Notices by myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win), page 26

@wmd

I agree. However, as a HS teacher the resistance and total lack of support I get when I want to teach about networks is remarkable.

And computer history should include a history of networks explaining why the internet is the way that it is.

@wmd

Any time you combine "the internet" and "children" people freak out. And not without reasons, but it's also very unhelpful.

I have been trying to get an intranet set up for them to learn, but I get so little support doing this from IT. And I'm asking a lot of them! There are not a lot of off the shelf "educational servers" designed for kids to play with that have been tested for years and come with worksheets and lesson plans.

I have to make all that from SCRATCH.

@hal_pomeranz @wmd

Doing this without support from IT would mean making our own wifi or mesh network? This is a nice idea but it's also a lot for me who has never set up such a network from scratch. Getting computers to play with is *NOT* hard-- but knowing what software to put on them and why? I don't even know where to start. I did some work with Lora a few years back to transmit data several miles but the whole goal was to get it onto the regular internet. 😨

@hal_pomeranz

It is not easy to connect to our school network. That is the issue. I need cooperation from IT to make such things possible and that means for the admins to tell IT that, yes, I really do need that kind of access.

@hal_pomeranz

I don't think it's their fault exactly. There are few if any schools that are doing what I think we ought to be doing.

I'm proud of my deft non-confrontational solution to the student I suspected of using AI for a bunch of club stuff (since it's not an "assignment" my options to use school policy were limited & I didn't want to make the kid feel singled out/exposed)
"For all images on our material it's important to credit the artist or say if it's from a clip art library-- some students have worked hard to design logos, give them credit! All images should have a source!"

Magically all the AI slop has vanished.

We need a unit to measure social contact exposure like with radiation mSv or Rads... and then I could have little badge that turns red when I'm over my limit for the day.

I think I'm not getting the worst of facebook by far, but spending just a little time there trying to reach out to people before going dark again has reminded me of ... the less lofty reasons why I left. There are so many post with images like this one, videos of "nature" and although some of the comments recognize it's a fake image just as many think it's "cute" and "nature is so beautiful!"

IDK it makes me die inside a little.

Some day no one will understand what the big deal is in the story of "the ugly duckling" because people will have repainted nature with our own notions of what would be "cuter" and how it ought to be ... missing the less glamours beauty of what is.

Of course a baby swan can only be a tiny white lovely bird just smaller and cuter with anime eyes.

Yeah... I really do not like this sort of thing at all.

@sbourne

If the owls in the second photo needed to be "improved" what will they do to you and I?

@sbourne

Can any bird wise person tell me why baby birds have scrabbly gray down?

My guess it may be because they are small and need to stay warm and match the gray scrabbly sticks in their nest. But are there other reasons? Maybe shedding flight feathers and growing wouldn't be energy efficient? So a temporary puff ball of warm down is better?

@sbourne

This is just devolving into posting cute owls but I don't really care.

@isotopp

A shocking number of young people aren't interested in computer games at all. In fact most of my students aren't even some of those who have taken to programming and building projects with the most enthusiasm.

Games can be an entry point, but it can also limit the audience.

@froge

The question is what can we create within the existing framework.

A "king's education" for everyone than only some getting the "king" version and the rest getting only the education their community can provide (which shouldn't be minimized, but there is value to learning about the world beyond your own immediate sphere: but many people think only some people need to know such things. I do not agree. )

Originally designed for the children of the wealthy to teach them what one might need to know to be a tolerably decent leader and rule others, the "Liberal Arts Education" is more important than ever.

The simple but radical idea that *everyone* should have such an education has started to lead to wonderful things.

But not everyone sees these things as wonderful, and we're seeing a big attempt at rolling it all back. Even for the children of kings.

@david_chisnall

This is a subtext of what I'm talking about here with curriculum development. Teaching and lessons are proven *in the classroom* you can plan all you want but until you try it with students you know very little. Class time is precious, knowing the pitfalls, benefits and bonuses of how you present each problem and challenge can make a huge impact on what students learn.

A subject is forever changed by being taught to massive numbers of people many many times.

@david_chisnall

What would be your list? "I don't see on the list is anything about systematic thinking and building abstractions"

That's done through: Encoding and Decoding, Logic and Control Structures, Objects & Functions and Databases. Systematic thinking (using and designing algorithms) building abstractions (modeling, variables, etc) could be math or physics topics. What makes it CS?

This could be a misalignment of vocabulary. So it might be faster to tell me your list.

@david_chisnall

What do you think the most powerful theorems of graph theory are in a CS context?

I love graph theory, but I find it's more about a framework for organizing problems, but it can feel thin on solutions.

I'm glad someone else who cares about CS sees the value of graph theory but since it's never been allowed in the "standard" math, much like CS, it's not as focused and distilled as Algebra or Calculus.

What is the "fundamental theorem of graph theory" what is the slogan?

@david_chisnall

Teaching calculus just for doing physics is a missed opportunity. Calculus shows several reasonable ways to deal with infinity, counter intuitive aspects of infinite processes-- huge stuff.

Just because it was put there for one purpose doesn't mean that's what it must be.

If graph theory were taught by tens of thousands of teachers for decades it would change. Could be very exciting.

Might we anticipate some of that maturity since this is unlikely to happen?

If you asked experienced math teachers to list the core topics for k-12 math education you'd get a number of different lists, but the lists could be combined and grouped into what math education *is* (for better or worse) today.

I'm looking to be able to do that same thing for CS.

The one area I'm avoiding is so-called "digital citizenship" this includes "what happens when you post your photo online?" and "what is a good password?"

This is taught in HEALTH class.