SIGCT-Newsletter-links

//From the 10/2007 Newsletter://

The Alice Newsletter edited and distributed by Barbara Conover arrives monthly in your mailbox in both text and .pdf versions. If you're involved with Alice or just want more information, this is certainly the place for all things Alice. Please email your request for a subscription to Barbara at < bconover@sju.edu > (10/2007)

Scratch is an interactive programming language that makes it easy for young people ages 8 and up to create interactive stories, animations, games, music and art and share those creations on the web.  (10/2007)

//From the 11/2007 Newsletter://

CompTIA was approved as the new IT Career Cluster leader. They have supported the creation of the IT National Advisory Committee with members representing industry, academia and government subject matter experts in IT. Take a look at their site . Though mostly oriented toward high schools, the career cluster approach can provide much input to the middle school curriculum as students prepare to move into high school. (11/2007)

Interesting Article: The Science Education Myth The author Vivek Wadhwa makes the case that there really is not a shortage of scientists and engineers in the US, that the US education system is better than reported, that we need to make sure we provide a balanced and broad education (not emphasizing math and science over humanities and social sciences) and that we should focus more on creating demand for the many scientists and engineers we graduate. While not specifically oriented toward our mission, he certainly presents some thought-provoking ideas. < http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2007/sb20071025_827398.htm > (11/2007)

//From the 12/2007 Newsletter://

http://tinyurl.com/2wqe9q - Students point out major problems with the current methods of content delivery; they also point out how technology can be more of a distraction than learning tool. About 4 minutes long. < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o >

http://tinyurl.com/23djrd - Steve Jobs tells Stanford grads about his educational experience, which was to follow his bliss. Only 15 minutes long. < http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=852822109929104720&q=steve+jobs+commencement&total=27&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4 >

http://tinyurl.com/2xhpfz - Randy Pausch, dying of cancer, speaks of what he has learned about pursuing your dreams through graduate school and becoming a teacher. This is his original speech (before Oprah, etc.) Over an hour and a half, but very powerful. < http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5700431505846055184&q=randy+pausch&total=43&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 >

http://tinyurl.com/2c4o8r - Poet Taylor Mali on "What Teachers Make", namely, a difference. I find this very inspirational. About 4 minutes long. < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU >

//From the 1/2008 Newsletter://

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/cs4hs/- this is a link to the site which has links to the workshops held during the summers of 2006 and 2007, the site for the workshop to be held in late July, 2008, and other interesting links. (1/2008)

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wing/www/publications/Wing06.pdf - This is Professor Jeannette M. Wing's paper on Computational Thinking. (1/2008)

//From the 2/2008 Newsletter://

Programming: The New Literacy by Marc Prensky: very interesting article and perspective if not a bit controversial. This appeared in the February, 2008 issue of Edutopia, a free periodical from the George Lucas Educational Foundation. This is a good periodical to subscribe to. < http://www.edutopia.org/literacy-computer-programming >

SIGCT HS Rep Scott Horan suggested an article highlighted on Slashdot.org entitled “How to Recognize a Good Programmer”. Slashdot hosted a discussion of this article. < http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=08/01/11/1746250 >

Also here’s an article in EdTech magazine for February-March, 2008 about a very successful high school internship program for IT students that was created by Scott. Congrats, Scott < http://www.edtechmag.com/k12/issues/february-march-2008/learning-by-leaving.html >

Information Week magazine in their January 12, 2008 issue a pair of articles where the existence of a shortage of IT workers was debated. Several interesting perspectives were noted. Certainly worth reading to know what the other side is thinking. Yes, the Tech Skills Shortage is Real or No, the Tech Skills Shortage Doesn’t Exist. Yes: < http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/training/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601557 > No: < http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/outsourcing/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601556 >

In the recent SIGs Newsletter there was an excellent article entitled Encouraging Girls in IT written by Leslie Conery, ISTE Deputy CEO. This is definitely worth reading and taking action upon in your classroom and school. < http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Membership/SIGs/SIG_Newsletter/Archives/2008/January/Notes_from_the_Volunteer_Front.htm#Leslie >

//From the 3/2008 Newsletter://

National Council of Women in Technology (http://NCWIT.org) is worth checking out. There a committed group has some exciting classroom materials and even a kit available to encourage girls to become involved in IT careers. (I also find that both the materials and other techniques used to encourage girls to consider IT also are appropriate for other underrepresented groups such as African-Americans and Hispanics).

