Programming problems in High Schools

We use a managed network system at our school which limits the students ability to run .exe files.

I have been using gamemaker through a virtual environment and discovered problems that would not allow students to run the executable in the virtual environment, due to Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 would not allow a graphics card greater than 16meg to be created, gamemaker requires a 64 meg graphics card or greater. We solved this by enabling an area on the network to run .exe files so the students could test.

The other programming software environments we teach run fine in virtual environments, visual basic and visual c# run well in Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, but this does not have USB support.

When my year 13 students asked whether we could create games for the xbox 360 through the XNA creators kit using the skills they have gained in Visual C#, I thought sure, this sounds like something we can do and works in well with Achievment Standards and the competition/learning resources for STUDENT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DESIGN COMPETITION located at http://www.nzfact.co.nz/education.html.

After a couple of months figuring out that Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 won't run the xbox 360 for windows game controllers, installing vmware player and getting all the systems working and testing we have encountered our next problem, vmware player does not support directx3d, there is no drivers or solutions around.

We cannot create the exectable file and copy it through to another area as XNA reequires you to debug the program first. How are other schools providing computer programming experiences, do you dual boot, run liveCD's run off USB sticks? have a complete computer science lab that is setup just for those classes?

Your help would be appreciated.

Note: 28/7/2008 While reading Lance Armstrongs book, it's not about the bike I came up with the answer for my troubles, give the students privileged user rights on the machine. they cannot access anywhere else or so anything on the network due to permissions, but user rights on the machine might just work. I just need to work out what machines they privileged  use and grant them access, no messy creating different user rights or anything like that. Why did I not think of that 6 months ago. I think it because I had my mind on something completely different. Shows what reading a book can do for you. Also we can test out the web browsers that we are going to create...

Ethics in Computing

I started off this year with Year 12 Programming looking at ethics, some of this involved some brand new resources from microsoft. They have the privacy page there with a number of GSI videos that microsoft has developed to educate the public.

There are four videos on the microsoft privacy site at the moment all looking at different areas of privacy, from licensing, counterfeit, piracy of software, and the proper licensing of software.

These are some fantastic resources for my students.

Counterfeit
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/genuinefactfiles/counterfeit.aspx

Proper Windows Licensing
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/genuinefactfiles/plp.aspx

Piracy Perils
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/genuinefactfiles/ipr.aspx

Legalization
http://www.microsoft.com/piracy/genuinefactfiles/legalization.aspx

How do I put this together, information packs for the students, online kit? Or direct them to the site? What is the best way for this information to be passed down? I have to start looking at how I put my lessons together. Do we need to use computers all the time. My view on this at the moment is that they can cause a distraction, they have to play with them. Even getting them to stand up away from the computer just to get their attention they have to touch the computer. I have another way of getting there attention through a network monitoring program that takes control of their computer, they have to play, just to try and get around my attention grabbing technique.

I look at the other material I have looked at lately that I have posted to this blog and even though it is in electronic form I still have printed it off, I have made notes on it and included it in my reference library. Could this be the same for the students, would they keep copies of it? Do I make them include it as part of the big project. Research to be included as part of there technological knowledge.

This is where I start to get confused. Technological knowledge is more about the "technological design? process" and not about the knowledge and skills of computing. Or is it. Even though the technological process involves ethics, knowledge, skills, constraints in the key factors and constraints. Under the brown technology curriculum document there was a strand on society. This is probably where I am aiming this to go. But under the new draft curriculum I am not too sure where this goes.

Going back to the earlier section on how could I use this, electronic portfolio, use blogging as a new means of assessment, however this does lead to a bigger issue of whether it is the students own work, or have they copied it from someone else. Email it into me would be another and then I have to put it onto a site for them to include as there electronic portfolio. maybe use knowledgenet new reflection and assessment tools available next year.

I am working on two things, a keynote show to display the information contained in the pdf's as well as have them downloadable for the students to use if need be. Also having the magazine and whitepapers printed out for students to work through questions and form an opinion of the information contained in each.

The next thing is to have all of this available on the net... probably do this at school next week.

Notes?
The use of this blog to down my ideas is fantastic, I think of it was a notebook or visual diary. Being electronic helps me, I also carry a visual diary around with me in my bag when I am out as well as a digital camera, just in case I see something and might want to use in in a class of mine.

One problem however is going over my cap on my internet account, just means I have some slow days at dial up speeds <64 kbps.