Tag Archives: education

Alan Kay on education

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Scholastic.com: Face to Face: Alan Kay Still Waiting for the Revolution:

Q: Well, what should 21st-century education be about?
A: The most critical thing about the 20th and 21st centuries is that there’s a bunch of new invented ideas–many of them connected with modern civilization–that our nervous systems are not at all set up to automatically understand. Equal rights, for example. Or calculus. You won’t find these ideas in ancient or traditional societies.

If you take all the anthropological universals and lay them out, those are the things that you can expect children to learn from their environment–and they do. But the point of school is to teach all those things that are inventions and that are hard to learn because we’re not explicitly wired for them. Like reading and writing.

Virtually all learning difficulties that children face are caused by adults’ inability to set up reasonable environments for them. The biggest barrier to improving education for children, with or without computers, is the completely impoverished imaginations of most adults.

Followup link: Squeakland.org

How I’m celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

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There is a light snowfall gracing Philadelphia today. The kind of quiet snowfall that brings with it an invitation for some reflection.

Saturday I got up as if it was a work day and headed to class. In a Villanova FastForward class, you attend once a week, and participate in mandatory activities online. For this class that boils down to a weekly timed online quiz, on Tuesday, and a new discussion topic to participate in each week.

Turns out many of my earlier fears were unfounded, at least for this particular class. There was a good mix of people aged from around 20 to around 60. So I didn’t turn out to be the old guy at the bar. And I did participate in answering questions from Dr. Pohlhaus, our instructor. Still, there is a required oral report later in the semester – I won’t be able to pull off my usual avoidance of public speaking. Scary, but this is good practice for me. That’s the only way to get better at something.

The course is required of all students going to Villanova – Christian Theology: An IntroductionTHL 1050-101. I’m enjoying the subject matter. Which is good because in this short running class there are four books to read. I’ve needed to reacquaint myself with note taking while reading, I haven’t hand written so much in such a short span in years.

Particularly timely is Stephen J. Nichols’ “Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us About Suffering & Salvation”. Getting to listen to Blues in class and talk about how it relates to theology is terrific. I lucked out in my first course. The music angle makes this easier for me – Heavy Metal loving, horrific songwriting guitarist that I am.

Grace, redemption, and hope from suffering, oppression, sorrow and pain.

In a way – I realize now that is the story of my mom’s life. It is the story each of us are compelled to write for ourselves one way or another. And it is a story that has written itself out in big strokes through history time and again.

Martin Luther King Jr. – Thank you.

And here is to tomorrow.

While I don’t look at President Obama as the miracle worker some do – and nor do I think things are going to radically ‘change’ because he is president – it does mark a new day in America and a recognition that massive change has already taken place. There is reason to hope. While some feel hope is a wasted emotion – I know otherwise. As does history. Hope encourages us to act and to fight for something better. We’re all in this together.

Sing.

Got my Villanova ID badge today

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Big day. I took off from work to get some legwork done at Villanova. Paid my first semester tuition, got my parking pass, bought my books, and got my ID badge.

My first day is this Saturday. It would be a lie if I said I wasn’t excited – and even little scared. Which is entirely normal, I know.

One foot in front of the other.

Some programming links and reading

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On loving what you do and practice

I love what I do. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize it as hard work – but I do believe I am one of the few lucky ones who has found a career that challenges, excites, and pays the bills. I repeat however – it is hard work. There are no free rides in life. You need to work at what you do in order to be a success at it.

Coding Horror: Programming: Love It or Leave It and the thread at Joel on Software that inspired the post – “Thinking of leaving the industry”.

Tim O’Reilly: Hard Work and Practice in Programming – an email thread discussion about programming, learning, and practice. via rc3.org.

On constructive criticism and feedback

ThousandtyOne!: Leadership, Constructive Criticism And Not Playing The Blame Game:

In the world of software development most managers are taught the blame game, right when they are young and budding management students, business analysts or programmers taking their first fumbling steps at managing a team. For most managers, blaming the process, an individual’s incompetence or the whole team’s incompetence is an easy excuse for all failures; including theirs. I’ve hardly ever seen managers personally attached to team members, spending genuine effort in trying to help them find their core competencies and coming forward to blatantly own up failures and take responsibility when things don’t work out.

I’ve hardly ever seen managers lending constructive one on one direct verbal criticism followed by genuine help. I’m not talking about a generalized you-need-to-get-better-at-coding-email followed by be-careful-next-time-email followed by I-am-going-home-but-check-in-the-code-and-email-me-the-status-as-soon-as-possible kind of criticism here.

I’m talking about the blatant and precise your-use-of-object-orientation-in-the-administration-module-sucks said with empathy, followed by a joke, followed by lets-go-out-for-a-cup-of-coffee, followed by lets-stay-late-and-refractor-together kind of constructive criticism. Or for that matter, let’s-meet-during-the-weekend-and-fix-this kind of constructive criticism; and that dear reader, irrespective of what they tell you, is not a waste of your time; it’s what you were hired to do; especially If you were hired to lead a team. If you weren’t specifically hired to do that, I suggest that you do it anyways.

If you work with a team, don’t criticize ruthlessly; if you lead a team don’t play the blame game; and remember, it doesn’t matter what they teach you in management schools or tell you at your workplace, if your project isn’t cruising along successfully, it’s always your fault.

