Digital Technologies Announcement and Industry

On Tuesday at the NZTech conference, an announcement in what we have been waiting over 7 months was made. Through the Curious Minds review of the positioning of Digital Technologies in the New Zealand curriculum, it was announced that Digital Technologies would be a part of the Technology Learning Area.

This has not played well for industry who have made numerous comments and press releases since the announcement calling for a rethink. The call has been made for Digital technologies to be a seperate learning area.

As a teacher I have thought about this for a long time, since starting teaching 14 years ago with the positioning of where the area was and have thought about it over the time. The move from computing unit standards in 2011 to achievement standards has helped develop the nature of the subject. The more important focus for me is the ideas and future of the industry.

Some things that have made an impact for me and I would like to see more of, education can only move so far and so fast...

Industry can support the development of the community, culture and development of the subject within the communities. Everyone is trying to be the next technological area outside of the states. I often read about the IT Business parks that are being created in cities and in towns. These are the future workplaces of our students.

I often hear about the academic requirements of a subject, yet, the constant call is for the soft skills, the communication, working in teams, thinking, collaboration. Many of the academic subjects work in isolation from each other. Where we want to grow the soft skills.

Developing a scholarship for ours students that is outside NZQA Scholarship would help. While there are the awards for outstanding scholarship and top scholar that provide an incentive, I would love to see the data on how many technology students get one or more scholarships?

Single Subject Awards

For Candidates who achieve Scholarship in one or two subjects in the same year. A ‘one-off’ award of $500 per subject (maximum payment $1000).

It is the single subject scholarships that I would like to see industry help to develop. Looking at building a panel to award 20 scholarships a year, an opportunity to work in a company for the summer break. These will provide valuable experiences to our learners. We need different types of incentives. Yes, there should be through government, but I realise that this would take time.

How about the companies that complain and take out full size ads in the New Zealand media... while I agree that they want to see change, could be putting this towards developing opportunites and spreading the word. 

It is dangerous to develop a curriculum that is developed for one particular group. When I look at what exists already through companies are:

One great opportunity that existed was the Orion Health codeworx competition. This helped get technology out to schools and to develop ideas on how a raspberry pi could be used. This also helped get students into the company, what a opportunity. This competition was ended in 2015.

Brightsparks provides opportunities to develop projects that around the concepts of Science, Environment, Software and Engineering.

Microsoft have the Imagine cup which looks at students across all disciplines to team up and use their creativity, passion and knowledge of technology to create applications, games and integrate solutions that can change the way we live, work and play.

The scholarship would need to consider aspects of what exists already and what is wanted from our future developers and industry leaders.

Great RPi resource

http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/by-subject/computing/raspberry-pi/

OCR resources for Raspberry Pi to liven up your lessons

We have been working in collaboration with Raspberry Pi and with leading practitioners to create resources that support the use of the Raspberry Pi in the classroom.

• Getting started tutorials
• Raspberry Pi Resources Link
• Raspberry Pi Resource Map

Recipe cards

• Recipe card - Flashing LED (PDF, 789KB) UPDATED06/03/2013
• Recipe card - Singing jelly baby (PDF, 732KB) UPDATED11/10/2013
• Recipe card - Traffic lights (PDF, 553KB) NEW

Classroom Challenges

• Classroom Challenge - Architecture - Learner sheet (PDF, 239KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Architecture - Teacher sheet (PDF, 190KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Architecture - Drag and Drop activity Flash file (SWF, 688KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Connecting to a network - Learner sheet(PDF, 803KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Connecting to a network - Teacher sheet (PDF, 189KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Simple animation - Learner sheet (PDF, 1MB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Simple animation - Teacher sheet (PDF, 190KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Hardware characteristics - Learner sheet (PDF, 373KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Hardware characteristics - Teacher sheet (PDF, 190KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Hardware hacking and robotics - Learner sheet (PDF, 575KB) NEW
• Classroom Challenge - Hardware hacking and robotics - Teacher sheet (PDF, 192KB) NEW

A Busy Day and ideas

It has been a busy day down here, taking part in all three jobs.

