Interesting Links 23 January 2012

Last week really reminded me of how much I miss being in the classroom. Two all-day workshops with a mix of students and adults. Lots of good learning going on. It was wonderful to see people “getting it” and learning some new things. I need to get in front of more students more often. A lot of links to share this week. The first one is the big one.

Time Running Our for Proposals for the CSIT Conference
This message is brought to you by the CSTA member listserv.

The proposal submission deadline for the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) 12th Annual Computer Science & Information Technology Conference is January 31, 2012.
The CS&IT 2012 Program Committee seeks proposal submissions related to the practice of teaching and learning computer science and information technology in K–12. Proposals will be accepted for one-hour presentations or panels and for three-hour workshops. All proposals will be submitted through the online symposium submission system that can be found at:
https://www.softconf.com/c/csta2012/

I’m sure some of you are doing interesting things that more teachers should know about. Please consider submitting a proposal to present as CS & IT and get it in this week. Deadline is the 31st of January!

New last week is SkyDrive.com/students for teachers, students or anyone else There is also a blog post with 7 power tips for working with SkyDrive across a group with Macs and PCs and a detailed how to video.If all you know is Google docs you owe it to yourself to check this out.

My friend Tara Walker and my manager Bob Familiar have both written about the Big App on Campus event for college students. Check out either Want Fame? The Big Apps On Campus is the Way or Big App On Campus! Your Time to Shine! for more information.

Big App on Campus (BAOC) is open to US College and University students who build apps for Windows Phone. Each app created from August 1st, 2011 until February 14th, 2012 can be entered and students can submit multiple entries. Win big cash (15k) or a trip to South by Southwest. More Details: https://on.fb.me/wT7vSm

My friend Andrew Parson’s mother, a retired teacher is now tweeting at @moppyp and blogging at  Everything I Learned About Learning!. I really liked her recent post - Can video and RP games encourage reading It’s an interesting question with some interesting opinions of the answer.

In an interesting coincidence, Mark Guzdial wrote Do badges get in the way of learning to code?  at just about the same time Microsoft was releasing an add-on for Visual Studio to let developers earn Achievement badges for what they do while coding. Check out the Geek Wire Article The coding game: Microsoft's Visual Studio gets badges, achievements and leaderboard but don’t miss the official announcement on channel 9 about Visual Studio Achievements.

Where creativity meets technology – a fascinating interview with Jennifer Chayes who is the Managing Director of Microsoft Research New England. She talks a lot about the importance of STEM especially for girls.

Ken Royal is one of my favorite Ed Tech writers. He has just opened his new Internet home at Royal Reports Follow Ken at @kenroyal on Twitter as well