If you must criticize, do so constructively, followed by empathy, followed by genuine help. I can’t teach you how to do that. What I can do, however, dear reader, is end this post abruptly and rather dramatically, leaving you with words of wisdom worth pondering on, from one of my all time favorite movies. Here’s Wishing you, good leadership, healthy teams and a good life.

Jonathan Lange: Your Code Sucks and I Hate You: The Social Dynamics of Code Reviews:

Code reviews provide an amazing opportunity to grow as a programmer and to improve the software we make. There are many choices that a project can make about how reviews are done and what they can achieve. By thinking carefully about how technologies and processes affect the basic human interactions involved in code review, open source projects can avoid traps that scare off newcomers or wear down longstanding contributors and instead focus on building the best software possible.

Some unrelated additional links

devChix: Beautiful Python: The programming language that taught me how to love again

Software for Civic Life: An Interview with Mike Mathieu of Frontseat.org

Student loans can be dangerous

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I need to quickly secure a student loan, and it looks far more complicated and dangerous than it should be. LATimes: Student loans turn into crushing burden for unwary borrowers:

…Hickey knew she would need loans to complete her degree, so she went to the campus financial aid office as a freshman. After she filled out paperwork, Brooks Institute set her up in a loan program administered by Sallie Mae, the nation’s biggest student lender.

Sallie Mae was chartered by the federal government in 1972, and most of its business is in issuing federally insured student loans. But while it may appear to be a quasi-government agency, it is in fact a for-profit company whose stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange.

Hickey ended up with $20,000 in low-interest federally guaranteed loans issued by Sallie Mae, and $120,000 in higher-interest private loans issued by Sallie Mae.

Hickey said no one explained the difference to her.

“The financial aid officer just said that my federal loans weren’t enough to pay the tuition, but that was OK because they had these great alternative loans,” Hickey said. “They made it sound so good that I didn’t ask that many questions.”

Tim Halsey, vice president of finance for Brooks Institute, declined to discuss Hickey’s case directly, citing federal privacy laws. But he said the school’s financial aid officers take great pains to explain the differences between loans and to guide students to the best deals.

“It is really to our advantage to get the loans and interest rates as low as possible,” Halsey said.

“My motivation is to get that person to come to the school, if that’s what they want to do. If I can get those costs as low as possible, it benefits us both.”

Discussion at Kevin Drum’s blog.

This loan mess is made even scarier by the fact that college costs are rising faster than income. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, college tuition and fees, adjusted for inflation, rose 439 percent from 1982 to 2007. Median family income rose 147 percent during the same period.

Inquirer: “Witness the world of college admissions at perhaps its greatest point of divergence.”

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Inquirer: “Toward college without a map Lack of counselors leaves students adrift.”:

In Philadelphia, former school district CEO Paul Vallas tried to give students a fairer shake by covering the cost for them to take on-line and face-to-face SAT classes from private companies.

But the classroom SAT prep was halted in 2006 as a budget deficit opened, and the online course was dropped this year, also for lack of money.

Top city and school district officials said last week that, despite budget restraints, they would restore funding for SAT prep classes. They are also planning a call-in center for students to get help on college admissions.

…Superintendent Arlene Ackerman said last week she was stunned upon arriving in June to find how little time counselors spend on college and career guidance and is redirecting their priorities.

The dearth of services is painfully apparent to Philadelphia Futures and White-Williams Scholars, nonprofits that help promising district students get to college.

“Students in the comprehensive high schools must badger their overworked counselors for everything they need in the college admission process,” said Joan Mazzotti, executive director of Philadelphia Futures.

“They do not have the luxury of being badgered by their counselors.”

Overbrook High Principal Ethelyn Payne Young said the outcome was obvious.

“Some of them end up maybe not going anywhere [to college] or not going to where we know they really could go. . . . When you don’t have enough resources, enough manpower to touch every kid, you lose some. You lose many.

High School Dropout Epidemic

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NYTimes: States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School:

…many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.

Going back to school

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It’s a long story, but I’ve decided it’s time for me to head back to school for something other than a certificate.

I had begun this journey back in 2004, but got hit with … life .. that pulled my priorities elsewhere: Emma, the Norgs Un-conference, the breaking up of my band, my mom’s illness and passing, the terrible back and leg pain I was experiencing (long story – there is great progress here), and the rebuilding of Comcast.net, of which I as a major part in developing its architecture.

Now, passing beyond the needed crisis-of-the-moment handling of that time, I can refocus on what I want to – my family, my work (both of which cross section with my hobbies and passions – I am blessed). My education is in support of these. Hopefully will be posting regular updates as to the process.

Michael Davis’s Inspirational Story and Turbo Pascal

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Sip from the Firehose: Michael Davis: Memories of Turbo Pascal version 1.0:

At the time, I was an 18 year old high school dropout that had recently been incarcerated in the Lebanon Correctional Institute outside of Cincinnati, OH. The one saving grace of this facility was that the Quaker originated Wilmington College had a branch located within the walls of the prison.

Facing the possibility of a long sentence, I made probably the best decision of my life to that point. That decision was to get my GED and quickly get enrolled in college. It only took a few days of incarceration to realize that something in my life needed to change and getting an education seemed to be the best way to do it. In addition to the Burroughs B1990 system, there was a lab of several Apple II computers that were capable of running Turbo Pascal. After taking the prerequisite courses, my introduction to computer programming was Turbo Pascal.