Interesting Links December 21 2009

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This will probably be my last interesting links post for the year. I’m taking some vacation time and hope to take a break even from the Internet. Hopefully you all will  be getting some rest and recharge time as you prepare for the new year as well. I’ve got a few posts up and in the queue so if you get bored there will be posts to read. And now for this weeks links.

It’s not too soon to be thinking about summer professional development opportunities. I’m very excited to be involved in planning for CSTA's CS&IT 2010 conference which will be held at the headquarters of some advertizing company. Googol of something like that. :-)

One of the people I started following on Twitter recently @weemooseus posts a lot of good links to Scratch/ Recently he tweeted about a summer Scratch conference this August 11 - 14, 2010: https://events.scratch.mit.edu/conference/index.php/Scratch/2010 He also linked to a set of curriculum resources for Scratch from the Irish Software Research Council. https://www.lero.ie/EducationOutreach/Secondlevel/ScratchLessonPlans/Overview.html Registration is required to get access to more than the first couple of modules but it looks pretty interesting.

The fall issue of JOURNAL FOR COMPUTING TEACHERS (JCT) from ISTE's SIGCT is now available

RT @guzdial: Blog post about the challenge of growing the number of high school CS teachers. Some interesting articles and I may find some time to read them offline over the break.

Mark Guzdial (@guzdial) is inimitably involved in the effort to create a new AP CS course last week he posted a blog post called how I see the new AP CS effort which I think is a must read for people interesting in high school computer science in general and the APCS program in particular.

I get updates on some of the animations created on DoInk. This Animation for a Math Class: The Pythagorean Theorem  is a pretty cool visualization.

From @GISeducation I found a link to a nice chat with Microsoft Research, authors of worldwide telescope. 

@ TeachTec noted some benefits of signing up for the new  Partners in Learning Network. Look under "Resources" and get a free full copy of AutoCollage when you join.

Interested in online safety education and events? You may want to follow @Safer_Online on Twitter. If not at least check out the an Informative event guide for your online safety event. Also, a useful presentation for your online safety event.

From  @SimpleK12 and @stevekatz: Should Computer Tech Classes Be Required in High School? Some interesting discussions in the comments too!