Wikivid – This is a site that contains lots of free instructional videos for all kinds of application programs. For example, I found some good videos to help me get started using GIMP which is essentially a free, Open Source version of Photoshop. The url is: http://wikivid.com

Javabat – Nick Parlante at Stanford maintains a site containing many practice problems in Java including basic logic, string, loops and so forth. Quite a nice resouce. It’s at: http://javabat.com

Monty Karel – Joe Bergin at Pace has recently released an update and extention of Karel J Robot for programming in Python for novice programmers. It includes some of the dynamic features of Python such as late binding and functions as first class objects. Some are considering Python as a first programming language and Monty Karel would be a super introduction. URL: http://www.cafepress.com/kareljrobot/4458153

//From the 4/2008 Newsletter://

Bill Gates is wrapping up a round the country (and Canada) college tour. The speech he gave at Stanford can be viewed at 

NPR Audio: "Computer Science Dips in US" While we all pretty know the facts presented here, it's nice to hear several talk about it, in particular Jeannette Wing from CMU and NSF of Computational Thinking fame. Another interesting and related piece is "Bill Gates Targets Visa Rules for Tech Workers" which are excerpts and commentary of his testimony before Congress on the state of tech workers available for US firms.

Alfred Thompson’s blog - Alfred is a SIGCT member and Microsoft’s Academic Relations for K-12 Manager. For many years Alfred taught about computing in high schools, has experience as a K-8 Computing Technology Specialist, taught and was a grader for the AP Computer Science curriculum and has written several Visual BASIC books. There lots of interesting stuff on his blog and it's worth reading regularly.

Does Universal Computing Even Make Sense? This is the title of an interesting blog posting by Ken Perlin. Ken is a Professor of Computer Science at New York University in the Media Research Lab. While his blog postings are about all sorts of interesting things (like his posting about the Russian names in the Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov), he has posted some very interesting thoughts on computing. You can search his blog for other interesting computing

//From the 5/2008 Newsletter://

IT Labor Shortage: It's a myth: This blog post and comments makes the case for not worrying much about the CS/IT shortage about which we speak about. Whether you agree or not, this is certainly worth reading. The author speaks as much to the quality of the current IT labor force as he does to the numbers game which he calls "inflated". < http://techdistrict.kirkk.com/2008/03/27/it-labor-shortage-myth/#more-58 >

Where are the Women in IT? This article from the April 19, 2008 edition of The Montreal Gazette highlights many of the same issues that have been occurring in the US. Good reading. < http://www2.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=277c14f5-0e76-4693-b45a-e476cac74bd9&sponsor= >

IT-Adventures in Iowa: This site talks about the program within Iowa to generate interest in CS and IT. Clubs at schools are encouraged and they also have a three-part contest. This seems to have both university and industry support in Iowa. Look at it here: http://www.it-adventures.org

Mark Guzdial's Blog on Amazon.com: Mark Guzdial is a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech. One of his more recent books is Media Computation using Python. He blogs not only about computer science theory but also about mathematics and computer science in context. Very interesting reading, particularly of late. Click here to get to it. < http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/id/A3W4CUXPE1WFNF >

//From the 6/2008 Newsletter://

Good news about IT... "Payroll Gains Suggest an IT Economic Rebound" is an article from May 2, 2008 in CIO Insight magazine. http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Bottom-Line/Payroll-Gains/

Tapestry 2008 Workshop at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. This is an NSF supported workshop whose goals are to explore strategies to attract more and diverse students in middle and high school computer science classes, strategies to influence perceptions of students, parents, guidance counselors, administrators and other teachers and strategies to engage your students in exciting and rewarding field of computing. The workshop extends from July 8 through July 10. For further information and an application go to 

From the 9/2008 Newsletter:

Great article on Alice programming: T.H.E Journal in the June 5, 2008 issue published a super article by Linda L. Briggs entitled "Alice Offers Gentler Intro to Programming" http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22708. A must read for current and would-be Alice fans.