1) First was the NZC Teacher Only day which I must say I have learnt a lot from, not only about the NZC and how it will impact our curriculum and unit planning, including more of the vision and key indicators through to how to include the DTG model. With the DTG, it became apparent that not everyone knew what it is about and how it came into being. The DTG is the Digital Technology Guidelines. We probably spent an hour looking into the DTG website and presentations that have been used previously to explain its purpose and get people thinking about the process, getting away from the assessment driven to the knowledge driven and knowing your students. This then started the sharing from the teachers, we talked about how we have designed our programmes, what is coming up, resources that we use and how we have developed our courses. It also came out that June 9th will be an interesting day with the new Computing Unit Standards being released. I have made notes to contact certain people to ask then questions about there course and development in the future.

2) Had emails from old job wondering why staff could not access the subject choice information. This was due to the staff member was not allocated anything due to I was not told to allocate him anything. Other issue was that I typed in a staff member incorrectly. I have also had to make a modification to the program that allows staff members with full access the ability to print off all the subjects with information so they can enter it into the curriculum guide. I may have to go through and do some design issues with this later on.

3) Went into new job and helped move stuff around, we have the 4 metre long plus copier being moved tomorrow into the new shop, this will then allow the guillotine to be moved at the same time. It is really starting to open up and we are creating new spaces all the time. It will be interesting to see how this new space will be utilised.

It seems that I also may have seven days of teaching coming up, will be teaching gamemaker to year 10 students. I look forward to this prospect, as well as I learned something today, you can run the gamemaker files within gamemaker you do not have to create a exe file every time. So when I get back to my old job we may just install gamemaker on the network as a package and use it this way, rather than the way I have been doing it for a while.

Another thing that I have started thinking about is developing contexts for students learning, I have a couple so far with developing material for a barista competition. But I have started thinking outside the square about a few of them now. I went for a drive at the weekend to Cable Bay, through this I saw a familiar man made structure, we used to go for a walk down around Bluff Hill and the Waihopai River stopbank and would see these all the time. The Walkways NZ icon, this started me thinking, is there a walkways nz website, what would it entail. And then, bang, no not my car crashing, I had an idea for a context of a website development. Getting the students to develop a walkways nz dynamic website, it involves a number of things, a php/mysql development. planning, look, feel. it would be a great context for them to work on and there is a number of walks around the region that could be used as a field trip. Ok, that is pretty mean, but it gives them an idea. I plan to go back to cable bay to walk a couple of the tracks, just for my own benefit, as well to take my camera and get some shots of this past icon of New Zealand.

Included on the DoC website is a old version of the nz walkways as a pdf.

Another idea for a year 10/year 11 class is to develop a number of pieces of marketing material for the school library. We are about to run a library competition at school that normally lasts for five weeks and has approx 2,250 books issued from the library. We need posters showing a possible 100 books that are in the school library, these book covers are available from the the internet, google images, amazon and a number of other book sites. this will introduce them to image manipulation as the book size will be different for each book depending on where the get the image from. Another is a bookmark with each of the house values on it, plus a unique code that can be entered on a website to enter a competition, like the weetbix cards. This allows the students to research bookmarks and devlopment, as well as poster ideas and book covers.

I add the top 100 list to this Blog as a resource, talk to your own school library and get them to do the same.

Top 100 Report

Rank Loans Title Author

1 45 Harry Potter and the half-blood prince ROWLING, J.K.

2 37 Anne Frank - the diary of a young girl [Text Paperback]

3 35 (un)arranged marriage [Text Paperback] RAI, Bali

4 34 To kill a mocking bird [Text Paperback] LEE, Harper

5 34 Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix ROWLING, J.K.

6 31 Harry Potter and the deathly hallows ROWLING, J.K.

7 31 A child called "It" [Text Paperback] PELZER, Dave

8 30 Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban ROWLING, J.K.

9 29 The skin I'm in [Text Paperback] FLAKE, Sharon G.

10 29 Love you to death [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

11 29 The secrets of love / [Text Paperback] RUSHTON, Rosie

12 28 Chinese cinderella and the secret dragon society [Text MAH, Adeline Yen Paperback]

13 27 The wish list / [Text Paperback] La'Brooy, Melanie.

14 27 The flood / [Text Paperback] Dietz, William C.

