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From Alfred Thompson, my favorite Microsoft Computer Science blogger -- "I was asked to pass along the news that the submission deadline for the June 17th Alice Symposium call for papers has been extended to March 31st. You can of course go to that website to find out more about the symposium and register to attend. There are also some other workshops going on at Duke in June. I understand that they are filling up quite quickly so if you're interested you'll want to sign up soon. Duke in June 2009 * Two-day Alice 3.0 Workshop June 15-16, 2009 * Two-day CompMedia Workshop June 18-19, 2009 * One-week Alice Workshops * June 22-26, 2009 * June 28-July 2, 2009"

"Engineering and Computing Career Conference (ECC) is a two day conference for high school girls to explore engineering majors offered at Georgia Tech. The 2008 ECC will be held on October 23 & 24 at Georgia Tech's Bill Moore Student Success Center." This is a great event to pass along to your female students who excel in math and science. To be held at my alma mater.

October 23, 24 math and science conference in Atlanta at GT.

I was pleased with how this introductory unit turned out. You'll notice, we created wikis, I had assigned 2 grades, one for technical (do they know how to do things) and another as the regular grade. For bonus for the test, students could make flashcards on proprofs (they are printable) or games on classtools.net and embed in the wiki. Also included is the assignment and my grading rubric made in excel. Sharing in case you'd like to use something similar. There are many ways to introduce wikis. First, each student created a sandbox page with basic requirements, then, this was their first group project.

Assignment for computer fundamentals - first wiki team project of 9th grade year.

Whistleblower lawsuit from an IT director.

Some push back in IT is happening such as this case with an IT director who said he was fired for "blowing the whistle" on innappropriate IT behavior such as problems with the grade reporting software and a computer with confidential student information that was breached without reporting it to the state. These sorts of things have both sides. The point that I would take here is to listen to IT directors when they have concerns: just because you don't understand the problem doesn't mean there is a problem, and that ethics must be applied when things are dealt with in IT.

Phones and computers contain dangerous metals like lead, cadmium and mercury, which can contaminate the air and water when those products are dumped. It's called electronic waste, or e-waste, and the world produces a lot of it: 20 to 50 million tons a year, according to the UN - enough to load a train that would stretch around the world. The U.S. is by far the world's top producer of e-waste, but much of it ends up elsewhere - specifically, in developing nations like China, India and Nigeria, to which rich countries have been shipping garbage for years.

I love this article which talks about the most common problems when people call customer service. I believe that as I teach my students I should help them become technically fluent to minimize these problems and maximize their potential in this increasingly technical world. The most common problems are: * Users don't know the terminology to describe the problem they have or to know what to look for. * Users haven't studied the problem long enough. * Users don't recognize details or signs which might aid in understanding the problem. * Users might not have easy access to the documentation, may not be qualified to understand it (because of language barriers or technical level), or they may simply not have the time or energy to use it. * Users might be unaware of the status of their computer/account/browser and/or they might be limited in their ability to obtain this information. * Users might have received incorrect or misleading information from someone else, or they might have made incorrect assumptions about the product. * Users may be familiar with one kind of product and lack the appropriate mental model for knowing how the product is supposed to work. * Users might have previous problems in the past and found it easier just to call technical support than to risk aggravating the problem when trying to fix it.

Information on how to help users become more proficient at being helped.

So with the caveat that I am only halfway through Mark Bauerline's book The Dumbest Generation, I have some early impressions to throw out there. While I think there is some merit to this side of the debate (much like Keen's Cult of the Amateur) what really bothers me about this book so far is, as the title suggests, this sense that our kids are at fault. Let me put it plainly: our kids are not "dumb" nor is this generation "dumb" simply because they spend a lot of time in front of television screens and computers or because they haven't worked out for themselves how to get smarter using the Read/Write Web.

A list of every product that Google has -- I use well over 75% of these.

Every single tool from Google teacher Academy

Fascinating article about upcoming data to be collected on international ICT use in education. So many challenges.

Doug Johnson estimates the savings moving to Google apps, Great post for those considering this. Doug says: "These are rough and admittedly optimistic estimates, but I think you can see the general trend. Even if only 50% of my estimated nearly $2M in savings is realized, that averages out to close to $200,000 per year. (Out of a $1.2M budget.) I am not suggesting reducing tech budgets by this amount, but I can sure think of a lot more interesting things (like kids' computers, a more robust wireless network, and more bandwidth) to spend tech dollars on. Yes, I need to pay $7 a year per administrative, possibily teacher, e-mail account for archiving and retrieval. Not bad, though, considering."

Computer science teachers planning this summer should look at this overview from Microsoft uber-blogger Alfred Thompson.

Some projects to make games for windows Phones in Visual Basic from Alfred Thompson of Microsoft. (The go to guy for computer science teachers.)

The idea of SIMPLE SCIENCE is to have informative music video presentations for use in the primary school classroom. They are designed to be used as part of a lesson to reinforce learning objectives and scientific concepts and also as a useful revision tool for the SAT exams. They work particularly well on a large whiteboard but can also be viewed on the computer screen and TV.

The idea of SIMPLE SCIENCE is to have informative music video presentations for use in the primary school classroom. They are designed to be used as part of a lesson to reinforce learning objectives and scientific concepts and also as a useful revision tool for the SAT exams. They work particularly well on a large whiteboard but can also be viewed on the computer screen and TV.

The iPad is coming, the iPad is coming -- apple tablet computer - sort of like a large iphone has rumors flying that it is coming very soon with a really amazing price point -- between $500-$700.

Computer Terminology, The lighter Side

Great article with many things people should know.

Cool article that covers a lot of things that people should know - whether you mind being called a geek or not. Very interesting reading.

Must read about considerations for the future directions of our schools and developing the 21st Century learner.