CS4FN  This is a publication from England aimed at the pre-collegiate crowd. The focus is about fun in computer science, though it's more attuned to the notion of computational thinking since this publication highlights the many places that computational methods are embedded into all sorts of areas. Among businesses which support this project are Microsoft and Intel.

On Teaching About Computing  is a most interesting blog for all of us to read and explore. The first page alone has much food for thought.

Visual Sorting Algorithm Demo. This applet is one of several on the Internet. This was written author David Eck. http://math.hws.edu/TMCM/java/xSortLab/

Web Design and Programming Course at University of Washington. This is the site for this course that is taught as a CS1 (first course in Computer Science) course. Material here might be useful in units at the HS level which emphasize web work at several levels. http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse190m/08sp/

From the 10/2008 Newsletter:

Karen North, our middle school board rep writes: My lessons and research are posted on my website: http://teachertech.rice.edu/Participants/knorth/ which is totally programmed in HTML. I use this to teach non-fiction reading and writing - in the CS world this is documentation and source code. Yes, I know I need to change the navigation and move to Web 2.0 tools - time is the missing resource in education.

BluePelicanJava.com has a free downloadable Java textbook along with support such as videos. The author takes the approach, starting the students programming on the first day, having many short lessons; many with a mini-project with interesting topics, weaving topics such as history, social issues, careers and other non-Java items through the text or in appendices.

Coolio_Niato: They won't even realize they're learning. What's most exciting for educators is the enthusiasm in the comments. These are "regular" people (mostly teenagers and people in their early twenties) getting excited about programming for fun. http://www.kongregate.com/games/Coolio_Niato/light-bot Rebooting Computing : There's an interesting by invitation only symposium happening in mid-January, 2009, where 200 educators and business reps will come together to roll up their sleeves and come up with some specific approaches, techniques, etc to deal with the shortfall of kids going into computing fields. URL: http://rebootingcomputing.org

This symposium is being led by Peter Denning, a professor of computer science. He's written a very interesting article entitled "The Computing Field: Structure". In this article he examines the development of the computing field. In particular on pages 8-11, he talks about the current situation and tries to deal with the varied and often narrow definitions of CS and IT, plus much more. Definitely worth reading even if you just read pp 8-11. http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/PUBS/ENC/cs08.pdf

From the 11/2008 Newsletter:

Computing Science Inside. Our member Lourdes Herling alerted us to this interesting website from the UK. To quote Dr. Herling: "They have many different workshops available for download. A teacher must simply register with the site and everything is available for free. All the tools needed to teach the workshop are available including handouts and PowerPoint presentations. There are workshops on a variety of topics including compression, networking, image representation among others. I teach IT courses for educators seeking a secondary endorsement in Information Technology and used the networking workshop this past summer with much success." 

NVU - This is free, open source web authoring software. While it's not as good as DreamWeaver, at least it's usable and its free. Check it out at: http://files.uberdownloads.com/apps/NVU/index.php

From the 12/2008 Newsletter:

Builder XP 5.6 Lite. This is another free web authoring tool recommended by Francis Schofield and used to teach Web Design to High School students. < http://tinyurl.com/5ubodg >

Fund For Teachers. This is a grant opportunity for individual or team professional development opportunities. For example, one of our board members, Karen North, applied and received her expenses paid to attend the several day AP Conference a few years ago. NECC would appear to be an appropriate pd activity for which to seek this grant. Application deadline is Jan 30, 2009 and there is an information webinar on December 10, 2008. http://www.fundforteachers.org

Community Connect: The Bluegrass State Blends Technology and Service Learning Great article on the Edutopia.org site present examples of student-driven projects using all kinds of IT skills in Kentucky. This is the very successful, statewide Student Technology Leadership Program. (from Scott Horan).