15 27 Rani & Sukh [Text Paperback] RAI, Bali

16 26 All American girl : ready or not / [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

17 26 Charmed : seasons of the witch, Vol.1 [Text Paperback] BURGE, Constance M.

18 26 Girls in tears [Text Paperback] WILSON, Jacqueline

19 26 Girls in love [Text Paperback] WILSON, Jacqueline

20 25 Chinese Cinderella - the secret story of an unwanted daughter MAH, Adeline Yen [Text Paperback]

21 25 Girls out late [Text Paperback] WILSON, Jacqueline

22 25 Bend it like Beckham [Text Paperback] DHAMI, Narinder

23 25 Drama queen [Text Paperback] RAYBAN, Chloe

24 25 Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone [Text Paperback] ROWLING, J.K.

25 25 How to be popular : when you're a social reject like me, CABOT, Meg Steph L. / [Text Paperback]

26 24 The day after forever [Text Paperback] SKIFFINGTON, Erin

27 24 Harry Potter and the goblet of fire ROWLING, J.K.

28 24 High stakes [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

29 24 Text game [Text Paperback] CANN, Kate

30 24 Does my head look big in this? / [Text Paperback] Abdel-Fattah, Randa.

31 24 Memoirs of a geisha / [Text Paperback] Golden, Arthur.

32 23 Lost for words [Text Paperback] LUTZEIER, Elizabeth

33 23 Mean spirits CABOT, Meg

34 23 The ghost next door [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

35 23 Sanctuary / [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

36 23 There's a boy in the girls' bathroom [Text Paperback] SACHAR, Louis

37 22 Nightmare hour [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

38 22 Noughts & crosses [Text Paperback] BLACKMAN, Malorie

39 22 Grave doubts [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

40 22 Something Wiccan this way comes [Text Paperback] HARRISON, Emma

41 22 Changeling places [Text Paperback] Ostow, Micol.

42 22 The lovely bones : a novel / [Text Paperback] Sebold, Alice.

43 22 10 things to do before you're 16 / [Text Paperback] PLAISTED, Caroline

44 21 Pride and prejudice [Text Paperback] AUSTEN, Jane

45 21 The Princess diaries [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

46 21 Soul of the bride [Text Paperback] LENHARD, Elizabeth

47 21 Falling leaves - return to their roots [Text Paperback] MAH, Adeline Yen

48 21 Eragon : inheritance [Text Paperback] PAOLINI, Christopher

49 21 The Princess diaries : take two [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

50 21 Heaven sent [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

51 21 Holes [Text Paperback] SACHAR, Louis

52 21 Artemis Fowl [Text Paperback] COLFER, Eoin

53 21 The Princess diaries : third time lucky [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

54 21 Jahanara - princess of princesses LASKY, Kathryn

55 21 Garden of evil [Text Paperback] HARRISON, Emma

56 20 The power of one - young readers edition [Text Paperback] COURTNEY, Bryce

57 20 The haunted school [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

58 20 The power of one [Text Paperback] COURTENAY, Bryce

59 20 The haunting hour [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

60 20 Every boy's got one [Text Paperback] CABOT, Meg

61 20 Best friends [Text Paperback] WILSON, Jacqueline

62 20 Forever [Text Paperback] BLUME, Judy

63 20 Liz Jone's diary... ...how one single girl got married JONES, Liz [Text Paperback]

64 20 My desperate love diary by Kelly Ann / [Text Paperback] Rettig, Liz.

65 20 Sold [Text Paperback] McCORMICK, Patricia

66 20 Pounamu pounamu [Text Paperback] IHIMAERA, Witi

67 20 The haunted car [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

68 20 '... and thats when it fell off in my hand.' : further RENNISON, Louise fabbitty-fab confessions of Georgia Nicolson

69 20 Angus, thongs and full-frontal snogging [Text Paperback] RENNISON, Louise

70 20 Love lessons / [Text Paperback] WILSON, Jacqueline

71 19 The dead of the night [Text Paperback] MARSDEN, John

72 19 Soulmate [Text Paperback] SMITH L.J.

