acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

Blogroll


Refine your search:
dateMore Than a Year Ago
authorAlfred Thompson
bg-corner

Last Mile Education Fund–Making a Big Difference
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Last Mile Education Fund–Making a Big Difference

We often underestimate the difference that small things can make. When I was in high school all I could afford was a cheap plastic slide rule (no calculators back...

Word Games and Cryptography
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Word Games and Cryptography

My latest discovery, thanks to Doug Peterson, is Crazy Phrase. Crazy Phrase is something of a variation of Wordle except that in Crazy Phrase the player is a phrase...

APCS A–Java or Python?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

APCS A–Java or Python?

There is a lot of discussion about moving the Advanced Placement CS A exam to Python from Java. The Collegeboard is reluctant to do so. They see APCSA as the equivalent...

What Should APCS A Really Be About?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What Should APCS A Really Be About?

Perhaps my favorite panel of SIGCSE 2022 was debating the question of should the APCS A course switch its language from Java to Python? During the discussion it...

Final Thoughts on SIGCSE 2022
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Final Thoughts on SIGCSE 2022

I had a great time at SIGCSE 2022. As an introvert I probably suffered less from not being with people than many but after two years I really needed to be withLast...

SIGCSE 2022 Day 3
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

SIGCSE 2022 Day 3

Saturday at SIGCSE was a short day but there was still plenty to learn. Shaundra Daily. Her talk, based on her own history, was about how their are barriers making...

SIGCSE 2022 Day 2
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

SIGCSE 2022 Day 2

The morning keynote was by Barbara Ericson. She talked about a lot of her early work including some of her online books CSAwesome and her work with the free online...

SIGCSE 2022 Day 1
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

SIGCSE 2022 Day 1

SIGCSE 2022 is my first in-person conference in over 2.5 years. It’s my first SIGCSE in a lot longer than that. It looks to be a great conference . There are 1518...

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

Fun With Rounding Errors

I love xkcd cartoons. I came across this one thing morning that shows the benefits(?) or rounding up. My immediate idea was “what a great programming project!” ...

Troubles with Error Messages
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Troubles with Error Messages

Error messages, in theory, are there to help programmers. Of course there are problems with then in practice. With students, the biggest problem is that  they don...

What Do Computer Science Teachers Need For Professional Development
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What Do Computer Science Teachers Need For Professional Development

Mike Zamansky had a great post called Trends In Professional Development in CS - it's not all good. We’re still at a very interesting place in the development of...

Writing The Wordle Clone
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Writing The Wordle Clone

Kelly Powers posted a Wordle project document on the AP CS A Teachers Facebook page. It’s solid as one would expect from Kelly who is just awesome. It inspiredList...

Computer Science for the sake of ?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Computer Science for the sake of ?

My grandson in kindergarten has a class in reading. It makes sense as he is just learning how to read. Over time, school spends less time teaching how to read and...

Planning Before Coding
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Planning Before Coding

After all these years one would think I would know better. But it turns out that when coding for fun I don’t always do the planning that I should. It always comes...

How Do You Define a Computer Scientist
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How Do You Define a Computer Scientist

The last few days have seem some social media discussion about requirements for a computer scientist. Is Calculus a requirement? Is Assembly/machine language a...

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

Wordle Solving For Fun and Coding

After my post the other day (Is Wordle A Project To Assign Students to Program?) I got thinking about solver help for Wordle. I happen to have a huge word list...

Is Wordle A Project To Assign Students to Program?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Is Wordle A Project To Assign Students to Program?

Seems like a lot of people are playing Wordle on social media these days. Have you tried it? It’s a word/letter version of old Mastermind game The idea is thathere...

Looking Back on Computer Science Education in 2021
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Looking Back on Computer Science Education in 2021

I’ve never felt less prepared to write a look back on CS education than I do today. I’ve been retired from most of the year and the world has been changed a bit...

Computer Science Education Week 2021
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Computer Science Education Week 2021

Well, its CS Ed Week again. Still no cards in the Hallmark store for it. I’ll get back to that in a moment. CS Ed Week has long been a time to introduce more students...

First - Understand the Problem
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

First - Understand the Problem

Things are different for me being retired. I don’t get the blogging inspiration the way I used to. Today a post by Mike Zamansky (Work through the example!!!!!)...
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account