Monday, February 20, 2017

At the Bird Feeder

Math Teacher Training

Here I am, an Oregon-based math teacher, flapping around the bird feeder looking for cyber-currency to keep my Internet channels alive.

That I had to replace the Android and lost my mycelium wallet bitcoin app is no help, and now I've lost the bitcoin public key. I just need to start over.

Not that I expect anyone has slipped coinage into that particular begging cup, deeply buried and now lost.

OCN (Oregon Curriculum Network) has gotten as far as it has with mainly me as its principal sponsor, though I acknowledge the booster rockets have helped.

These days I'm with Coding with Kids and helping middle-schoolers acclimate to eye-balling source code.

Having the topic be akin to what they're covering in class anyway, helps reinforce both the relevance and potential familiarity of the "learning to code" branch.

Last week was Prime Numbers.  This week is Triangles.

triangles_2

I also teach older adults at night, so sometimes bill myself as "pedagogue by day, andragogue by night".

The more "adult version" of the Triangle class both includes more concepts about triangles, and uses more of the Python language.  I've got that at Github.

Codesters is not a full implementation of core Python, plus includes many __builtins__ that core Python does not have.  Sprites for example. And a stage.

You'd think as CMO of the CSN, I'd be doing that full time, but lets remember this was 2017 and most adults were not informed about American Transcendentalism.  We were still bootstrapping back then.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Paid to Play


Paying students and teachers alike, not necessarily at the same rate given different responsibilities, does not assure that any given school will stay afloat. The true cost that never goes away is "opportunity cost": what you're doing right now is at the cost of everything else you're not doing.

Even if my code school pays a stipend of N ETH per completed task K, who says task K is relevant to one's long term plans? You could have gotten N-2 ETH for completing task T at another school, but guess what, the relevance of T is so much greater, that the -2 delta is more than made up for. You've factored in opportunity cost.  Good for you, that's smart.

The model LMS that meters out credits in the form of some non-cash currency, not legal for all debts, but good towards many things anyway, is premised on the wish to reward and support those doing what we regard as real homework, developing in ways a program promises its enrollees will.  Whether we need a blockchain technology to make it work will depend on many factors.

Those with a GST background will have more responsibilities helping government services figure it out, in collaboration with participating universities.