73 19 Startling moon [Text Paperback] HONG, LIU

74 19 Between you and me [Text Paperback] CLARKE, Julia

75 19 Ghost beach [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

76 19 My heartbeat [Text Paperback] FREYMANN-WEYR, Garret

77 19 Lola Rose [Text Paperback] WILSON, Jacqueline

78 19 Bindi babes [Text Paperback] DHAMI, Narinder

79 19 Mao's last dancer - young readers edition [Text Paperback] CUNXIN, Li

80 19 Stuff / [Text Paperback] STRONG, Jeremy

81 19 Princess [Text Paperback] SASSON, Jean P.

82 19 The village by the sea. [Text Paperback] DESAI, Anita

83 19 The legacy of Merlin [Text Paperback] FLOOD, Eloise

84 19 Sugar and spice / [Text Paperback] URE, Jean

85 19 Two-timer [Text Paperback] RAI, Bali

86 19 The whisperer / [Text Paperback] RAI, Bali

87 19 The boy in the striped pyjamas : a fable / Boyne, John.

88 19 Eldest - inheritance [Text Paperback] PAOLINI, Christopher

89 19 The amulet of Samarkand / [Text Paperback] STROUD, Jonathan

90 18 Of mice and men [Text Paperback] STEINBECK, John

91 18 The joy luck club [Text Paperback] TAN, Amy

92 18 Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets [Text Paperback] ROWLING, J.K.

93 18 Fifteen love [Text Paperback] CORBET, Robert

94 18 Locker 13 [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

95 18 Cupid & co [Text Paperback] JONES, Carol

96 18 When a girl is born [Text Paperback] GRANT, Pamela

97 18 One day at horrorland [Text Paperback] STINE, R.L.

98 18 Throwaway daughter [Text Paperback] YE, Ting-xing

99 18 The phone goes dead [Text Paperback] HOROWITZ, Anthony

100 18 You're the one that I want [Text Paperback] von ZIEGESAR, Cecily

Useful Web links for Computer Science/IT/Computing/ICT/Programming teachers

I have found a number of these websites useful for developing some programmes that have been useful in teaching students programming and included in these are some fun innovative projects.
If anyone has any other useful websites they use for encouraging students to get into IT I would love to hear about them!

K-12 Faculty Community Site http://www.microsoft.com/education/FacultyConnection/precollegiate
A source for curriculum resources, teacher forums, and program announcements

Programming Languages for Beginners

• Alice – http://www.alice.org/ – A 3-dimensional, drag and drop programming language from Carnegie Mellon University
• Kodu - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/ A graphical programming tool for younger students. (Not available for public release yet!)
• Scratch – http://scratch.mit.edu/ – a light weight 2-dimensional, drag and drop programming language from MIT, for learning resources visit http://learnscratch.org/
• Small Basic - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950524.aspx Small Basic is a project that's aimed at bringing "fun" back to programming. By providing a small and easy to learn programming language in a friendly and inviting development environment, Small Basic makes programming a breeze. Ideal for kids and adults alike, Small Basic helps beginners take the first step into the wonderful world of programming.
• Microsoft Popfly - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/cc950523.aspx Popfly includes a simple way to create and share games with your friends. Choose from a variety of built-in templates or start from scratch to create a side scrolling game, a 2D shoot-em-up, or a host of others. And best of all, you can get started without writing a line of code. You can also build mashups. Mashups are a kind of application that take information from many places and mix it together.

MSDN Academic Alliance http://www.msdnaa.net/
A Microsoft program for schools to get Microsoft Development software for labs, teachers, and students - costs attached

DreamSpark for High schools https://www.dreamspark.com/HighSchool/Default.aspx
DreamSpark High School provides professional-level development and design tools to students enrolled in an accredited, secondary educational institution at no charge.

XNA Game Studio Express http://msdn.microsoft.com/xna
Software for developing games for Windows, the Zune and the XBOX 360. Also links to the XNA community with sample code, tutorials and support forums.

