Rebuilding my Eco-System

19. April 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
Newsblur Care Package

Newsblur Care Package (Photo credit: Zack Fernandes)

The last few days, I’ve been reading and collecting a lot of information.  Once upon a time, as I mentioned a while back, I had a system that allowed me to very easily share items I’d collected to a web site.  I used Reader plus Delicious and then Javascript to embed.  Delicious had a tool for that, but that went away when Yahoo sold it.  Ever since, I’ve been trying to replace my system with something new. So far, I haven’t found the perfect thing.  I’ve signed up for Newsblur. So far I like it, and there are lots of sharing options. I think I’m going back to Diigo, which allows me to post items on my blog automatically.

However, I have a slight problem, which I think can be fixed with iftt.  For the newsblur iPad app, where I read a lot of my feeds (I like the size and convenience), Diigo isn’t available.    But I think I can go to an intermediary and then post to Diigo, which will then post to the blog.

Here’s the thing.  I like reading things on my iPad.  It is really built to be a very nice consumption machine.  But taking those things that I consume and remixing them is really hard on the iPad.  There’s no having multiple tabs option.  Most of the stuff that’s built in for sharing isn’t for sharing to a blog and then adding commentary.  Heck, it’s even hard to post to Google plus where you have more than 140 characters.  I guess Facebook does too, but *shiver*.  Maybe the iPad needs to get better at this, but I think the rise of the iPad explains, in part the decline in blogging and creating.  I blame Facebook and Twitter, too.  The world has moved to a consume and tweet it world.  God, I sound old.  I’m actually okay with some quick sound bytes.  I use Twitter and Google + a lot.  But I don’t always want to limit myself to reading and writing 140 characters, and that’s what I feel like some of the apps on iPads encourage.  Read this article, then post it to FB or Twitter, sometimes without allowing even a comment.

If you’re wondering if software matters, it does.  The way interfaces are designed can determine how we interact with information, whether we’re going to be consumers or producers. No one should just accept what comes with your machine.  Hack it to be the way you want it.  When I get some more time, I might create a better system from scratch, but that’s a summer project.  For now, as they used to say, “small pieces, loosely joined.”

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Time Passes

21. February 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

How does two weeks go by–just like that?  I’ve had the busiest two weeks, and there’s more to come.  Honestly, I don’t see a break until spring break.  It’s all good stuff, but I really wish I had some time to sit back, think, plan (I’m currently planning classes at night because there’s no time in the day), and reflect.  I pulled out my to-do list yesterday, and sitting there are 3 or 4 long-term projects that I’d hoped to plug away at, but which I haven’t touched.

On the plus side, I’m giving a talk in a couple of weeks at our big national conference.  I also had another talk accepted at another big national conference that happens over the summer.  And I am spearheading a couple of things at school that are starting to come to fruition.  Which takes work, but it’s good work.  I had another robotics competition this weekend, which my Upper School students won (with the help of the boys school down the road, but they did some really good work).  We’re gearing up for another one in a couple of weeks.  I started another club that’s focused on programming, and we have 6 or so students coming.  I’ve helped a student land an externship, written a letter for another to do a programming camp, and I’ve presented my classes to all the grade levels.  Rumor has it that enrollments are going to be up next year.  We’ll just have to see how the schedule falls out.

I’m both excited and nervous most of the time.  I’m excited by all the good work around computing that’s happening at my school, and for myself personally.  But I’m also nervous about living up to expectations.  Stupid imposter syndrome.  But I’m plowing ahead, taking one day at a time.  I hope to be writing here more often.  I miss it.

Assessment, Group Work and other vexing issues

05. November 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Last week, Gas Station without Pumps had a post about the problems with group work.  I just did a group project in my CS class which I didn’t think went quite the way I wanted it to.  It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either. In part, it’s my fault for not setting better parameters for how the group project should go, but I think it’s also just really hard for students to do group work in a real sense.  They’re too worried about how they’re going to be assessed to contribute in an authentic way.  Stronger students often take over or the work gets divided up in ways that aren’t really useful; it’s just convenient for the students, especially for the assessment piece.  I plan to do some further research about how to make this work better.  I believe in group work.  I think I just need to include the right kinds of assessment tools to recreate the authentic experience one would get in a work situation.

I’m constantly struggling with assessment.  I’ve been teaching for over 20 years, and it’s this issue that I always get hung up on.  I like project-based learning, and for the most part, it works for me, but then I also want to include ways of testing for concept understanding.  What’s happening to me a little bit is that students rely on me and the textbook or other materials to complete their projects.  They’re copying a lot of code and altering it.  That’s not a bad thing necessarily, but then I’m never sure if they really understand what they’re doing.  So I have started having tests to make sure they really get a concept.  But I’m not sure that works that well either.

