Author Archives: Stacey Armstrong

UIL Capital Conference

The University Interscholastic League will be hosting the 14th ANNUAL UIL CAPITAL CONFERENCE in Austin on the UT campus on July 9th and 10th.  This conference is designed to allow teachers and UIL Academic coordinators to discuss the UIL Academic Competitions and the rules, procedures, and contest of the individual competitions.   The conference will have a 2 day Java workshop and a PC^2 workshop.

If you are at the Capital Conference, stop by and chat as I will have a booth setup somewhere on site with information about  contest preparation materials and curriculum materials for the upcoming school year and UIL Academic season.  I will have some cool giveaways, sample materials, and demos running.

I will also be making a stop of at the Salt Lick for the world’s best barbecue.  If you are ever in the Austin area, you have to drive out to Driftwood and eat the original Salt Lick Location.  It is amazing stuff.

Follow up – The Capital Conference was great!  I saw lots of people and had a great time.  Thanks to all that stopped by to chat.   The BBQ at the Salt Lick was world class as usual.

UIL Capital Conference

UIL Capital Conference

CS News – Future Looking Good for Computing Careers!

Things are looking good for Computing Careers!

This about the one millionth post that I have made about Computing Careers, but I will go ahead and post this information anyway.  It appears that the data for Computing Careers continues to indicate that a large number of good jobs will be available in the future.  This information is consistent with the data that has been floating around for the last few years.

I continue to stress to all of the students in our Computer Science classes that they need to take Computer Science classes to make themselves for marketable and adaptable as they will need Computing skills when on the job at some point.  Hopefully, they will head my words.

AP Computer Science Summer Institute Report

Well,
My AP Summer Institute officially wrapped up on Thursday.  It was a great week and we covered lots of material and had fun doing it.

I had participants from all over with the furthest coming from Florida.  Last year, I had a participant from China which was cool as well.  I found out that some of my attendees this year had mad skills, including Senior Olympic archery, Vice-Presidential experience, Athletic Training, CIA experience, Social disturbia ( pretty sure that is the proper description and a pretty common comp sci diagnosis ), Home Improvement, Buried Treasure Hunting, Aerobics, Tennis, Fire Safety, and Computer Science.  I list Computer Science last as it just does not stack up against the rest.  How could Computer Science compete with Buried Treasure Hunting?

During the workshop, we spent a good deal of time discussing how you could and should use GridWorld all year long when teaching the AP A Course.  The case study is very dynamic and makes the course much more fun and engaging for the students.  It provides a nice game platform as well.

I also spent tons of time on the basic fundamentals of the AP A course, including ifs, loops, arrays, ArrayList, interfaces, abstract classes, and recursion, but not necessarily in a programming centric way.  I tried to present ways to teach the topics that makes them relevant and gives them context to which students can relate.  When teaching matrices and interfaces, I teach these topics in the context of Codes and Ciphers to show the students some of the ways Computer Science is used beyond just typing in braces and semi-colons.  It works well and I think the workshop participants found the approach effective as well.

Pre/AP was discussed and I included tools like Scratch, Alice, and Jeroo as pre/AP courses do not have to be taught using Java.  I spent time showing how you can use Scratch, Alice, and Jeroo to teach any AP level topic effectively.  We did some nice list processing in Scratch.

Scratch Pong Game

Scratch Pong Game

We also spent time discussing ways to broaden participation in Computer Science.  Participants visited the ACM Education Policy Committee site to see the resources posted there.

The workshop wrapped up with a look at the new AP Computer Science Principles course that is being developed.  Participants visited the AP Computer Science Principles site as well as Dan Garcia’s Full Frontal Nerdity site ( you have to love the name ) to see some of the resources posted for Dan’s new pilot AP CS course.

Lunch everyday was awesome!  I am very motivated by food that was a huge plus for sure.  It was a great time and I am sad it is over.

I should have taken some pics, but I didn’t so imagine you see people writing code and looking really excited when looking below this line.
(:)(:)(:)~~(:)(:)(:)
(:)(:)(:)~~(:)(:)(:)

CS News – Algo Ranks Soccer Players

Algorithm Ranks Soccer Players

Soccer is a great sport and the World Cup is in full swing.  It is cool to see a Computer Science algorithm being used to add a new twist to sports.  This actually happens all of the time as Computer Science powers tons of cool apps, but you do not always here about it.  Sports and Computer Science – what a natural pairing!

CS News – Learning Engineering Early

Learning Engineering Before They Can Spell It

This is a great article that shows that you can teach students some fairly complicated stuff when they are young.  Young children have not developed the same negative views about engineering and computer science as teenagers often have.  I have been able to visit the classes of my sons( 2nd and 3rd grade) and teach the classes how to program in Scratch.  I have found they are not scared of computer science nor do they view the process as hard in any way.  It is great to see schools attacking the lack of engineers problem by starting with younger students.  I think this is the right way to get more students to study engineering and computer science.  It is often too late to change the perceptions when the students are in high school.

CS News – Enigma Messages Go Digital

Enigma Messages Go Digital

It is hard to believe these records are still laying around in non-digital form, but they are.  Hopefully, not for much longer.

I find the Engima machine very interesting as I spend some time on Codes and Ciphers in my Computer Science classes.
Cap’n Dave Reed has some very nice materials on the Enigma machine on his site.

Student get much more motivated when they can see the relevance of what they are studying.
Pulling in real world topics and issues helps students see the relevance of Computer Science.

Pac-Man 30th Anniversary

Google Pac-Man

People Playing Google Pac-Man Wastes 4.8 Million Hours

The 30th anniversary of Pac-Man has come and gone.  What a cool game!
I remember playing Pac-Man on 25 cent arcade machines when I was a kid.
We had a local arcade / pizza house that all sorts of video games.
We had Space Invaders, Frogger, Galaga, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Phoenix, and Asteroids just to name a few.

Due to my fond feelings about arcade games and my perception that my students like them as well, I have my students complete several of these games in my classes.
I have a GridWorld Snake Project that can easily become PacMan.

I also have Space Invaders and Pong projects using Frames and Java Graphics.
I ported over my Pong project over to Scratch and use that in our intro CS class.
We also created Pac-Man in XNA / C# as an end of year project.  The students had to research grid-based gaming and the A* algorithm.  The project was fun.
My students love building interactive projects and really enjoying playing what they create as well as playing what others in class create.
It is very educational for the students to design and build a game and then explain that creative process to other students.