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I blog about a lot of resources here and I’m curious about what sorts of things teachers are finding useful. In some ways I am shooting arrows in the air with no idea where they come down. In other words, what things are people finding useful? What courses and age groups are people using the things I blog about? Is anyone out there? OK I know there are people out there. I get statistics (raw numbers with no detail) that tell me people are reading. And from time to time I get an email or a message from the contact form that tells me someone is using something. But generally I don’t know how much is actually being used.

Yesterday Garth Flint (Sacred Heart High School Missoula Catholic Schools in Montana) left a comment on my post about Small Basic curriculum that he will be using those presentations in his intro programming course. In fact he is going to directly use it to put the students to work.As he said in part:

The scheme is to have the kids critique the PowerPoint slides and the curriculum overall.  Of course that means they will have to learn the SB along with writing comments about the curriculum.

That’s a pretty interesting way to use the resources. And I think it will work out well for him. On a personal note though it let me know that someone was following the link, finding something potentially useful and trying it out. It’s the sort of thing that really helps me keep going. So if I could ask a personal favor or you? If you have found something I have blogged about useful and used it in a class or used it to create or make a change to an existing class would you please leave me a little comment here?

Just a few lines about what resource, where/how you used or are using it and if you feel like going public your name and school. Of course if you want to write more that would be great as well.The more information I have the better the job I can do about sharing information and resources that are genuinely useful to teachers. Your comments may just give someone else a good idea as well. Thanks in advance.

Source: Alfred Thompson

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Way back in the old days when programmers coded using simple text editors and command line editors there was a utility called Pretty Print (or some variation). These utilities would take text files as input and output code that was made more “pretty” and so easy to use. They would add consistent formatting of loops, comments, tab stops and space between keywords, variables and other elements of code. The results looked better when printed. One major benefit of all this is that reading code looking for bugs was a lot easier. I was reminded of this old utility when I read the post “You code like a girl!” which I included in my interesting links post.

Modern IDEs like Visual Studio make consistent formatting much easier than the old text editors did. They even color code things for you so that the difference between reserved words and variable names jump out at you. The obvious effect of all this is that the formatting looks nicer to some definitions of nice. It’s largely superficial as the code would run just as well if the formatting was poor, spacing was inconsistent, and there were no color coding at all. The compiler ignores all of those things of course. And here we start the search for “inner beauty” of code.

This is more complex a question. It also means that one has to be concerned about the difference between clever code and efficient code. Some are impressed by code that is difficult to understand but used as a means of impressing the reader rather than the compiler. Ternary operators and recursion sometimes run the risk of being incorrectly seen as beautiful when in reality they add unnecessary complexity. Though like so many things beauty can be in the eye of the beholder.

I remember a recursive bit of code I once wrote that I just found elegant and cool. No one else in the group agreed with me and I had to rewrite it. It was clever (in my opinion) but it was also unnecessarily hard to understand. Is it really beautiful code of no one else can understand it? Isn’t that the modern art sort of question? But code has to be used, modified, expanded, and understood easily by everyone who views it. Art tends not to have those requirements.

I’m not sure I have a good operational definition of beautiful code. Of course it is formatted nicely. Big deal! Highlight the code in Visual Studio and hit the Ctrl-e, Ctrl-f key sequence and everything will be lined up nicely for you if it is not already. For inner beauty I look for things like names that make sense without being obnoxiously wordy. I look for classes that properly handle public and private access and have clear methods for dealing with data. I look for methods that are not too long as to be hard to follow. I look for code that is as complex as necessary but no more complex. I look for comments that make things clear but don’t hide what is going on. I look for code that looks like it was designed and not patched together by adding semi-random code until things seem to work. I guess I sort of just know it when I see it.

What do you think of as beautiful code? Does it exist in your world few or is it just the ravings of people who are just a little too much geek?

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I really like this award program so I am happy to promote it on my blog. The following is from the official announcement. I strongly encourage you to share this opportunity with high school women and with teachers who may be able to suggest it to their students.

The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing honors young women at the high-school level for their computing-related achievements and interests. Awardees are selected for their computing and IT aptitude, leadership ability, academic history, and plans for post-secondary education. The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing offers both national and local "affiliate" competitions to generate support and visibility for women’s participation in communities nationwide.

PLEASE help us spread the word about this competition with any K-12 or groups who serve young high school women!

National Award-winners receive:

• $500 in cash
• a laptop computer, provided by Bank of America
• a trip to attend the Bank of America Technology Showcase and Awards Ceremony in Charlotte, North Carolina
• an engraved award for both the student and the student’s school

Affiliate Award-winners receive an engraved award for their home and school, and a range of great prizes from local sponsors. Visit Find a Competition to see details.

