Notices by Yani Bellini Saibene (yabellini@fosstodon.org)

January 8th, I will be (online) as part of the University of Edinburgh's winter school on teaching programming to non-programmers with @gvwilson, sharing some of the things we have been working on together.

As always, it is related to coding, teaching, and communities.

Come to chat with us to our keynote: Teaching Tech Together: What's Worked, What Hasn't, and What's Next.

https://pairprogramming.ed.ac.uk/winter-school-25/

I am working on a talk and thinking about adding this Map:

The "international community."

cc: @gvwilson

I'm so happy to share that @rOpenSci has received new funding from CZI. This funding will allow us to continue our work with the Champions Program and Multilingual Publishing, focusing on Latin America.

This is the kind of work I wanted to do when I joined rOpenSci, and it’s fantastic to see these initiatives come to life, work so well, and provide a solid foundation to continue building on them.

Stay tuned for announcements!

https://ropensci.org/blog/2024/10/10/czi-latam-grant/

#OpenScience #RStats #RSE #OpenSource

Today I confirmed some decisions I made 20 years ago and I must say I congratulate myself.

I should trust my self more.

✍️ Day 13: Distilling how to use Participatory Live Coding in-person and online - Tip 6

Participatory live coding can make it difficult to know if people are following along or unable to code due to issues. So today's tip is to

Get real-time feedback and provide immediate help.

📝 https://typeshare.co/yabellini/posts/day-13-distilling-how-to-use-participatory-live-coding-in-person-and-online-tip-6

✨ https://yabellini.netlify.app/blog/2024-05-18-30ship30-day13/

#OpenSource #OpenEducation
#TeachingTechTogether #CodingSkills #30Ship30
#100DaysToOffload

No matter how many times I introduce myself at a meeting, I always, always forget to mention important information about my background or role for that specific meeting.

🙃

Reading proposals for a conference. I've finished reading and rating 60. I have 40 to go.

Tip: if you propose something that has nothing to do with AI you will stand out. And you are going to get the highest rating from me.

Younger niece: aunt, what is your job?
Me: my job....
Younger son interrupts: my mom travels around the world giving talks teaching people how to use the computer.

And I'm seriously thinking about that being my new bio: world traveler computer teacher. 😅😂

I'm watching the start of the American Soccer Cup in the USA, and they are doing a Christian religious blessing ??????

@gvwilson I'll take the bait. Why do you say that?

@gvwilson do you have a course on how to write (books or blog posts, or edit or review) Because you know how to do that and I never see you teaching that.

The WhatsApp group of my oldest son's school parents had 40 unread messages.

It took me a few minutes to overcome my fear and see what was going on: parents had already started organizing next year's graduation trip. It Is going to be intense.

Note: it is a tradition that when the kids finish sixth grade, they all go on a trip together to celebrate in a city in another province of Argentina. For many, it is the first trip to another place and the first one without their parents. Big deal.

This research shows that aptitude for learning foreign languages is a stronger predictor of learning to program than basic maths knowledge.

"These results provide a novel framework for understanding programming aptitude, suggesting that the importance of numeracy may be overestimated in modern programming education environments."

Relating Natural Language Aptitude to Individual Differences in Learning Programming Languages. Prat, et.al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8

#TeachingTechTogether

I am writing about how we contribute to improving the quality of research.

I feel uneasy that everything about generating a friendly, non-adversarial, transparent, non-toxic, diverse work/community environment must be explained in great detail because otherwise, some people can't connect the dots as to why doing so generates better quality science.

Two thoughts: how much work lies ahead of us and how lucky I am to be in places where we put people first.

"Teaching is not transferring knowledge, it is creating the possibility of producing it."
-Paulo Freire.

Once I started to believe I could make myself understood in English, I went to a meeting where two other people had to explain to the rest what I meant.

Some days, that feels like a kick in the stomach.

Did you realize that we live in a reality where SciHub is illegal, and OpenAI is not?

@arun Some months ago, I wrote my experience, which is very similar to yours: https://yabellini.netlify.app/blog/2023-05-06-visa/

Thanks for writing and helping create awareness.

@judell @bitsplusatoms @eschaton @bitsavers I will add that Excel does something that very few of the other programming languages let you do: you can program in your native language (you don't have to use English). For example, Excel has a Spanish version for each function, so I can even "guess" the function name and don't need to remember that "promedio" is AVG or MEAN or something without any sense to me. Only 4.8% of the world's population speaks English as a first language. ;-)