Useful Web Links for Computer Science Teachers

I keep doing sets of links to hand out at various conferences. It seems like every time I do the list comes out a little differently. Some new things. Some things have new addresses. And the order of things changes for the audience. This list is from a pair of handouts I have put together for a high school curriculum panel at Stevens Institute of Technology and for TCEA. Since I’m been working on this I haven’t has as much time to write for the blog. So here’s hoping this serves as double duty.

K-12 Faculty Community Site https://www.microsoft.com/education/FacultyConnection/precollegiate 

A source for curriculum resources, teacher forums, and program announcements

Programming Languages for Beginners

Alice – https://www.alice.org  – A 3-dimensional, drag and drop programming language from Carnegie Mellon University

Kodu - https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/

A graphical programming tool for younger students. Kodu will be available via Xbox Live Marketplace this spring. A version for schools is in the works. I included that link because I am talking about it to let people know it is coming.

Scratch – https://scratch.mit.edu  – a light weight 2-dimensional, drag and drop programming language from MIT

Small Basic - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx

CSUnplugged https://www.csunplugged.com

Computer Science Unplugged is a series of learning activities that reveals a little-known secret: computer science isn't really about computers at all!

MSDN Academic Alliance https:// www.msdnaa.net

A Microsoft program for schools to get Microsoft Development software for labs, teachers, and students.

DreamSpark for High schools https://www.dreamspark.com/HighSchool/Default.aspx

DreamSpark High School provides professional-level development and design tools to students enrolled in an accredited, secondary educational institution at no charge.

XNA Game Studio Express https://msdn.microsoft.com/xna

Software for developing games for Windows, the Zune and the XBOX 360. Also links to the XNA community with sample code, tutorials and support forums.

Visual Studio Express Editions https://msdn.microsoft.com/Express

Free development tools (IDEs) for Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C# and Visual Web Developer

Beginner Developer Learning Center https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb308754.aspx

A web site for people of all ages who want to learn programming and web development. Tutorials, videos, projects and web casts

Microsoft Robotics Studio https://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics

Visual Programming Language for robots, runtime libraries for higher level programming, a 3-dimensional robot simulator with sample simulations, tutorials, and videos

Coding 4 Fun https://blogs.msdn.com/Coding4Fun 

A web site for hobbyists and computer tinkerers - sample projects and information for doing fun and interesting thing with programming; often combined with interesting or unusual hardware

Alfred Thompson’s Blog https://blogs.msdn.com/AlfredTh  Which is of course right here.

Sharing of resources, links, and information of interest to K-12 Computer Science Teachers