School Community

I’ve talked about DreamSpark before of course but the start of the school year seems like a great time for a reminder. The Microsoft DreamSpark Program provides students with Microsoft Professional Development tools for free! Lots of tools! The full professional suite including Visual Studio and several server products. It provides access to the XNA creators club as well. It’s an amazing amount of software.

A recent edition is that now students can build and deploy apps to Windows Phone Marketplace for free through DreamSpark (In the US and other selected areas) This is a real value as it lets students create and sell applications without paying the usual marketplace fee.

The part of DreamSpark that gets the most attention is the sign up for college/university students. But high school students can get in on this program as well. The way this works is that someone (an adult who may be a teacher or an administrator) signs the school up and gets up to 200 access codes. This person (called an administrator by the program) then validates that the students they give these codes to are in fact students. The students can then sign up and start downloading software for free. And of course taking advantage of the other program features. Sign up you high school at https://www.dreamspark.com/highschool/

Give students some software and cut them lose to learn on their own. And have them look at the Imagine Cup and to think about entering that as well.

Similar Posts:

• Interesting Links Post 21 March 2011
• Interesting Links Post–6 July 2011
• Atlanta (Georgia) Area Windows Phone Camp for Students
• Three New Chances to Get Involved in the Imagine Cup
• Interesting Links 9 August 2010