New Teaching & Learning Resources for XNA and Web

Last week Microsoft put several curriculum modules on on the higher education part of the Faculty Connection. While aimed at the college/university space I think they may be useful for many high school people especially those working on independent studies involving XNA.

curriculum mod

What is a Curriculum Module?

Resources developed by teaching faculty and aligned with US collegiate standards that provide a set of lectures and assignments for computer science courses.  The first is an introduction to programming with XNA Game Studio. On the screen shot below, the first two buttons provide a free overview to the content of the curriculum module.  The third button provides a download of  Prof. Kelvin Sung’s 683 page lab workbook for teaching CS1/CS2 using XNA.  This final button requires sign-in using a Windows Live ID. 

HE XNA

The second module is Programming Fundamentals from Java to C#. Have a CS1-level background in Java? These curriculum materials, developed by Professor Joe Hummel of Lake Forest College, build on your expertise in Java to introduce C#, .NET, and Visual Studio. The curriculum consists of 12 modules covering approximately 15 hours of core ACM requirements. Materials include PowerPoint slides, demo source code, and lab exercises suitable for students and faculty.

In the case of these materials, the page launches an introductory video about the curriculum materials following by a 3 hour workshop delivered at the ACM SIGCSE conference.  The second button contains the actual lectures to be delivered in a Java class and requires a sign-in with a Windows Live ID.

Pat Philips has a good article with Really good list of XNA Game teaching resources at https://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/bz/articles/articledetails.aspx?cid=2084&c1=en-bz&c2=BZ

Independent of the Faculty Connection resources, Microsoft is happy to announce the launch of .toolbox! .toolbox is a free online training program where designers and developers can learn to create Silverlight applications using Expression Studio and to apply basic UX concepts to their solutions.

toolbox stuff

I think the target audience is mostly professional developers but if you are teaching (or learning) web design you will want to check it out for sure!