Thinking about what kinds of rigor are needed

A couple of articles have been bouncing around in my mind, both of which touch on issues I’m sure most educators are thinking about, but where I feel like the most interesting part of the conversation starts at the point the articles end. The first article from Inside Higher Ed, New Data Shows Attendance Fosters Student Success, initially caught my attention because of the sheer obviousness of the statement and curiosity about what more there might be to say about this. If my class sessions don’t foster student success, what am I even doing! The article, of course, is more … Continue reading Thinking about what kinds of rigor are needed

Miscellanea, June 2025

This video made me laugh enough I watched it twice, and then a bunch of others from the series, which were also good but not as funny as How to Fix Grocery Stores from Hank Green. This made the rounds thoroughly, but this is exactly how I consumed the weather forecast for years and I would absolutely install a widget that ran this on my phone. Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Aviation is a variation on the falsehood programmers believe about names. While the names piece is great, the aviation variation is interesting because, on its surface, air travel is an … Continue reading Miscellanea, June 2025

Project report: Raglan Pullover

I took a step away from my lace knitting projects and knit up a quick sweater for myself this spring. I managed to finish it while there was enough cool weather to wear it a couple of times and it’s a comfy, slightly oversized fit. The pattern is Lightweight Raglan Pullover from the Purl Soho yarn site. The yarn is Big Twist Boho in color Lakeside Lodge – it’s a Joann Fabrics brand I had never used before but picked up in one of their store clearance sales. It’s an 80% acrylic, 15% wool, 5% mohair blend listed as “super … Continue reading Project report: Raglan Pullover

A big agree that “the homework is the cheat code”

Just the title of this long blog entry caught my eye, because YES!!! The Homework is the Cheat Code indeed! The content didn’t disappoint. Written by someone teaching CS at the graduate level at U Chicago, I’m not sure if I’m shocked or relieved that they’re seeing similar patterns in their students as we’re seeing at the undergrad level. Maybe the most honest reaction is that if we want to graduate students who are job- and grad school-ready, addressing these tendencies has to be central to undergraduate education (bold mine): I get a lot more requests now for extensions on … Continue reading A big agree that “the homework is the cheat code”

Miscellanea, May 2025

April got away from me with the end of the semester (earlier than usual with a new academic calendar for us), so early May has been spent catching up all over the place. Looming summer means more time to read. In preparation, I browsed the new-to-me Literary Hub on grading breaks. Ask a Ninja is back! Long read The Department of Everything: Dispatches from the telephone reference desk – excellent reflections on the importance of knowing how to find information and how to frame answerable questions. An even longer read on the hidden house in the IBM ascii character set … Continue reading Miscellanea, May 2025

Computing education for everyone, and maybe some CS also?

Mark Guzdial has written some blog posts recently about having computing education for everyone that doesn’t have to – and shouldn’t – look like computer science education. He has posts looking at this for both the undergraduate level and the K-12 level. I’m entirely on board with offering introductory computing and programming education from students with a range of disciplinary interests that doesn’t look like a typical CS1 class or have to cover the typical range of CS1 topics. However, I think a piece missing out of this discussion is whether there is value is teaching those courses in a … Continue reading Computing education for everyone, and maybe some CS also?

Miscellanea, March 2025

The hardest working font in Manhattan: Excellent long read about a near-invisible font that appears everywhere, and the investigation into where it came from and why it is ubiquitous. Ultimately its a story of the analog versus the digital. Beautiful collection of illustrative photos throughout. Ran into this interesting research from last year about reconstructing protolanguages and developing models that can move from a protolanguage to the modern variants and backwards from a modern language to its ancestor. As for gaming this month…. Hooked on Bracket City as part of my morning word-game routine. The site started up on January … Continue reading Miscellanea, March 2025

Miscellanea, January 2025

Going up a couple of days late, here’s some things I came across in the past month…. A new favorite comic from SMBC There is a variety of content at the ELIZA Archaeology Project site including the complete code of the text generation system with a description of the MAD language it was written in, a blog on the software archaeology process of recovering it, and a running version you can try out. The Calm Tech Certification (IEEE Spectrum article, project site, book) is a really appealing idea, both for consumers and as a tool for encouraging developers to think … Continue reading Miscellanea, January 2025

Miscellanea, October 2024

The Merchants of Venice – In Code: A nice little review of early cryptology in 1400s/1500s Venice within both trade and politics Typing Bowl is only barely a game but it’s good for a five minute break to see if you can type faster than strangers on the internet. I’m not a big discussion forum person, but this massive list of topic-specific forums probably has some great content in here. I wish there was an index of the topic areas at the top of the page to help skim for what’s available. The recent post Of trashcans and thimbles by … Continue reading Miscellanea, October 2024

Miscellanea, September 2024

Cool photos and breakdown of a Navajo weaving of an Intel Pentium chip from a display in the National Gallery of Art (sadly the exhibit now seems to be closed). The breakdown is able to map out the chip to determine specifically which chip it is based on. The blog post also closes with an interesting story of the Fairchild work on the Shiprock chip and the relationship to the Navajo. Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power Since 1500: Scrollable visualization of computing, communication, and control from the 1500s to the present categorized by things like communication devices, … Continue reading Miscellanea, September 2024