Daniel Forhan

Daniel Forhan Computer Science Teacher and Java Programmer

Mar 15

Algonquin Takes First at Providence College Regional Programming Contest

Algonquin team won the first place trophy at Providence College.In addition to the trophy, Providence College has granted a $5,000 scholarship to each member of the first-place team (should they decide to enroll at Providence College). Way to go team!!!Photo (l t r)Professor Fran Ford, Eddie Pyne,Tom Hayden, Jack Gerulskis, and Hongzhe (Hernry) Liu ......

Posted On Monday, March 16, 2015 12:05 PM Algonquin programming team , providence college , programming contest

May 12

Algonquin Regional Programming Team Continues Winning Ways

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Algonquin Regional Programming Team won first place in regional computer programming competition at Fitchburg State University. This is now the second regional event the team has won this Spring (also winning the Providence College event). Students solved math problems using the Java and C++ programming languages, and competed against students from ......

Posted On Friday, May 4, 2012 1:18 PM

Mar 12

Algonquin Takes First at Providence College

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Algonquin High School Team takes first place at Providence College Programming Contest.Winning team:Jackson Brodeur, Shaun Tan, Raymond Mead, and Akshay ThejaswiEach member awarded a trophy and a $5,000 scholarship to PC.Nice job team! Photo and details here: article link ......

Posted On Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:44 AM

Jan 10

Using Video Games to Teach Programming

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As a programming teacher one of the things that often comes to mind is; how can I teach programming in a way that is interesting and dynamic? Very recently I came up with a plan that I hope will address this idea. My plan is to add a new and exciting programming course called "Game Development and Programming with XNA" to our course offerings. Coincidentally ......

Posted On Tuesday, January 26, 2010 8:36 AM

Dec 09

I'm back with Big News!!!

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As you can tell by the gap in the posting dates it has been a while since I last posted on this blog. With all that has been happening in my personal as well as professional life, blogging has taken a back seat. Many things have happened since I last posted. I won't enumerate them, but let's just say life has been exciting to say the least. One of the ......

Posted On Tuesday, December 15, 2009 7:43 AM

Apr 06

Hunt for the Wombat

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Very often as us AP Computer Teacher's approach exam time we start to think of interesting activities that our students can do the weeks that follow the exam. I was fortunate enough to come across a real nice project that was developed by a teacher and his former student who is now an employee at Microsoft. The project is called “Hunt for the ......

Posted On Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:08 AM

Great Idea For a Computer Science Education Day

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Brian Scarbeau has a great idea posted on his blog to promote Computer Science Education.

Check it out. I'm in!!!

Posted On Wednesday, April 26, 2006 8:52 AM

Mar 06

Professional Development in Phoenix, Arizona

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A couple a of days ago I attended a conference in Arizona that was hosted by a new (to me anyway) and exciting company called 21st-Century Learning. This was a very exciting trip for me as I had a chance to see demonstrations of some very interesting ways to introduce lessons into to the classroom. The main focus of what this company does is deliver ......

Posted On Thursday, March 9, 2006 5:37 AM

Mar 06

Programming Contest at Providence College

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On Monday some of my AP Computer Science students had a chance to participate in the annual programming contest at Providence College. This the 21st year that PC has hosted this event. The contest was a fantastic experience for my students. They had a chance to compete against students from all over New England. It was very challenging. Most of the ......

Posted On Friday, March 10, 2006 5:01 AM

Feb 06

What is a "brrreeeport" ?

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Here is something kind of cool I came across on Brian Scarbeau's blog today. Looks like fun. To find out what this is all about go here.

Posted On Tuesday, February 14, 2006 10:02 AM

Feb 06

Exception handling

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This week, in addition to re-visiting the Marine Biology Case Study, our class wrapped up the unit on exception handling. My students seemed to get a good handle on this topic and it went much smoother than other units we have covered. We did also get into the idea of writing our own exception classes (that extend the Java Exception class) and how we ......

Posted On Wednesday, February 8, 2006 7:12 PM

MBS Simulation-Inheritance

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Today our AP Computer Science class will be doing the Marine Biology role play exercise. Many AP teachers, like Brian Scarbeau use this to help students visualize the role of objects in the MBS classes, and how they relate to one another. Earlier this school year we did a version of the role play that simulated fish in an environment. This week will ......

Posted On Wednesday, February 8, 2006 6:38 AM

Feb 06

Linux Lab fun

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The most recent adventure my computer club has embarked on is the development of a new Linux lab. So far they have installed about five different Linux distributions on various computers on the computer club lab. Their goal was to further developer their networking/TCP/IP skills and at the same time see how different versions of Linux perform in parallel ......

