Eric Maino

System.Brain.CoreDump();

High School .NET Initiative

Let me enlighten those of you that are interested in the high school .NET initiative.

 

Over the past year I have really been trying to think of ways that our community could drive .NET into the high schools. Microsoft  has really started trying to drive this initiative by offering a one week .NET training for high school faculty this summer. I really think this is a good move on their part, but who is to say the students will benefit from any of this. First the training is taking place way to late to even think about incorporating any of this into next year’s curriculum and secondly many of the high schools don’t have the budgets nor the labs to support VS.NET currently.

 

So why stop there? Well we really aren’t. I feel that if we want to get .NET into the high schools we should really begin with the students. My #1 goal isn’t to get .NET taught in the high schools right now at the moment, but yet to drive awareness in the student population. Two of the major things that I am planning to execute during the next school year are:

  • A high school .NET programming contest
  • High school .NET user groups

The details of the programming contest cannot be disclosed at this moment as they are still being discussed. I will state that the contest will most likely last a few weeks, with a big grand finale competition and will be launched in early fall. Based on how the pilot competition (held in Michigan, yet open to anyone willing to travel for the finals), we are hoping to launch a much larger competition in the spring if not next fall for sure. Those that compete in the pilot competition will be more then welcome to compete the spring competition if there is one.

 

The high school .NET user group will not be called a “user group”, but yet another name is currently in the works. We are hoping to align this initiative very closely with The Spoke and I am currently working on creating a kit for all interested schools. The vision I have is to create an organization within the school similar to a chess club, science club, or French club. This organization will be designed for students, by students and run by students. Our goal is to align these organizations very closely with their local community champions such as the MVPs, Student Ambassadors, user group leaders and other folks from Microsoft.

 

I am working very closely with folks from Microsoft on both of these endeavors right now and will continue to keep everyone posted.

 

I am also in the process of planning a dinner to chat with local high school students and other influentials in Michigan. The dinner will be location in West Michigan (Grand Rapids – Holland area) though will be open to any individuals. Space will be limited so if you are interested send respond to this post or send me an email so I can tack you onto the email that will be going out with the dinner details.

Posted: Jun 04 2004, 11:49 PM by emaino | with 5 comment(s)

Comments

Eric Engler said:

Thanks for the info. I agree that there are 2 big obstacles:
1) Teacher training
2) Cost of procurring VS for schools

Even the $99 price of the Academic version is too costly for many schools, since they need multiple copies in order to teach a class.

I think Microsoft should donate VS to schools if they agree to use it in programming classes.

Having said this, I can't come up with an easy fix for #1. The programming teachers I've met at the high school level have very little formal education in computer science (they are normally math or science majors), and they structure their classes around the things they know (normally VB6, or sometimes Java).

This cuts to the bigger issue of the fact that .NET has a big learning curve. It's hard for people who aren't professional programmers to learn it. They just don't have the time to invest in learning it.

I wish their were a simplied IDE, and a good book that tries to teach a subset of the .NET Framework that could get people going in a minimum of time. It should be easier for people to build simple apps without learning lots of complicated classes, methods, properties, etc.

My son wrote a version of Life for a high school science fair using VB.NET. There wasn't a single teacher on staff who kew anything about .NET. I brought my laptop in to the fair so he could show people the program. I was expecting that some of the science teachers might ask me questions about .NET, and I was prepared to offer my own time to help them learn about it. Nobody asked any questions :-(
And this is at one of the biggest high schools in the Atlanta area.

Eric
# June 5, 2004 9:40 PM

Eric Maino said:

Eric

I do agree that those are two obstacles that do currently exist but are in the process of being resolved. I really can't disclose more details on this at the moment, but let me say that getting VS.NET into the high schools and to make it available to the students should not be much of a problem down the road.

As for the comment about the simplified IDE, is there anything specific that sticks out in your mind that would make the IDE easier to use or easier to learn? Please be sure you voice any concerns about the IDE so the product teams can attempt to incorporate these into the next versions.

I don't really agree with you that VB.NET has much more of a learning curve then VB6. One study I would love to see done is a comparison of new programmers to see what appears to be harder to learn as a first language. I will agree you can incorporate more complexities into VB.NET, but this doesn't mean the language really has a higher learning curve.
# June 5, 2004 9:56 PM

James Griffith said:

Hi Eric E.,

Have you heard of the MSDNAA High School membership? For $299 it provides VS to every student and teacher. Check out http://www.msdnaa.net/hsmember/ for more information.
# June 8, 2004 2:04 AM

Nancy Head said:

Can you elaborate for me your rationale for promoting .NET specifically, rather than programming concepts generally, for HS students?

My own feeling has been that CS learning does not (and should not) require a proprietary solution.

Nancy

# June 11, 2004 11:45 AM

Eric Maino said:

Nancy

The real objective of the user groups and programming contests are to promote programming concepts. It is just that the vehicle I have choosen to use and gain support for is .NET.

I agree that CS learning should not require a proprietary solution either and that is not my intention, nor my goal with all of this.
# June 11, 2004 12:16 PM
Leave a Comment

(required) 

(required) 

(optional)

(required)