Young women in grades 9-12 interested in computing and technology are STRONGLY encouraged to apply.

Applications will be accepted until 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Friday, October 15, 2010. Check out the Preparing Your Application guide to learn more about the application process and information needed. Instructions are also available in Spanish! 

Please let us know if you have any questions and thank you so much for helping us spread the word about this exciting competition and opportunity for our young women interested in technology!

If you have any questions, please contact us at aspirations@ncwit.org.

Source: Alfred Thompson

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As promised here are a bunch more links that I hope you will find interesting and useful.

The CSTA blog had a couple of recent posts of interest:

• Preparing Future Elementary Teachers to Teach Computing
• Dealing with Competence Issues & Confidence

Lynn Langit (@llangit ) is a developer evangelist at Microsoft who has a passion for education as well. In a recent post she talks about Volunteering as a Comp Sci Teacher – How To It’s an interesting look at how to volunteer to teach and what it is like for a professional developer type to do it. Also check out her Teacher-for-a-Week post that tells the story of her recent experiences at the Girl’s Middle School.

I found a bunch of videos on new things in Office 2010 for teachers:

• What’s new in the Office 2010 applications
• What’s new in Word 2010 for teachers
• What’s new in Excel 2010
• OneNote 2010 for teachers and students
• What’s new in PowerPoint 2010 for teachers
• How to make interactive quizzes with PowerPoint

Looking at Windows 7? Highly recommended. If you are or if you have it check out 67 Windows 7 tips, tricks and secrets  I found things I didn’t know here. Some cool stuff!

I’m a big fan of FIRST Robotics. The regular season is over but I found this list of FIRST Robotics post-season events run by local teams. If you haven’t been to one you should go and see one.

From @CapstoneEdu is an interesting looking conference event event May 6th in Cambridge, MA.

Capstone Partners and Microsoft are organizing an event to discuss the education landscape from K-12 to Post-Secondary and how technology will change the experience in the future.  We will discuss challenges schools face in competing with online programs, business models that are emerging to improve education (not just test scores), and technologies that disrupt the status quo.  Topics will include:

• student retention
• lecture capture
• cloud computing & info security
• tools & apps: wikis/ phones/tablets
• online proctoring
• open-source textbooks
• learning management systems of the future
• distance learning across borders

Register: http://bit.ly/a1sWJb They really need more real educators to show up and make sure they don’t go too far afield I think.

The @scratchteam has a  new video with an overview of Scratch 2.0.

Don’t have enough time for social media? You may find this post that answer the question How Do Busy Leaders Find Time for Social Media? interesting. It was written by Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt) who is the CEO of a major publishing company. And related to that Doug Peterson asks about teacher’s online footprints at 404 Educator. What do people find when they search for you

Source: Alfred Thompson

I twittered up quite a storm last week. Much of it was because of the US Imagine Cup which I was also blogging a lot about. I was also putting updates on the Microsoft Facebook account. The Imagine Cup was flat out busy but much fun and much excitement for me as well as all involved. I did find a bunch of useful links to share though. I apologize for them being so late this week but, well, I was busy.

First a couple of Imagine Cup links to highlight:

• U.S. Imagine Cup Winners Celebrate Victory, Share Inspiration with James Cameron and Craig Mundie from Microsoft Presspass.
• Bill Gates blogs about the Imagine Cup which is one of his favorite events.
• Team members, mentors, a mom share their experiences on the U.S. Imagine Cup Finals Videos from the Virtual Press Room for the US Imagine Cup
• High School Team Makes Mark at Imagine Cup from the Official Microsoft Blog
• Video interviews with Imagine Cup teams by Pat Godwin, Microsoft Student Insider

Looking for girls in technology? One of the very interesting people I met at the US Imagine Cup was Genevieve L’Esperance  Geek girl and video blogger. Gen is a teenager from Montreal, Quebec. Gen has a bunch of video posts and interviews on her blog GenINC.

Garth Flint has an interesting review of of programming languages and their usefulness in first CS courses. You may also find his discussion about what makes a good first programming language to be interesting as well. Garth’s blog is new but its off to a great start. I recommend subscribing.

A couple of workshops to recommend. There will be a workshop on Alice at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi in June. And a High School (AP) Computer science teachers workshop at Carnegie Mellon Judith Hromcik is one of the presenters at CMU. I’ve known Judy for years and there are few people who know more about AP CS than she does.

I’ve got still more to write up but they’re going to have to wait for tomorrow.

Source: Alfred Thompson