Posted On Tuesday, February 7, 2006 5:10 AM

Jan 06

Be careful what examples you give your students

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Yesterday I sent my students an e-mail link that I came across, of what I thought was an interesting little program that might make for a good project once the AP students took the exam. Well let me say that I wish that I had waited, because many of the students got hooked on the example program. Take a look. See if you can last for 2 minutes in the ......

Posted On Monday, January 30, 2006 10:18 AM

Dec 05

Arrays: Copy vs. Clone

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Occasionally when working with an array is may be useful to make a copy of that array. What might not be apparent is that by making a copy of an an array there are implications that can cause unintended side-effects if one isn’t aware of what actually happens when a simple copy the array is made. For instance let’s consider: int [] numbers ......

Posted On Thursday, December 1, 2005 4:57 PM

Dec 05

Java Puzzle

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Today four of my students are competing in a programming contest at Fitchburg State College (MA). Since I cannot interact with them during the competition I have had a little time to catch up on some of the blogs/newsletters that I enjoy reading (and update my blog). One thing I came across this morning was a neat Java puzzle from one of my favorite ......

Posted On Friday, December 2, 2005 7:42 AM

Nov 05

Working with Arrays

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This past week we have been studying arrays and ArrayLists in my AP class. It didn’t take long for students to become excited about using them once they saw how valuable of a tool they are. One of the issues I try get across with them is how arrays/ArrayLists are a key part to use of sorting/searching algorithms. Since sorting and searching doesn’t ......

Posted On Sunday, November 20, 2005 12:37 PM

Nov 05

LINQ

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There is an awesome article about LINQ on Azam Sharp's blog today, http://geekswithblogs.net/A... The Microsoft Faculty Advisory team had a nice opportunity to hear about this from Anders Hejlsberg at our meeting in Redmond. Chanel 9 also has a nice interview with him as well where he talks about some of the exciting ......

Posted On Saturday, November 5, 2005 3:40 PM

Apple's and Banana's

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By now you are thinking, what the heck is a title like this doing on a computer science teachers blog? Now that I have official entered the blog world and started dumping my thoughts/opinions into cyberspace I have also started reading many blogs that other people are writing as well. One thing I have noticed is that in many respects blogs have become ......

Posted On Saturday, November 5, 2005 6:30 AM

Microsoft In the news

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I came across an interesting article today about Microsoft. I would be curious to hear peoples opinions on it. Looks like this could be an exciting opportunity for Microsoft's customers. Microsoft Acquires FolderShare, a File-Synchronization Technology Provider. ......

Posted On Saturday, November 5, 2005 7:25 AM

Nov 05

Method overloading, is this.good(idea) ?

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The short answer is yes, but… The ability to overload is one the many powerful tools built in to the Java Language (as well as many other programming languages). Like many of the powerful tools in the Java language that we use to program there are often complexities that get in the way of proper use. I hope to describe some of them here. There ......

Posted On Thursday, November 3, 2005 10:00 AM

Networking 101 -the Student way

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Yesterday after school a few students from my AP class came by for our weekly computer club meeting. At this meeting they took a computer system, which was an amalgam of spare parts, and installed Ubuntu ( a user-friendly open source Linux shell) with the intent on building a Web server for our school. They then installed Apache, MySQL, and a PHP web ......

Posted On Thursday, November 3, 2005 5:40 AM

Oct 05

What's with the Modifiers?

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Each year that I have taught Java or AP Computer Science I have found my that students tend to get confused with the proper use of modifiers when designing classes. Partly from a misunderstanding of what the modifiers mean, and partly because they haven't really developed a strong conception what the whole OOP paradigm is all about. So here is a brief ......

Posted On Monday, October 31, 2005 5:45 AM

Oct 05

SPM LAN Party

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Students in my AP CS class decided that it would be fun to test out their TCP/IP knowledge by setting up a mini- LAN in one of our old computer rooms. They planned out the whole thing during after school meetings with our Computer Club. Yesterday (yes Sunday) each student brought in their own computer systems to school, and they linked them together. ......

Posted On Monday, October 24, 2005 11:27 AM

Oct 05

Welcome

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Hello, welcome to my new Blog! - Just dropping in to introduce myself. My name is Daniel Forhan and I am a new member of Microsoft’s K-12 Faculty Advisory Board. I have been a certified teacher now for over 15 years and in that time I have taught many different computer languages such as Pascal, Basic, C, C++, and now Java. During my teaching ......

Posted On Friday, October 21, 2005 4:08 PM