…and for something a little different...LilyPad Arduino This is a pretty cheap, little open source microcontroller which could be used in a course involving hardware. This particular one is small, flat, and easily stitched into an article of clothing. There are other Arduinos such as those at the MakerShed.com Could make for interesting hardware/software projects. If you have one or more websites

From the 1/2009 Newsletter:

On Educating Software Developers. Most interesting comments from the creator of the C++ language, Bjarne Stroustrup. A most interesting read. < http://tinyurl.com/8hjpml > < http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3789981 >

The 9 Hottest Skills for '09 - a list and article worth thinking about as we move SIGCT forward to deal with teaching and learning about computing (our mission) and providing the best learning and preparation opportunities for our K-12 students. < http://tinyurl.com/8nkdze > < http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=330106&intsrc=hm_list >

Hottest IT Skills Survive a Cool Economy - an opinion piece by Gretchen Koch, director of Education to Careers for the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA),. Ms. Koch indicates several careers which will continue in high demand including Web developers, network administrators and information security managers. Other areas that are expected to grow include web-based technologies (such as Web 2.0, rich internet applications, AJAX and others) along with unspecified specific programming languages. < http://tinyurl.com/86jhjb > < http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Careers&articleId=329395&taxonomyId=10&pageNumber=1 >

ACM Urges Obama to Include Computer Science in K-12 Core This posting on slashdot.org < http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/24/0117220 > generated much interesting discussion. Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/9aq5wu Here's a link to the actual < http://www.acm.org/public-policy/ACM_CS_ED_Transition_Final.pdf >

From the 2/2009 Newsletter:

ACM-W - ACM's Committee on Women in Computing: This ACM SIG publishes a quarterly newsletter. Each issue highlights opportunities for women in computing of all ages and career stages. Read about exciting projects, interviews with women leaders, reports from student chapters, and stories from around the world. Join us in celebrating the accomplishments of the remarkable women in our field. They've published three issues to date. You can view them at  Very worthwhile

Make Magazine. This is a relatively new magazine dealing with project where you (guess what) make things! There are projects of all kinds including ones involving electronics, robotics and computing and who knows what else? They have two sites (at least) one is for the magazine itself < http://makezine.com> and another for their associated video podcasts < http://makezine.tv> Definitely worth a look.

From the 3/2009 Newsletter:

Cool Tech Camps: Our SIGCT HS Representative Scott Horan < scott.horan@jefferson.kyschools.us > is involved with a neat summer program aimed at middle school kids in Louisville to get them interested in and involved with Information Technology. The hands on and highly engaging one-week camps range from Graphics to Programming to Wireless Networking to Computer Repair to GIS (mapping). The 2009 camps will be similar in nature with some expansion into other IT areas. This certainly is a model which might be interesting to pursue and possibly not too late to implement even this summer. < http://www.cooltechcamps.org/ >

Computer History Museum - This is the world's largest history museum for the preservation and presentation of artifacts and stories of the Information Age located in the heart of Silicon Valley (Mountain View, CA). This is a place definitely worth visiting, particularly for those of us who have been involved with computing for more than a few years. Their website has some historical information which would be useful for students doing reports. < http://www.computerhistory.org >

Alice - I recently received an email with Volume 5 Number 1 of the Alice Newsletter. This is definitely worth subscribing to as a way of keeping up with activities regarding Alice and information about resources and links. This link which is to the Community/Newsletter link on alice.org provides you with access to an arrchive of all issues plus the contact person (Barb Conover) with whom you can subscribe. This is a rich resource for those teaching or interested in teaching Alice. < http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=newsletter/newsletter >

