TEALS set to go

TEALS (Technology Education And Literacy in Schools), TechEd has been taken a long long time ago by a worldwide MS conference.

After a couple of informationals at Microsoft attended by around 60 people, we ultimately received 10 applications for four positions to teach at Issaquah High School.

The Advanced Math class did not get enough enrollment to warrant a class, but both AP CS and Web Design had overwhelming responses from the students. So much so that I realized that we might have to go to a college lab assistant model. That's how we ended up with four open positions. Each subject will have a teacher and a lab assistant.

The resume review process was hard to select who we wanted to interview and I felt pretty terrible for having to turn people away from teaching. This will only drive me more into expanding this program down the road. The interview took place on Monday and the four candidates we felt who were best fit for the positions all accepted.

For the next few weeks, I will be getting together with both teaching teams to start on getting text books selected, course laid out etc... I am very excited to work with these four amazing and enthusiastic people who share my passion in technology education.

One more month of school

My one semester long CS class is getting closer to the finish line. The kids have their tic-tac-toeprograms finished. We have started to watch WarGames in class as a reward for their hard work in the past few weeks. Of course, none of the kids have seen the floppy drives or the 300 bits/s acoustically coupled phone modems in the movie. Naturally, Tic-Tac-Toe plays a big role in the movie.

Funnily enough, this week, another Fox show featured Tic-Tac-Toe. A chicken who plays TTT in a riverboat casino that Cleveland has to clean up after.

Up next is making a half adder and full adder using the Radio Shack kits that we just recently got. That should be pretty fun and close out the semester.

EduConnect All Star

So it turns out this TEALS thing is starting to take off. I'm rather giddy about it actually. Anyway, got selected as Microsoft EduConnect's All Star. I will also be in a video at MGX (internal MS sales and marketing conference) and doing an EduConnect webcast as well. Hopefully TEALS will get a lot more exposure this way and get some more momentum inside the company and surrounding schools.

I will be conducting interviews with Issaquah High School for the positions next Monday. Very excited, can't wait to see the demo lessons.

Ivory Tower vs Microsoft, the revisit and rethink

A while back, by a while back, I mean in 2006. I had a choice to make, to continue in education academia get a PhD or go work for Microsoft on an online collaboration service. 4 Years into it, I am looking at the choice once again.

(The Sign In App on the right was my feature)

At Microsoft, I have been the Program Manager for Microsoft Business Online Services since its inception. We built a group from nothing to a service that's now regularly uses by millions of customers world wide. In my spare time, I have been able to teach CS on the side, take education classes at UW, and most recently start up the TEALS pilot program.

(notice the book talk on the Computer Club House)

In my recent visit to NYC, I think I might have briefly fell in love with the idea of a PhD program and the atmosphere of graduate school again. NYC has this amazing energy and vibe that just does not exist anywhere else. Columbia itself is sort of an oasis in the city. Best of both worlds maybe. I visited Teachers College and it did remind me of what I liked about graduate school.

It's always been a struggle for me between on the ground impact I can make vs bigger picture theory. So very very torn... Then reality hit me, beer in NYC is $8.

TicTacToe makes it to the Simpsons

On last night's Simpson's (season 21, episode 19), they did a parody of children's games films (I think Monopoly and Battleship will actually be made into movies). Appropriate since the project this semester is TicTacToe.
Some favorite lines:
"The one who controls the center controls the board", Dune reference to He who controls the Spice, controls the Universe?
"I love you RomeO", "I love you JulieX". RomeO get crushed by X shaped star ship, JulieX screams "TicTacNoooooo!".
Anyway, that's relevance for ya. Or at least CS projects and pop culture relevance.

TEALS on MSW!

My Technology education and literacy pilot at MS took a very positive step yesterday. We were on MSW, the Microsoft internal website (see pictures below). The turn out was great, and the room was packed. I think we'll get enough interest to start the pilot next year on the right foot. To be continued...

Evolution of CS class tshirts

Over the past few years of CS teachin', I have had some good class shirts bought / made. The first one is pretty obvious. The kids all wore it during their AP CS test. The scores and TShirts agreed.


Think back to the early 2000's, what can make CS cooler than a Hollister class tshirt? Letting the student know that they should relax during the AP test. This laid back approach to AP test taking also worked out pretty well.

Lastly, this year's CS shirt. The black square thing is a 5 inch floppy. The kids in the class have never seen one. Oh well, at least it's on their shirt. I need one that says coach on it.