Last year, I mentioned that I was primarily focusing on the creativity in the projects.  The more explicit I was about that, the better the projects were, and the less “code copying” the students did.  So, often, my issue with assessment is really an issue of me not laying out the guidelines.  Of course, creativity is a subjective thing, and I hate turning something like that into a rubric (though I do for middle school).  Basically, I want them to create projects that make me say, “Wow, that’s pretty cool.”  But I can’t put that on the assignment sheet.  Sigh. I’d love to hear from others about assessing projects or even assessing inquiry-based learning, which is something I want to do next year.

Projects for girls

31. October 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

A week ago, Alfred Thompson was musing about CS projects that might be interesting for girls. I commented on the virtual pet program my CS II students are working on. Honestly, finding things all girls are interested in is difficult. I have all girls in all my classes, so I’m always leaning in the direction of “girl-specific” projects, but mostly, I keep it general and let them pick. So, in my 7th grade Scratch class, I tell them to create a story, and the guidelines I set out are technical (change backgrounds, change costumes, have your characters talk) and contextual (your story must have a plot). What I don’t say is what the story has to be. So I got stories about princesses and cats, rock stars and aliens. Recreating fairy tales was by far the most popular thing to do. Now they’re working on games, where going through mazes seems to be the most popular choice.

As I’ve written about before, I’ve always struggled with engaging 8th grade. Infographics seems to be working. The key is I let them pick their data. So, I have broadway plays, Starbucks drinks and favorite vacation spots.

To teach lists last year, I told students to create word games. We ended up with trivia games, boggle, jumble and lingo. Graphics is always a huge hit with my students. Graphically representing anything adds to the fun. So when we were learning about files and data structures, they created infographics (it’s a theme for me this year). Objects is the same way. Though it’s a challenge to add graphics, they like visualizing their objects, so we have virtual pets and haunted houses. For final projects last year, we ended up with pong and snake, fun games with easy to generate graphics.

I think the key is to offer several examples. For the objects project, I suggested everything from a book being sold online to a student registration system. While the latter might be more real world, they tend to gravitate toward things that are more fun. Choice is key. Many of the CS classes I’ve taken have students writing code for a single purpose. Write a poker program or write a program that reads in this file and spits out this data. Those lack creativity because one has no choice. I’m actually assessing creativity, which I can’t do if students have no choice, if all I’m looking for is good code. For the record, the harder the projects get, the messier the code. If I graded just on whether the code was organized, my students would fail.

Creative ideas and solutions to problems are more important to me than neat code. And girls seem to want to come up with creative ideas and don’t want to focus so much on neat code. All I ask is for no errors. If the code doesn’t quite do what you had in mind, fine, we’ll deal with that later. I don’t get hung up on things they don’t need to know until or unless they become professional programmers. Things like comments or even public versus private methods I leave for another time.

Most of my projects, I come up with myself, but many I get from books. The virtual pet project I got from Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 3rd Edition. I often modify them or let the students modify them. We discuss what might be appropriate and fun before we start. Familiar projects might be easier for a teacher, but I’m betting the concepts don’t stick with the students if they don’t find them compelling.

Ultimately, I think compelling projects will work for boys or girls, but I find girls often need more suggestions than boys. The industry right now is all about boys so examples of games, for example, come readily to boys. My girls turn to friv, which offers dress-up games and other kinds of girly games, for example. I do worry about stereotyping for some of these games, but if creating a dress-up game will draw in one more girl to CS, I can address the stereotype issue later (which I always do). Just ask girls what they’re interested in, and then try to turn it into a project. That usually works better than trying to come up with your own ideas.

How computing helps during a crisis

30. October 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

While many of us lost power, leaving us without access to tv or Internet, there are so many ways that computing helped us weather this disaster. First, there’s the mass amount of computing power that went into predicting the path of the storm. Because our computing power is better than it was, the path can be predicted more accurately and earlier. This allows states and municipalities to prepare sooner, to tell people to evacuate, to set up shelters. Individuals have time to get supplies and prepare. That saves lives.

Once the storm is underway, communication is key. Thanks to computing, there are multiple avenues for communication. Cell phones, email, twitter, all keep people in touch with each other. I was on twitter most of the night, following local tweeters from the media and fire departments, letting us know where roads were dangerous, where power was out, and what places were open for dinner.

Computing may help us find a way to keep these things from happening again. Learning what patterns, environmental or other kinds, contributed to the storm, may help us reverse the larger damage that we’ve done and help us rebuild in ways that allow the planet to function better. Or it can help us think about putting electrical wires underground or other things that may keep damage to a minimum.

Not that humans don’t have a hand in solving these problems, but using models and data produced by computing can help humans make good decisions.

