Hour of Code Resources

I originally posted this to the blog I run for one of my schools but I'm posted it here as well.

Earlier in the week students at Albert Hill took part in the global Hour of Code event to introduce them to computer science.

For students interested in pursuing it further on their own time I’ve put together a list of resources below:

Hour of Code - the original Hour of Code site used for Monday’s activities.

Snap!- Drag and drop programming interface designed to help you learn how to program.

Code Monkey - Learn how to code through by playing the game.

Code Maven - 59 lessons on coding fundamentals.

Code Monster - 58 short lessons on programming in Javascript.

Game Maven - Learn code and write three simple games.

Blockly - Series of educational games that teach programming.

Also, last summer an Introduction to Computer Science and Coding enrichment course was offered in summer school that will most likely be offered again. I encourage interested students to sign up for it when the summer school applications come out in late spring.

Lastly, I recently attended the Virginia Society for Technology in Education annual conference. While I was there I had a chance to play with The Finch robot that is designed as an even more hands on way to learn programming. It supports not only the drag and drop programming like what is found on the Hour of Code site but also writing code in many of the languages used today. I liked it so much I’m ordering one for my own son to play with.

IKEA Tech Finds

A few weekends ago the wife and I made the trek up to northern Virginia to the closest IKEA to pick up a few things for our house. I also grabbed two cheap tech related things that have proved very useful.

Above is how the underside of the desk in my home office has looked up until now, a tangled mess of cords. Thanks to this nifty little add on, the Signum cable management bracket, however it’s now completely cleaned up as seen below.

I also found this cheap little stand for all of two dollars. Normally on my desk my Mac is docked with an older 24” Apple Cinema Display running at 1920 x 1200. While this is usually enough screen space ocassionally I want to run dual display but I’ve always found it annoying to cope with the lower height of the laptop’s screen when it’s sitting flat on the desk. While the stand is designed for tablets it fits my 13” MacBook Pro perfectly and gives it just enough height to make it useful.

New Camera

With child #2 on the way my wife told me back in the fall she wanted to get a new camera. We've got a good point and shoot (Canon PowerShot S90 that I bought in 2009) but she wanted something with interchangeable lenses.

Not long after our first child was born I bought a Konica-Minolta Maxxum 5D. It took excellent photos and I invested in several lenses and other things for it. But I sold it a few years later and went back to a point and shoot mainly because it was too big and bulky to carry around.

In typical fashion with most any technology purchase I started doing extensive research; reading reviews and forum posts, checking prices, and looking at various models in person. Because of the aforementioned experience with the Konica I initially looked at micro four-thirds cameras instead of dSLRs. But the wife didn't care for those and with the amount of money involved anything I got had to meet her approval.

One thing I learned from having the KM (and from research) was you're not just buying a camera but buying into a system. Lenses and other accessories weren't as widely available for KM so this time around it came down to pretty much Canon vs Nikon. I've always liked Canons and have had several P&S models over the years. (SD1000, G9, and the current S90) so I was familiar with their menu system and set up. And after handling models from both manufacturers decided that was the way to go.

The other consideration was a lens. I'm a fan of zooms and knew that the standard included 18-55mm wouldn't give me enough reach. On the other hand I also didn't want to carry around multiple lenses. I looked around at several all-in-ones including the Tamron 18-270mm and Sigma's 18-250. But the more I read the more good things I found about Canon's new 18-135mm STM. It doesn't have quite the reach but the image quality is good and the focus is very quiet, an important feature for taking video.

Finding out about the lens ultimately lead me to the camera I ended up buying, the Rebel T4i. I scored a fantastic deal on Amazon with free two day shipping. The lower price was probably due at least in small part to the T5i being released a week after I placed my order but they're almost identical spec-wise and I'm not feeling any remorse about not waiting.

We haven't used it much yet, only taking about 200 photos but I've been extremely happy with the results so far. The autofocus is very fast (this was a big consideration in getting a dSLR) and I've found the 18-135 lens has more than enough reach for day to day photos. (Although eventually I probably will get a dedicated telephoto lens.) The camera, at least from my untrained eye, takes very nice photos. A few are below and more on my Flickr site. My wife and I are taking a trip out to the Eastern Shore soon and I'm looking forward to really putting it through its paces to see what it can do.