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dateMore Than a Year Ago
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Should We  Use the Technology in the Classroom?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Should We Use the Technology in the Classroom?

I confess that I would love some augmented reality device that showed me the name of the student I was looking at. I am horrible with names. I like to think that...

Thinking and Teaching about Technology Policy Issues
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Thinking and Teaching about Technology Policy Issues

What are the top technology issues for the 2020s? Brad Smith, Microsoft President, wrote an interesting post about a month ago called Dawn of a Decade: The TopHis...

Having Fun With Computer Science
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Having Fun With Computer Science

There is no question that there are a lot of ways to have fun with computer science. Some of them are inexpensive. Some of them cost a lot of money. You can doComputer...

How Do Teachers Without CS Experience Debug Student Code
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How Do Teachers Without CS Experience Debug Student Code

My Programming Honors students are wrapping up their semester projects today. Actually they should all have been handed in by now but I’ll give them until the end...

What does “doesn’t work” mean?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What does “doesn’t work” mean?

Every computer science teacher has heard it “My program doesn’t work. What is wrong with it?” Sometimes they will show you the code without any more explanation...

A Brief Career Memoir
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

A Brief Career Memoir

Blame Mike Zamansky for this one. In my last post I mentioned that I am planning on retiring from the classroom this spring. Mike wondered how my perspectives have...

A 2020 Vision
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

A 2020 Vision

Sorry. You may be as tired of the 2020 jokes and puns about the new year as I am. I’ll try to avoid them in the future. This is the time of year I look at the last...

Looking Back on Blogging
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Looking Back on Blogging

Both Doug Peterson (https://dougpete.wordpress.com/2019/12/30/10-years-ago-2/) and Mike Zamansky (https://cestlaz.github.io/post/10-years-blogging/) posted to their...

Looking Back on Computer Science Education 2019
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Looking Back on Computer Science Education 2019

Christmas break for me until 6 January 2020 and with Christmas over I have some time to think. 2019 was an intere3sting year in CS education. States continue to...

Explain This Confusing Code
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Explain This Confusing Code

My major task today has been finishing off the semester exam for my Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles students. They’re not happy about having an exam...

Coding Without a Net
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding Without a Net

My Programming Honors students are struggling with creating classes in C#. They really wanted me to code up a project live (again) and have them follow along. But...

Coding for Fun and Advent of Code
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding for Fun and Advent of Code

My friend Mike Zamansky is a big proponent of the Advent of Code – 25 days of coding problems leading up the Christmas. Since I have been thinking I want to write...

What’s In A Name?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What’s In A Name?

Naming things seems to be a continual problem with programming students. I’ve written about this before (two years ago A Rose By Any Other Name Gives An Error )...

Coding For Fun
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Coding For Fun

As with so many things, it started with Doug Peterson. Doug recently posted about something called 100 days of code. This got me started about the need I feel (some...

Teachers Helping Teachers For Free
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teachers Helping Teachers For Free

I understand the appeal of sites like Teachers Pay Teachers. Really I do. Some teachers are awesome at creating resources and the idea of getting paid to shareAmazon...

Not Too Easy and Not Too Hard
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Not Too Easy and Not Too Hard

We’re covering Classes and Objects in my Programming Honors course this week. Specifically we are learning how to program classes in C# and use them in programs...

Define Better
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Define Better

Someone posted an interesting question on Facebook.Is using ++i(pre-increment) better than i++(post-increment) ?My reply was to ask for a definition of “better....

AI-assisted Programming
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

AI-assisted Programming

As I said in yesterday’s blog post,Microsoft has been running their big MSIgnite event this week and making all sorts of announcements. One interesting announcement...

Visual Studio Online–Possibilities for Education?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Visual Studio Online–Possibilities for Education?

Microsoft has been running their big MSIgnite event this week and making all sorts of announcements.  One of them was a cloud-based development environment called...

CSTA at 15 #CSTAat15
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

CSTA at 15 #CSTAat15

The Computer Science Teachers Association is now 15 years old. I’ve been a member from the start and I have to say that in some ways it feels like it has always...
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