From the 4/2009 Newsletter:

CS Major is Cool Again: The number of computer science majors enrolled at U.S. universities increased for the first time in six years. Read about it and the "coolness factor" of CS. < http://tinyurl.com/cg5jzr >

Teachers Not Getting Adequate Technology Education - this is focus of a very recent doctoral dissertation posted on the Old Dominion University website. This doctoral candidate indicates that while most NCATE-approved initial teacher education programs include basic technology courses for all teachers, less than 15 % of the 248 programs include technological literacy courses. He indicates that this study will enlighten the education community about the differences between instructional technology and broad technological literacy. < http://tinyurl.com/d3vnut >

Top careers for 2009 - no surprises here - 4 IT areas are noted; most require a Bachelor's degree in CS, IS or MIS; one a two-year degree. Interesting reading. < http://tinyurl.com/9m4jvj >

SIGCSE 2009 Conference Papers. About 15 papers from this conference are posted at < http://tinyurl.com/deslvm > A number of them will be of interest to our SIGCT membership.

From the 5/2009 Newsletter:

No Gamer Left Behind < http://www.edutopia.org/no-gamer-left-behind >: This video on the Edutopia.org site is a powerful statement about the use and creation of games in the school environment. Several of the people interviewed during this video are significant books on this topic which are definitely worth reading. Some of those include: Shaffer, David Williamson. How Computer Games Help Children Learn. Palgrave MacMillan. 2006. Gee, James Paul. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palgrave MacMillan. 2007. Prensky, Marc. Digital Game-Based Learning. Paragon House. 2001 (sounds a little old, but he's right on the mark (sorry for the pun); he's got another book which I haven't read: Don't Bother Me I'm Learning, plus other online articles and several sites: < http://marcprensky.com> )

Future5 : Scott Horan, our HS Representative, has been heavily involved in the career programs at the high school level in Louisville, Kentucky. Five areas are highlighted one of which is Business and Information Technology. Take a look at this exciting program for kids in Louisville. 

FANG (Freely Available Network Gaming) : This is a Java-based Game Engine intended for students and teachers new to programming games. In addition to this game engine and tutorials, there's access to an online Java environment which includes an editor and a compiler called JavaWIDE. With this wiki-based editor and the online Java compiler, anyone anywhere can write Java programs without having Java installed on your computer. Neat! < http://fangengine.org >

FETC Virtual Conference: On April 23, the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) held it's first online conference. There were several sessions on games in education, STEM and CTE, and Web 2.0 among others. You can hear these sessions by going to < http://virtual.fetc.org > and registering. It's all free and there's good stuff here.

From the 6/2009 Newsletter:

"Stimulus" Interns in Louisville, KY - Scott Horan offers the site < http://www.itintern.org/ > and says "This year we have money for 50 stimulus IT Interns to place in businesses (hire one get one free) and public agencies (city gov, schools, police, parks and forests, etc). We are calling them “Stim-terns”. Their salaries and the salaries of their “coaches” are being paid for out of Workforce Development Agency Stimulus $ grants."

iFair - In Milwaukee, WI a group made up of business, post-secondary and high school people have put on six IT/Engineering oriented career fairs. These have been aimed principally at middle school students. The concept is for businesses and post secondary schools to create a trade-show style booth but instead of selling product, they are selling the excitement of IT and engineering careers to the student visitors. Students are prepped by their teachers before coming. These six have been met with much enthusiasm and have spawned two similar fairs in other parts of the state, as well as a similar fair for counselors and at least two more fairs during the 2009-2010 school year. < http://ifair.pbworks.com/ >

Light-Bot the game - This is game in which students are invited to solve a variety of challenges using programming. Students create a main routine and possibly one or two functions to solve each challenge. Unfortunately, this site may be blocked by most schools, but at least you can get some idea of what approaches could be for kids. < http://armorgames.com/play/2205/light-bo t >