Interesting Links 20 February 2012

Happy President’s Day! Not a day off for me but still a good day. Hope you are all off to a good start as well. I think I have some good links to share today. So without wasting any more time have a look at the links below.

Want to Get and Keep a Job…Coding Seems to be the Key Tara Walker comments on some news about there being jobs for people who can code. Pretty big deal in this economy. I am constantly amazed at schools that are cutting back on computer science education at a time when we really should be doing more. BTW if you are in Georgia some of the workshops Tara has coming up may be of interest to you. It’s all in her blog post.

CS Teacher education ain't what it should be blog post by Garth Flint. Garth has some strong opinions and some good ideas about what sort of education people who teach computer science should have. He’s given it a lot of thought and his post makes an interesting read. Also last week Mark Guzdial writes about Two CS Endorsement programs in Georgia!

Success Story: Mrs Marien on the path leading up to her student's visit with President Obama Young Hannah demonstrated her Kodu project for President Obama last week. In this post her teacher fills you in on the backstory. It’s a great story of a teacher empowering her students and one girl to takes a project and runs with it.

Are you using Scratch from MIT in your school? You may want to know about Scratch Day 2012. It will be May 19th this year.

Scratch Day is a worldwide network of gatherings, where people come together to meet other Scratchers, share projects and experiences, and learn more about Scratch.

Microsoft Research launches https://www.layerscape.org, a 3-D visualization and storytelling tool for Earth scientists. Read more about it at A New Way to Visualize Earth 

Great guest post by Kelli Etheredge (@ketheredge) on Changing Perceptions of Teachers

|i]f you ask Etheredge what she’d most like to change about education in the US, she’s quick to answer. “This overall characterization and stereotype of all teachers and all schools as being boring and inept,” says Etheredge. “It’s simply wrong.

Something of interest for game making students - National STEM Video Game Challenge TweetChat

Kinect-based DarwinBot lets you remotely play with and talk to your pet. A pretty cool robot project using a variety of Microsoft technologies.