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CSTA 2019  Day 2
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

CSTA 2019 Day 2

I’m always skeptical about celebrity keynotes at education conferences so my expectations for Natasha Singer from the New York Times.were not high. I was pleasantly...

CSTA 2019–Day 1
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

CSTA 2019–Day 1

As planned I spent most of the morning helping at registration. And talking to a lot of people as they came in. After lunch the exhibit hall opened and I was in...

CSTA 2019 Day 0
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

CSTA 2019 Day 0

Sunday was the start of CSTA 2019 with workshops and the Chapter Leadership Summit. I wasn’t part of the summit and I didn’t get to any workshops but I still had...

Pre-conference Thoughts–CSTA 2019
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Pre-conference Thoughts–CSTA 2019

I’m on my way to Phoenix AZ for the CSTA conference.  For years I would get there early and leave late. This was especially true when I was on the CSTA Board and...

ISTE 2019 Trip Report
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

ISTE 2019 Trip Report

There was a time when I would have written a blog post every night of ISTE. Apparently I’m getting older or something and that is not a priority for me any more...

In Honor of BASIC
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

In Honor of BASIC

I found an interesting article today New Hampshire installs first historical marker to honor computer programming The BASIC programming language was invented at...

Teaching Students to Yearn to Learn
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Teaching Students to Yearn to Learn

Summer time is time for me to do a lot of thinking about my teaching practice. I've been doing a lot of reading and a couple of quotes have helped me in my thinking...

Different Kinds of Professional Development for Computer Science Teachers
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Different Kinds of Professional Development for Computer Science Teachers

What to teach and how to teach are different questions. The first is all about content knowledge and the second is about pedagogy. For the most part it feels like...

Join the Online #CSed Conversations
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Join the Online #CSed Conversations

At it’s best, social computing is a conversation that moves in a positive direction. The more people who participate the better the conversation and the more benefit...

Change the Programming Language, Change the Course
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Change the Programming Language, Change the Course

A recent Facebook post suggested changing the language for Advanced Placement Computer Science A (what some of us annoy others by calling AP Java). This comes up...

How Well Can You Code the Projects You Assign Students?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

How Well Can You Code the Projects You Assign Students?

Garth Flint had another good post today (Last Day of School And Done with Java) He lists some interesting projects he assigned and writes about some lessons learned...

Helping Doesn’t Always Help
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Helping Doesn’t Always Help

My programming students are working on their final/semester projects. As is typical some of them are doing extra work on their projects at home. Normally that is...

Learning From Today and Planning For Tomorrow
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Learning From Today and Planning For Tomorrow

It’s the end of the school year for me. Next week is our final exam week and my students are working on their semester projects. I use projects rather than an exam...

ACM CompEd Conference
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

ACM CompEd Conference

Brett Becker has been blogging about the ACM CompEd conference now taking place in China. See his blog post at ACM CompEd daily update 1: Day 1 for example.  Looks...

Computer Science And x
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Computer Science And x

For most of my teaching career I have been focused on teaching computer science in stand alone computer science classes. And  I really like teaching computer science...

Migrating to Android–an early trip report
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Migrating to Android–an early trip report

One of the reasons I held on to my Windows Phone as long as I did is that it was so easy to program apps for it. I had come to depend on one particular app I wrote...

With Great Code Comes Great Responsibility
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

With Great Code Comes Great Responsibility

Omidyar Network, Mozilla, Schmidt Futures, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies recently announced the winners of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge. The challenge...

Game of Thrones and Computer Science
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

Game of Thrones and Computer Science

I confess that I have not watched a single episode of Game of Thrones.  That doesn’t mean I am oblivious to the social impact of the show. My online social media...

More Than One Way To Code a Solution (to a programming project)
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

More Than One Way To Code a Solution (to a programming project)

Garth Flint has an interesting post about grading programming projects (It is never easy) in which he talks about the interesting solutions students come up with...

What is in a name?
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson

What is in a name?

It’s been said that the three hardest things in programming are naming things and off by one errors. For some reason, this semester, my students are having the...
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