Visual Studio Express Editions http://msdn.microsoft.com/Express
Free development tools (IDEs) for Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C# and Visual Web Developer

Beginner Developer Learning Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/bb308754.aspx
A web site for people of all ages who want to learn programming and web development. Tutorials, videos, projects and web casts

Microsoft Robotics Studio http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics
Visual Programming Language for robots, runtime libraries for higher level programming, a 3-dimensional robot simulator with sample simulations, tutorials, and videos

Coding 4 Fun http://blogs.msdn.com/Coding4Fun
A web site for hobbyists and computer tinkerers - sample projects and information for doing fun and interesting thing with programming; often combined with interesting or unusual hardware

CSUnplugged http://www.csunplugged.com/
Computer Science Unplugged is a series of learning activities that reveals a little-known secret: computer science isn't really about computers at all!

Privacy
Also I know that we are back at school now, but 28 Janurary was Data Privacy Day 2009

January 28th, 2009 is the second annual Data Privacy Day. Intel has a great information page about this day and includes this explanation:

Designed to raise awareness and generate discussion about data privacy practices and rights, Data Privacy Day activities in the United States have included privacy professionals, corporations, government officials, and representatives, academics, and students across the country.

One of the primary goals of Data Privacy Day is to promote privacy awareness and education among teens across the United States. Data Privacy Day also serves the important purpose of furthering international collaboration and cooperation around privacy issues.

At the Intel Data Privacy Day page you will find educational resources that you may find useful in class. Items include:

• Teen privacy online (ZIP 2.69MB)
• Teen privacy online script (PDF 159KB)
• Teen privacy online sources and resources (PDF 32KB)
• Teen privacy online highlights (PDF 124KB)
• Privacy Today slide presentation (ZIP 39.3MB) and manual (PDF 522KB)
• Secure your computer to protect your privacy presentation (ZIP 594KB) and speaker notes (PDF 319KB)

Fun Stuff

Ok, now some fun stuff, got a webcam, now you can have your own Microsoft Surface,

One of the hottest new technologies in computer interfaces is Microsoft Surface which uses multi-touch to allow several items (like hands for example) to control things happening in software. The hardware for this is a bit expensive. OK it's a lot expensive. Microsoft recently released some software as an open source project that makes this technology a lot easier and less expensive to try out. It requires a webcam to use and the following Touchless SDK video shows what it is about.

http://www.codeplex.com/touchless/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=17986

And something for you Mythbusters fans out there, what is the difference between a CPU and a GPU?

Well there is cost for one thing. And prep time for another. Oh wait, you don't know what I'm talking about. Let me back up. Apparently at some sort of event the NVidia people wanted to show the difference between how a CPU works and a GPU (graphic processor) works. They also had an interest in entertaining people so obviously they hired the people from the TV show Mythbusters to create the demo. You can see the demo here. Now if you know the show at all you probably know that they are big fans of robots and of shooting things – all sorts of things with all sorts of shooting apparatus. Yep, there is some of that here.

3d visual tour

Amazing software that I want to play with, might make a special trip the museum to try some of it out.

Microsoft just released some cool software to mesh photos together. After taking several photos, the array of photos stitched together to recreate the scene.

in three dimensions. It's one of those deals where you have to see it to believe it.  The product is called photosynth and you really need to think out of the box and be created to mesh your pictures together. The site has existing projects to view along with a blog.

This information is from the site:

You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With a nothing more than digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your synth is put right in your shoes, sharing in your experience, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.

Synths constitute an entirely new visual medium. Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos.

Microsoft Education - bits and bytes

In my view this has been one of the most annoying part of researching a topic. Every time I think I have found all the learning and articles for a topic I then find more.

The Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions Beginning Developer Learning Centre is my new find.

There is two parts to this, the Web Development, and Windows Development. The one I am focussed on today is the Windows Development.

Windows Development
Would you like to customize your desktop with cool utilities or build fun Windows applications and PC games? Then you should explore this Development Track

There are Five lessons in the Bits and Bytes section:

• Bits & Bytes: Lesson 1 Problem Solving in Life and Technology
  Introduction to Programming Concepts – Understanding problem solving patterns and strategies is the first step to computer program design and development.


• Bits & Bytes: Lesson 2 Things, Things, and More Things
  Introduction to Programming Concepts – How do we represent the complexity of real-world situations to a computer? This lesson will introduce the idea of Object Oriented Design.


• Bits & Bytes: Lesson 3 The Data Game
  Introduction to Programming Concepts – This lesson will explore how computers process and store data.


