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dateMore Than a Year Ago
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Teaching is About Relationships
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teaching is About Relationships

Today I was online with my students for about 90 minutes of a planned 55 minute class. One of my students joined the Google Meet session early and we chatted for...

What is your School IT Department’s Mission?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What is your School IT Department’s Mission?

My school ran a pair of online awards events yesterday. We had almost 850 people on the day time Zoom meeting and around 500 on the evening one. These are both...

More Fun With Live Coding
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

More Fun With Live Coding

Live coding or as I like to call it coding without a net is a wonderful way to teach.There was a time when I thought that having prewritten code that was pasted...

Can Online Teaching Really Work?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Can Online Teaching Really Work?

There is already a lot of discussion about schools and the fall semester. Will we be in physical spaces again? Will we be online again? Will there be some mix? ...

Planning for the End of the Year
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Planning for the End of the Year

My school will be on our regularly scheduled April break next week. It’s a nice breather for me and probably for the students as well. It’s been a long time since...

School Buildings Without Students are Sad
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

School Buildings Without Students are Sad

For the first time in 5 weeks I visited school today. My purpose was to clear out my personal stuff. I am retiring and I needed to get everything at some point...

Ending School With a Whimper not a Bang
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Ending School With a Whimper not a Bang

The other shoe dropped today. New Hampshire’s governor ordered public schools to continue emergency remote teaching for the rest of the school year. This was not...

Planning For School in the Fall of 2020
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Planning For School in the Fall of 2020

This time of year I always start thinking about the next school year. Even though I don’t expect to be teaching (announced my retirement already) I can’t stop thinking...

Revisiting Old Coding Problem Friends
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Revisiting Old Coding Problem Friends

John Conway died the other day. He created the famous "Conway's Game of Life" that is familiar to so many programmers and computer scientists.I've recently decided...

A Look at Technology For Remotely Teaching Computer Science
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

A Look at Technology For Remotely Teaching Computer Science

While I do believe that people are the most important part of emergency remote teaching,  technology does have a serious role to play. One key piece of technology...

Emergency Remote Teaching is About People Not Technology
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Emergency Remote Teaching is About People Not Technology

Attendance at my emergency remote teaching classes has been very close to 100%. Frankly, this didn’t surprise me at all. Apparently I should have been surprised...

When Are We Going Back To (bricks and mortar) School?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

When Are We Going Back To (bricks and mortar) School?

That’s the question my students asked the most yesterday. We’re in our fourth week of remote emergency teaching and I think it is starting to wear on most of us...

Living in Interesting Times and Sharing Thinking
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Living in Interesting Times and Sharing Thinking

You may have noticed I didn’t post anything in this blog yesterday. Part of that is because I had to make an unexpected trip to my family’s vacation home. A neighbor...

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

Coding For Fun and Mental Exercise

Recently, I started reading a book about the mathematics of cryptography. (Mathematics of Secrets) Fascinating. A lot of the math is hard (to put it lightly) for...

Three Weeks of Teaching From Home
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Three Weeks of Teaching From Home

two of my international students have returned home to China. I spent some time talking to one of them after class today.It was interesting to talk to someone in...

Please Blog About Your Emergency Remote Teaching
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Please Blog About Your Emergency Remote Teaching

It seems like there are a large number of long Twitter treads where educators are reporting their experiences and how their school is handling this period of emergency...

Teaching From Home–What about Cheating?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teaching From Home–What about Cheating?

The College Board has been making some moves to make it harder to cheat on Advanced Placement exams. Given that their business plan relies a lot of the integrity...

Changing How We Think About School
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Changing How We Think About School

What my school is doing is trying to replicate the brick-and-mortar model in the online world. Other schools are doing something more like “correspondence school...

Teaching From Home–Day 11–Is this our new normal?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teaching From Home–Day 11–Is this our new normal?

Well. we’re definitely going to stay online until May. Our last week in April is a vacation week. I am hoping it still is. What will May bring? I have no idea.Teachers...

Teaching From Home–Day 10B–Plan? What Plan?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teaching From Home–Day 10B–Plan? What Plan?

When administration announced we were moving to remote teaching I started adjusting my plans. Now understand that when the semester started I had a plan for every...
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