Things I’ve learned

23. October 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

In the last week or so, I’ve been working on a couple of projects where I didn’t know everything going in. I created a little mock election program in Python, which was easy enough. But I wanted to put it on the web, something I’ve never done before. I’ve done a lot of things on the web, which is how I started in this computing gig to begin with. But connecting the two was a challenge. I had to marry two paradigms. I’ll admit that I got frustrated more than once. I swear I could feel my brain getting hotter as I struggled. Maybe I created some more brain cells.

After I got everything to be functional, I made it pretty. I had more fun than is probably legal playing with CSS and HTML, which I haven’t done in a serious way for a long time. I learned a couple of new CSS tricks, which was fun. I forgot how much fun it is to see the results of your work so immediately. Change a color. Boom! Done! Change the background image. Boom! Instant gratification. So much fun.

I’m also teaching objects in my CS II class, something I haven’t done much of. I’m spending some quality time with objects, which is more fun than it should be. I have a nice little virtual pet program going that is giving me way too much joy.

I wish I had more time to do these kinds of things, but, of course, that’s why I teach and change what I do frequently. I can’t imagine doing the same thing over and over.

New toy

12. September 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Playing with python for iOS. Not sure how practical it is, but it’s fun.

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Programming for girls

04. September 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

The number of programs geared just for women or girls seems to be increasing rapidly. Almost every day, it seems, I read about a camp or a class just for the female gender. I have nothing against these programs. I teach in an all girls’ school. I think there’s value in single sex education. But I wonder if they are working. Will we see a huge influx of women in tech or programming jobs in 10 years? I’m honestly not sure.

I’m sort of inclined to think that these programs are separated from education in a way that may not be useful in the long term. There’s no continuity in these programs. They’re often one off attempts to teach technology x. After that, the student is on her own to figure out what to do next. Maybe it will inspire them to take a college course or advocate for CS to be taught in their high school or to enroll in the one class that exists but is always all boys. If so, that’s a good thing. I don’t know how some of these programs are measuring success, and if anyone is studying them in a sustained way.

I can’t help but think, also, that these programs may take away some of the incentive for schools to offer courses themselves or to recruit more girls to existing programs. I just feel a lack of connection between these programs and what I and many CS teachers are trying to do.

MOOCing

13. August 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

While traveling, I started participating in a MOOC n computer science. Everyone and their brother has been touting these as the game changer in higher education. Please stop. I honestly can’t imagine anyone getting a complete degree this way and doing well. While there are likely some people and subjects that are well suited to this format, I find it a frustrating way to learn something new. Yes, the videos are short, which is indeed a good thing,and it’s cool that there are questions you can actually answer. But there’s only one right answer and no one to ask why your answer isn’t right. Sometimes in the explanation, there’s a brief mention of other ways to solve the problem, but no explanation of what those solutions might be, and worse, why the actual answer is better than those other solutions.

After a while of trying to sort out answers for myself and getting them “wrong”, I gave up and just clicked on the answer. This can’t be a good way to learn. It’s also true that I’m under conditions not necessarily conducive to learning, but I suspect many people who choose to enroll in classes online are in similar kinds of situations. Full-time jobs, kids, no money to pay for other classes, low motivation, etc. I just don’t find the material compelling enough to dispel all those distractions.

I’m going to continue, though, and I may change my mind. But so far, it’s not living up to the hype.

Please send housecleaning robots, k thx bai

31. July 2012 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

I hate housework. But I like a (mostly) clean house. Also housework takes away from more important and fun activities like programming and hanging with your family or friends. For most of my unpleasant tasks, I try to find technology that will help or motivate me. I have electronic to do lists and exercise trackers. I’m writing two programs, one as a friendly weight loss competition between me and my husband and one to store recipes and on hand ingredients to make cooking easier.

But for the most basic chores, technology has still not come up with better solutions. Washing dishes is about as good as it’s going to get, unless they come up with a way to put the dishes away automatically. There are robotic vacuums and mops. I have a vacuum, which works reasonably well for a quick clean, but for deeper cleaning, I have to use old school methods. And laundry is still a major chore. Why wash and dry in separate bins? Where’s my laundry folding robot? I know. It’s a really hard problem and expensive to solve. I could use something to poke the rest of my family, too. I’d love to send a robot into the kids rooms, wake them up, and assign them some chores, prodding them until they’re completed. Could be done with enough effort, I’m sure. Maybe one to poke Mr. Geeky, too, at least until the other robots are invented.

An organizing robot would be nice, too. Couldn’t there be a special sorting algorithm to determine the ideal placement for everything in your house? That would be awesome. If anyone wants to invent these things, go right ahead. I won’t even ask for a cut, as long as I am saved from housework.

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