Education

Brick-and-mortar college

By AMH

For some reason, this article about Best Buy as a showroom (from earlier this year but I only just read it) made me think about the conversation going on about MOOCs. I had to ask myself if my willingness to turn to online stores for a deal rather than spending more for a more robust experience (being able to try out products, get advice, have it immediately) revealed my feeling that small, in-person classes are still worth the money hypocritical or, at least, motivated by self-interest. So I thought about what I do buy in-person, rather than online. Clothes, obviously … Continue reading Brick-and-mortar college

Rethinking courses

By AMH

I recommend both this article about plagiarism in Coursera’s courses but also the comment thread, which makes a few interesting connections between the specific issue of plagiarism happening in these courses, and the broader discussion about MOOCs and their role in the higher education universe. The obvious question, posed but not answered in any of this, is why would students plagiarize in a free, non-credit course that they are taking entirely voluntarily? If you want to just watch the lectures, or just do the reading, there’s absolutely nothing in the structure of these courses to prevent it. And, completing the … Continue reading Rethinking courses

Playing games about making games

By AMH

While Gamestar Mechanic isn’t really a fit as a development tool for my course, it’s an excellent example of a teaching game, and I would highly recommend it for anybody with a middle-school aged kid (I think that is the right age range for it). The game is structured as a quest to learn to be a game developer, but what surprised me was how much of the focus was on good design, not just how to place blocks and enemies and make things go. You start out by just playing the various types of games that might get built … Continue reading Playing games about making games

Blocky coding

By AMH

One of my projects this month is looking into tools I might use in a very-introductory course organized around the theme of games. I’m still circling in on the exact set of capabilities I’m looking for, but since one goal of the course is to warm people up for a more intense Java programming course, exposing them to simple programming in a visual manner is appealing. One possibility is Blocky from Google. Web-based drag-and-drop programming where constructs are puzzle pieces. The maze demo gives a nice starting point for thinking about solving problems, using ifs and loops, debugging, etc. You … Continue reading Blocky coding

To Code or Not To Code

By AMH

There is an interesting pair of essays about how universal “learning to code” ought to be over at Coding Horror: Please Don’t Learn to Code and a follow-up So You Want to be a Programmer. The first essay questions whether we really need more programmers, and whether learning some basic programming is that valuable a skill as compared to learning how to understand a problem and its solutions. The followup clarifies that what is being criticized is learning to code for the sake of knowing how to code, as compared to learning to code in order to solve a problem … Continue reading To Code or Not To Code

Interactive Learning Startup Top Hat Monocle Wants To Turn Your Homework Into A Tournament

By AMH

This article about a company that produces classroom engagement technologies such as in-class polls, discussion forums, and homework tournaments is making my head spin. I can get behind the value of in-class polls or quizzes, where students get immediate feedback, and professors get an immediate sense of what they sank in or not. But this: Top Hat offers an SMS-based response system, while all others access its platform through the web. Students can ask questions during lectures without interrupting teachers and get instant feedback from other students. Why would we even bother all getting together in the same room, if … Continue reading Interactive Learning Startup Top Hat Monocle Wants To Turn Your Homework Into A Tournament

Tablets for all

By AMH

I’ve been thinking a lot about tablet computing in educational settings, partially because of some research I’m doing, and partially because of the splash of Apple’s announcement of iTunes U back in January which doesn’t seem to have been followed up by much. My gut reaction is that tablet computers are awesome, but for certain purposes. I absolutely love mine when I’m not working – vacations, weekends, messing around online in the evening. But when it comes to my teaching, I’ve yet to find ways that it really supports or helps me, and it makes me suspect that it isn’t … Continue reading Tablets for all

Also, the lack of symmetry has always bugged me…

By AMH

It is nice to see studies confirming that we’re not all as taken up with shiny new technologies and clever marketing strategies as it sometimes seems – here, a “youth marketing company” finds that, out of a sample 500 college students, 79% could not successfully scan a QR code. Only 19% did not have smart phones, and only 20% weren’t familiar with QR codes, so that leaves a large portion of students with the awareness and ability but lack of inclination to have ever figured them out. I suspect the comment about not wanting to download an app to handle … Continue reading Also, the lack of symmetry has always bugged me…

Thoughts on Thiel and the value of college

By AMH

This is just the latest article I have seen about Peter Thiel’s scholarships to students to develop entrepreneurial ideas instead of going to college, motivated by a belief that college is not serving these students well. Listening to the interview and things he has actually said elsewhere, I think that Thiel is focusing on a very small set of students – highly motivated students with specific ideas for projects they would like to take on – and he is saying that these students ought to be encouraged to take a chance on those ideas. I have no issue with the … Continue reading Thoughts on Thiel and the value of college

Also a reasonable test for psychopaths

By AMH

If you hang out in logic/math/education/psychology circles (as one so often does….) you’ve run into the Wason selection task – give people four cards, each with a destination on one side and a mode of transportation on the other and ask them to flip over all and only the cards necessary to ensure that the scenario described doesn’t involve someone violating the ruled “If you travel to Boston, you take a plane.” The general point is that people are bad (really, epically bad….) at propositional calculus and inference. Bruce Schneier wrote recently on an interesting twist I hadn’t come across … Continue reading Also a reasonable test for psychopaths