http://www.hanselman.com/blog/...
azure storage comes with a cdn AND you can process / transform uploads with very little boilerplate using WebJobs. See the link for a code example.
Everybody in my middle school took a class in logo during 7th grade (12-13 years old) - it alternated with keyboarding and was taught by a math teacher. The first half of the class was basic programming and logo concepts, and the second half was a "final project" - a program that had to be at least a few minutes long and tell a story..basically a primitive flash movie.
The story was completely up to us with some constraints.
My project replicated a mario level. Mario dropped out of the sky, with his theme music playing. There were text boxes that had narration. he moved his way across the level, ducked under and jumped over arrows from Zelda guys, squashed them, used a turtle to kill Wario, entered the castle to rescue the princess, only to find it empty (the princess is in another castle!).
I loved that class, and although I was relatively clueless to the concepts I was being taught, what I did learn was very helpful later when I actually got interested in programming and started toying with vb.net, asp and php.
I wish I could list what I did learn, but it's been 10 years... There's no reason to view logo as "senseless shapes" or too basic - it depends on your area but you would have to balance that with your knowledge of the students prior knowledge.
Also, The first "real" language I used was vb.net, and looking back, while I didn't learn alot about data structures and such (that may have been my teacher though, I don't think he knew that much in retrospect), I did make tetris, brick breaker and tic tac toe. I liked the gui aspect. There was some overhead learning the windows forms, but it was pretty intuitive with.NET, probably moreso than with a gui tookit addon for something like Python. Also, it gave me an intro to using Visual Studio, something I haven't even seen in my 2 years of college as a compsci major. When I get to my senior year and apply for design projects, some of which are (very well) funded by Microsoft, that experience will be nice and hopefully give me a leg up on other applicants
Actually, a democrat almost won Nebraska's third district, the most red, last year. He graduated from Yale...
Scott pursued a Masters Degree in International Relations. For his doctoral dissertation, he focused on the history of American cattle ranching. Most of his research was done from the back of a pick-up, as he traveled through every state west of the Mississippi, listening to the stories of farmers, ranchers and small-town workers.
(scottkleeb.com)
I would've voted for him had I lived in the third district. The election was close too, 55% to 45%. And, apparently Scott's campaign was sabotaged by fake "robocalls" (NY Times)
I am an IT Assistant at a smaller school (1200ish students, k-12) and It is a nice setup we have.
There are around 350 computers spread over 5 labs with approximately 30 each, with one 90 computer lab, and the rest are in classrooms. Every teacher has a computer, and all the computers are newish dells. We spend approximately 30 thousand dollars a year on hardware upgrades (1/3 of hardware every three years) + occasional expenses we have extra money for.
The network is almost brand new, with fiber links between switch closets(6 of em), and 10/100 ethernet to every computer. There are also POE switches that power the phones (everything is nortel), and there is a wireless network to accomodate cordless phones, and administrators pdas.
Everything is kept under a tight, tight control with Symantec Internet Security software at the proxy server filtering almost everything. There is also Symantec managed anti-virus on every networked computer. We use Winclass to manage students, and It works great, for the most part. All of the updates, security or just plain software are pushed out through the domain, and if it can't be done then the assistants(Myself and other students) get to manually install it on all the computers that need it. Everybody gets a "Z" Drive where their stuff is stored(even the My Documents folder is mapped there), everybody loads a default profile when the log on and then that profile is theirs on that computer, but everything is extremely locked down with policy, so if they can do it it's because we said they could.
It's a pretty relaxed enviroment, stuff doesnt crash very often, and we have a great budget, considering what other schools have. The biggest problem we have as far as students screwing with stuff is occasionally somebody will go into the bios and set a password. Another one of my favorites is when a retarded student puts tape over the sensor on the mouse. That one was pretty confusing the first time it happened to me...
This is all from the perspective of a HS Junior, BTW, but I feel that is a pretty good at what goes on at my school, without revealing too much.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/... azure storage comes with a cdn AND you can process / transform uploads with very little boilerplate using WebJobs. See the link for a code example.
Everybody in my middle school took a class in logo during 7th grade (12-13 years old) - it alternated with keyboarding and was taught by a math teacher. The first half of the class was basic programming and logo concepts, and the second half was a "final project" - a program that had to be at least a few minutes long and tell a story..basically a primitive flash movie.
The story was completely up to us with some constraints.
My project replicated a mario level. Mario dropped out of the sky, with his theme music playing. There were text boxes that had narration. he moved his way across the level, ducked under and jumped over arrows from Zelda guys, squashed them, used a turtle to kill Wario, entered the castle to rescue the princess, only to find it empty (the princess is in another castle!).
I loved that class, and although I was relatively clueless to the concepts I was being taught, what I did learn was very helpful later when I actually got interested in programming and started toying with vb.net, asp and php.
I wish I could list what I did learn, but it's been 10 years... There's no reason to view logo as "senseless shapes" or too basic - it depends on your area but you would have to balance that with your knowledge of the students prior knowledge.
Also, The first "real" language I used was vb.net, and looking back, while I didn't learn alot about data structures and such (that may have been my teacher though, I don't think he knew that much in retrospect), I did make tetris, brick breaker and tic tac toe. I liked the gui aspect. There was some overhead learning the windows forms, but it was pretty intuitive with .NET, probably moreso than with a gui tookit addon for something like Python. Also, it gave me an intro to using Visual Studio, something I haven't even seen in my 2 years of college as a compsci major. When I get to my senior year and apply for design projects, some of which are (very well) funded by Microsoft, that experience will be nice and hopefully give me a leg up on other applicants
Sorry, I ramble
I would've voted for him had I lived in the third district. The election was close too, 55% to 45%. And, apparently Scott's campaign was sabotaged by fake "robocalls" (NY Times)
There are around 350 computers spread over 5 labs with approximately 30 each, with one 90 computer lab, and the rest are in classrooms. Every teacher has a computer, and all the computers are newish dells. We spend approximately 30 thousand dollars a year on hardware upgrades (1/3 of hardware every three years) + occasional expenses we have extra money for.
The network is almost brand new, with fiber links between switch closets(6 of em), and 10/100 ethernet to every computer. There are also POE switches that power the phones (everything is nortel), and there is a wireless network to accomodate cordless phones, and administrators pdas.
Everything is kept under a tight, tight control with Symantec Internet Security software at the proxy server filtering almost everything. There is also Symantec managed anti-virus on every networked computer. We use Winclass to manage students, and It works great, for the most part. All of the updates, security or just plain software are pushed out through the domain, and if it can't be done then the assistants(Myself and other students) get to manually install it on all the computers that need it. Everybody gets a "Z" Drive where their stuff is stored(even the My Documents folder is mapped there), everybody loads a default profile when the log on and then that profile is theirs on that computer, but everything is extremely locked down with policy, so if they can do it it's because we said they could.
It's a pretty relaxed enviroment, stuff doesnt crash very often, and we have a great budget, considering what other schools have. The biggest problem we have as far as students screwing with stuff is occasionally somebody will go into the bios and set a password. Another one of my favorites is when a retarded student puts tape over the sensor on the mouse. That one was pretty confusing the first time it happened to me...
This is all from the perspective of a HS Junior, BTW, but I feel that is a pretty good at what goes on at my school, without revealing too much.