Insights from a seasoned Computer Science Trainer
A teacher asked me about wikipedia's and are they good for student research. It's very difficult for high school students to know if the research they are reading is good or bad. That's why several teachers only accept the internet as one resource on a paper and do require students to still visit the library. I have read several wikipedia's and learned a great deal , however, I'm not sure if the facts that were stated were accurate. More importantly is the background of the author and do they have ......
I read with great interest this morning in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper that the Orlando International Airport (OIA) is now offering free wireless internet service to its many travelers in all terminals. I travel out of this wonderful airport and have sat waiting for delays many a time too and this could have come in handy. The purpose of having wireless for the entire airport is not just for travelers either. The goal of this new system is to facilitate better coordination between airport and ......
In class today we reviewed the test that the students took before the Thanksgiving break. It was on chapters 7-9. I think my students were thinking more about the vacation than they were my test because the class average was a 76 which was ok but I know that my class could have done better. Students are working on Lesson 12 with Webmatrix and continuing to work with the Code Wizards that comes with the software. They will create a Band Journal Page where fans will be able to browse through the journal ......
Last week, I purchased the new Wrox Publisher ASP.NET book called Professional ASP.NET 2.0 by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman, Farhan Muhammad, S. Srinivasa Sivakumar, Devin Rader. The book was mentioned on Brian Goldfarb’s blog. Brian works with ASP.NET at Microsoft Corporation and he’s bright and super energetic. I’ve heard him talk on a couple of occasions and more recently heard him on a webcast that he did on stage with Steve Balmer at the VS Studio event in San Francisco. A couple ......
This morning I received an e-mail that was kind of cool and quite frankly woke me up as I start to read my e-mails at 7:00 am. I'll share: Dear Brian Scarbeau, Thank you for being a great contributor to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. You have been nominated to receive the Award for Customer Excellence. This award recognizes your extraordinary contribution to the Visual Studio 2005 product and will be shipped to you without charge. The Award for Customer Excellence (ACE) program was created to reward ......
Several years ago, my computer science students placed third at a local computer programming contest. They won a trophy along with a computer for the school to use as part of their prize. I beefed up the memory on the pc and turned it into a server for my dotnetnuke website and for student asp.net work as well. The server served its purpose and this month the computer science department purchased a new server because the old server was getting too slow for us to use. I had no idea how long it would ......
Today students are working on lesson 11 which covers properties of the datagrid and the Mxdatagrid. Students learn how to use sorting, autoformatting, paging and much more. It's a very easy lesson for students to follow and they learn how easy it is to use webmatrix web controls. Here's an example of an application: Lesson 12 works on the Select statement, Where, Order, And clause and more. Students learn the code wizards that comes with Webmatrix. When you selelct code view, you will see the wizards ......
Today there are 24 high schools and 11 teams competing at the 9th Annual Stetson University ACM Programming Competition in Deland, FL. There are schools from around the state from as far as Miami and Sarasota. Deland is near Daytona Beach, FL. I have been coming to this competition since 1999 and I'm always impressed with the Stetson University students running the show. I'm equally impressed with the dedicated high school students who had to wake up early on a Saturday morning to compete at this ......
My students have learned how to create a database using webmatrix. I was quite surprised how easy it was for them to create the table and then add fields and records to the database. This is what happens in Lesson 9 if you're following along with the lessons. In lesson 10 they learned how to use the Access Data Source Control and the datalist web control. It really amazes me how easy it is to drag and drop these controls on the page and then run the web server and VOILA you get to see the database ......
Tomorrow I'll be introducing databases to my students. This will be the first time for all of them to learn this and several of my students have already created a database and tables with Webmatrix and they told me that it was easy to learn. There is a great deal of new terminology that they need to learn. Words like record, field, table will be new. This is the database that they will create: BandDatabase Database For some of the future site features we will create, you will use the BandDatabase.mdb ......
The students are getting into creating their ASP.NET applications with Web Matrix using the CurliQue lessons. The majority of students are on Lesson 8 which is a farily easy lesson and will only take up three or four classes to accomplish. Allow one class for instruction of these important concepts and show the code as well. Some students have gone beyond lesson 8 and I highly encourage them to do that if they want however with a class size of 20 they need to know to be patient for my help when they ......
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I have been using the beta version of these products for a couple of months now and I must say that I'm quite impressed with the product and the price. The product includes for web developers Visual Web Developer and students can create asp.net web pages that includes a local server so you don't have to install IIs on all the pc's in your lab. In addition, you can also use SQL Server 2005 Express with your web development. On the programming side you can select J#, Visual Basic.NET, C# or C++ Now ......
Lesson 7 contains an introduction to some programming concepts that my students have never heard of especially arrays. As a teacher, you'll need to spend a little bit of time explaining how this will work on their asp.net page. The students will be creating an array of pictures on the page and then with a button click advanced to the next picture and then a previous button will take them to the previous picture. I had an assignment that I've used with my students before using the Curlique lessons ......
This reminds me of the EF Hutton commercial when everyone stops what their doing and listens attentively when EF Hutton talks. Here's the story: On my way from school on Monday afternoon, I was travelling down the street at an intersection and the light was green and bam all of a sudden I find myself facing the same direction that I came. I drive a Toyota Tundra truck and the driver of the vehicle that struck me was driving a Honda. Needless to say, I was in shock that I got hit and that the impact ......
Several students were not finished with the task exercise for lesson 6. I spent today reviewing all of the activities in the student folders to make sure each worked properly. I then gave the students a print out of what was completed and what needed to get finished. This gave me an opportunity to review the important concepts in the lesson such as postback, state, and databinding. I have already introduced these concepts with my students and they have already completed one activity for the lesson ......
It's very important as a teacher to make sure students follow written instructions when working with the Curlique lessons . Walk around the room and make sure students are working on their own vs having another student do everything for them. Even after lecturing to students about concepts and even after giving a demo of what they will be doing in class there will always be that student that doesn't get it. So what do you do? The first thing that I do as a teacher is to have the student do the lesson ......
Today in class we reviewed the test that the students took yesterday. In addition, we talked about important concepts that students will be using in lesson 6. Students like to do the hands on part of my course and often times neglect to study new terms and concepts in computer science. Needless to say those are the students who scored below average and will need to buckle down and study harder for the next test next week. Lesson 6 reviews the following concepts: State, Postback, IsPostback, databinding ......
Today was test day for lessons 1-3. At the end of each lesson, the students answer questions on that material and any other material I cover in class. My students did a good job on the test with 80 being the average. Next week we'll have another test on lessons 4-6. The students are completing the task for lesson 5: PurposeDemonstrate the ability to use ASP controls and event code.InstructionsYou are creating a page to show a quote and the favorite song of Maktub fans. The data will be coded into ......