• Bits & Bytes: Lesson 4 Computer IQ
  Introduction to Programming Concepts – How do computers "think" and make decisions? This lesson will answer this question and see just how "smart" computers actually are.


• Bits & Bytes: Lesson 5 Life before Mice
  Introduction to Programming Concepts – This lesson explores human-computer interaction and the concept of graphical user interfaces (GUI). You'll learn some best practices for designing GUI applications.

I am now working on downloading the various lessons both the audio and the articles, this will be an interesting addition to the microsoft virtual pc 2007, which as well I have just found out that it is free, I hope it will be better than the microsoft virtual pc 2004 that we have on the school system at the moment.

So I will have the bits and bytes series as well as the Microsoft Curriculum on Digital Literacy that I found the other day, or would it be better on the managed network, so it can be allocated to various rooms.

Microsoft Education in New Zealand

I have been to the Microsoft Education site in New Zealand http://www.microsoft.co.nz/education a lot in the past years I have been a teacher. I have looked for may varied and interesting ways to teach a multitude of topics ranging from webdesign, piracy, ethics, and operating systems. You would think the Microsoft site would be a good place to start. Well you are right, just not the New Zealand one.

I subscribe to a number of Computer Science teachers blogs from overseas and have found in the last couple of days good resources from them, and they are from Microsoft!

Number One: Digital Literacy
http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/citizenship/giving/programs/up/digitalliteracy/eng/Curriculum.mspx
The Digital Literacy Curriculum consists of five courses:

Computer Basics

The Internet and the World Wide Web

Productivity Programs

Computer Security and Privacy

Digital Lifestyles

Each course has an e-learning module and an assessment. You can also take the Certificate Test, which covers topics from all five courses. If you pass the Certificate Test, you can print out a personalized Digital Literacy Certificate.

This original version teaches generic ICT skills and concepts, and features screen shots and simulations from Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Microsoft Office 2003 to illustrate and provide hands-on examples for students. Version 2 of Digital Literacy uses screen shots and simulations from Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Number Two
Microsoft Academic Alliance High School Membership

The alliance that I'm referring to is the Microsoft Academic Alliance which allows any high school computer science department and computer science students to install Visual Studio. In addition, you get the following:

Three Microsoft e-Learning Library (MELL) collections:

• General Programming
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
• Programming in Visual Basic .NET

• Teaching Tools CD
• Student Tools CD
• Teaching Tools Manual
• Student Tools Manual
• Introductory Kit
• Monitored Newsgroups
• MSDN Library

• Documentation
• Technical Articles
• Code Samples

• Access to the Member's Area of the Web site
• Private MSDN Academic Alliance newsgroups
• Additional "Members Only" special offers
• 2 Professional Technical Support incidents

There are three ways for students to obtain the software for their personal use.

1. Member departments may make up to 50 copies of MSDN AA software for students to check-out from a library or lab. Students are required to return the physical media within a reasonable period of time.
2. Member departments may put the software on a secure server and have students download directly from the server. If a department desires to utilize both methods, that is perfectly acceptable.
3. Microsoft has partnered with e-academy to provide electronic software distribution for students and faculty free of charge.

Students must sign an agreement before they can download the software. The school administrator keeps track of the software and the agreements.

Number 3
Academic Resource Centre
http://www.academicresourcecenter.net/curriculum/facetmain.aspx
A number of programming resources are available here, as well as high education.
I have gathered some C# and visual basic resoures that I plan to use with the year 12 and 13 programming classes.
Example:
Code Rules: Introduction to Programming with Visual Basic - 12/19/2006
Code Rules introduces students to basic computer programming concepts. The simulation involves four students who travel the country in a Winnebago stopping at offbeat places to face coding challenges. This is a complete introduction to a programming course using Visual Basic 2005 Express.

This really annoys me, and I have made it known in a couple of emails, one to the msdn alliance, and the other to the innovative teachers Australia and New Zealand network. Why is none of this on the New Zealand Microsoft Education website, are we not important. No wonder that there is the call for Open Source. Ubuntu has just released training for students and instructors on how to use 7.10. Maybe there is the need to change. Just because Microsoft are stuffing us around.