I could see some eyes light up when they had the opportunity to change colors on the windows form and drag n drop tools from the toolbox. More eyes lit up with the useage of intellisense on the coding. Today, we took the same application and created a pocket pc applications with visual studio. Students had some fun seeing the application deploy on the pocket pc. Eventually, I'll teach them web programming but for now I'm happy that they are learning and want to learn more. We'll be using Code Rules curriculum that you can get for free at mainfunction.com. I'll let you know how they are doing soon.

Digital Literacy Certificate Requirement for all High School Students

Brian Scarbeau — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:02:00 GMT

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 part of my students assignment, they are required to review each unit of study at home and then take the assessment test for each unit. I've given due dates for this and then on Monday, February 19th they will all take the exam on campus. All students not just computer science students should be digital literate. At some point in time, colleges will have some type of digital literacy requirement for students. This is important, don't you think?