Friday, October 21, 2005 4:08 PM
Hello, welcome to my new Blog! - Just dropping in to introduce myself. My name is Daniel Forhan and I am a new member of Microsoft’s K-12 Faculty Advisory Board. I have been a certified teacher now for over 15 years and in that time I have taught many different computer languages such as Pascal, Basic, C, C++, and now Java. During my teaching career I have also taught many science classes such as chemistry. In the mid 90's I discovered the Java programming language and was immediately drawn to it. That eventually led to me becoming a certified Java programmer (2003).
Right now I teach programming courses at Saint Peter-Marian Jr./Sr. High School. This is my 9th year at SPM, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. In past years I have taught courses in Web Design and Java at one of our local community colleges.
One of my most recent ventures is my appointment as the VHS Site Coordinator at SPM (The ‘VHS’ stands for Virtual High School). I also teach an online course through VHS called Computational Science & Engineering Using Java. This course uses the Java programming language to teach students how to develop mathematical models.
Back to programming languages, I have recently been developing curriculum for my students using the .NET technology. Some specific examples of this would be the use of ASP in my Web design course, and J# with my AP Computer Science class. The purpose of this blog is to discuss lessons (recent and not so recent) that I have found to be effective, and to share my "best practices" with you. Stay tuned.