Microsoft Student Partners

Something useful to all students…  $10,000.

Microsoft is running a treasure hunt, where you download IE8, look out for clues on Twitter to find $10,000 on the Net.

We have posted often about Microsoft’s It’s Not Piracy offer for students, allowing us to get a completely full, legit copy of Office 2007 Ultimate for $75.00.

Making it an even better deal, when you purchase Office for $75 you go into the draw to win $5,000!

The competition ends June 30th, 2009 so get your copy of Office now to go into the draw!

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

One of the benefits of being a Microsoft Student Partner is that we get access to free Microsoft Certification Exam Vouchers for ourselves and to give away. Additionally Microsoft announced recently free technical exam vouchers for students through the DreamSpark program.

I thought I might as well work on my MCPD as .NET is one of my primary tools I use to write software.

I got myself a copy of Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Developer Foundation which is part of the self-paced training kit for the MCTS Exam 70-536.

At 794 pages this book is pretty huge. I was kind of overwhelmed at first. However when I started self-studying I found each chapter is broken down into bite-sized lessons. Each lesson is generally specified for about 40 mins, but I found I could read the lesson, and do the included exercise in about half that time. This was great for me, where often I’d only have 20-30 mins here and there to spend on this, and I could easily start a lesson knowing I could finish it off in the time I had free between other stuff I was doing.

The book itself has 16 chapters (listed below) on the fundamentals of the Microsoft .NET Framework. Although it says it expects the reader to have some experience, I found it explained well enough for even newer developers to understand.

Every lesson is followed by both a summary and a small multi-choice lesson review, which is great as we know the key to learning is repetition. Additionally each chapter also gives a summary and a review, along with case scenarios and suggested practices.

Like most Microsoft Press books, this book also comes with a companion CD. This includes practice tests and exam questions from each chapter. One thing I found on the CD was an included PDF of the entire book! This was great for downloading to my phone and notebook and being able to read a lesson when I had a spare 10 mins.

A couple of things I found useful were:

• The small lesson sizes
• “Real World” examples and best practices
• The integration of lessons and exam objectives
• Mini labs

Microsoft also provides resources for universities to teach Microsoft Certification through the IT Academy program. This would allow you to learn through some structured program at your university.

For the rest of us, the self-study training kits are a more cost-effective approach than a third party institution, which for me as a student is not really a feasible choice. But the book provided everything I need to pass the exam.

You can get a copy of this book at www.mspress.com.au.

I also have a copy of Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Developer Foundation to give away to a UWA Student, along with a second-shot exam voucher. To enter, please leave any comment below, and I will randomly draw a winner within the next week. Please use your @student.uwa.edu.au E-mail address in the comment.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

In what can only be described as an unforgettable and amazing finals race two teams – Team Emo (Michael Lawrence & Daniel Fozdar) and Team Dunno (Judah Lieblich & Jonathan Toby) raced through to a death (frag) defying draw after three rounds! Check out the amazing score sheet:

After three rounds with no possibility to declare a winner – neither in frags nor games, it was decided to declare both teams King of Halo!

Final Standings

Congratulations to Team Emo and Team Dunno and to everyone else who participated in the first (of many) UWA Halo shootout!

To the MVP - Microsoft mini-golf!	The Finals Get Intense	Team Emo and Team Dunno (check out the scores!)
To CSSC - Halo 3 for their new Xbox 360!	Till Next Time!

Shooting myself in the foot here – as part of Steve Balmer’s visit down under Microsoft are giving away a couple of Xboxs and some games. Only signup is required – so what are you waiting for?

On that note, don’t forget to tune in to hear Steve Balmer’s talk in Sydney this Thursday – more details on the Liberation Day website!

Good Luck on your exams!

It’s that time of year again – exams are bearing down, stress is building up and projects are due. In order to help relieve the stress a bit UWA MSPs are running a Halo shootout during swot vac! Held after all of your projects are handed in but just before the real exam stress sets in this your oppurunity to frag your friends and let out same steam.

We’ll be holding 2v2v2v2 games (i.e 4 teams of 2 per round) in a frag count shootout afterwhich the leaders will progress to an elimination ladder. There’ll be a slew of prizes and giveaways on the day, not just for the winners but also for random criteria (such as most frags in a single game etc).

When? November 4th
Where? CSSE 1.24
Team? Bring your buddy along on the day, otherwise, randomly assigned by our robotic overlord

Signup: http://events.wamsp.com.au/halo

See you there!

UWA MSPs would like to announce their Live Mesh Competition.

Simply sign up for Live Mesh through our gateway and go into the draw to win a stack of prizes.

You can even increase your chances by adding your own content to our Mesh.

For more details and to sign up CLICK HERE.

Register Now at xna.wamsp.com.au

If you live in Perth, Australia, are a student and would like to be involved in the Imagine Cup 2008 competition, please contact us asap.

Three WA MSPs are entering as a team into the competition and we require a graphic artist for some of our program artwork.

You would need to be experienced in creating digital artwork and be ready right away.

If you are interested please contact us on the contact page.

Luke
MSP (UWA)

If you have been thinking of entering into the Imagine Cup then get registered now! The date of submission for Software Design is fast approaching, so you really need to get registered and start building awesome software solutions! If you need help getting a team together, please Contact Us.

Visit www.imaginecup.com today!

Once again the Imagine Cup is back for another year, and we need your help!!

Microsoft HQ Australia, is making a bid to host the 2009 Imagine Cup Finals! “Hmmm…. That’s great, but how can I help??” Quite simply register for the Imagine Cup! There is no obligation to submit any items into the competition but getting people registered into the program is a key issue to show that not only is Australia great, but we are also supporting the competition in a bid for the finals!

However, if you do submit an entry, here is something that may be quite useful to know. Microsoft is providing access to free downloads for EVERY student who is part of a submission!

So if you are interested go to the Imagine Cup Website (http://imaginecup.com/Default.aspx) and sign-up today!!

Allan

MSP (Curtin)