So how are you getting your students learning in their free time?

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 pex_logo Touchdevelop

Microsoft Research have come up with the following great tools for Windows Phone.

The Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group at Microsoft Research have two great mobile programming apps TouchDevelop & PexforFun.

TouchDevelop (New name for TouchStudio) is an Windows Phone 7 App that allows the users to script with their phone. By bringing bringing programming to the Windows Phone it not only great fun but productive too, especially from a learning perspective. In the video below Nikolai Tillmann and Michal Moskal from Research in Software Engineering group (RiSE) at Microsoft Research give a demo of TouchStudio

In the video below Nikolai Tillmann from Research in Software Engineering group (RiSE) at Microsoft Research give a case study of TouchDevelop being used by School children developing an app in 45mins directly on the device

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In this video, Grant Bronsdon, a intern at Microsoft Research, gives a quick tutorial on writing scripts in TouchDevelop

Download the app from here

Another great tool is Pex4Fun. Pex4fun is another project from Research in Software Engineering (RiSE).  PexforFun have a dedicated web site application which allows programming in C#, Visual Basic, and F# from your browser. Now the team has released a Windows Phone mobile app which allows you to do the same in Windows Phone 7 titled Pex4Fun.

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The difference between Touch Studio and Pex4Fun is that Pex4Fun is a learning tool, you can win points by writing code! You earn points when your code computes the right outputs for all inputs. Pex4Fun features a code editor with auto-completion, snippets and background compilation to make programming on the phone a reality. If you are new to programming in general, don’t worry: Pex4fun also features a set of courses to learn the basics and beyond right from your phone.

Download the app from here.