I enjoy public transportation but sometimes (most of the time) it’s really inconvenient.  I don’t have time to always be on someone else’s schedule!

So now I ride a 2008 Genuine Buddy 125cc scooter.  Isn’t she gorgeous?  I filled the gas tank the other day and it cost me $1.50.

I was doing the dishes.  It was good because Russ Roberts was talking to me.  I’m not ashamed to say that podcasts have changed my life.  More specifically:

• Planet Money: an entertaining look at serious economic issues.
• Fresh Air: I used to be annoyed by Terry Gross.  Now I have no idea how that could have been possible and I wish she were my friend.
• EconTalk: Russ Roberts from George Mason university (libertarian bastion) discusses economic issues of various kinds. I think I got into this one through Yaw.  It’s one of the best at giving me food for thought.
• The Moth: hilarious stories every week.  I sometimes cry they’re so funny.  While doing the dishes.
• This American Life: each week, of course, they choose a theme.  And they bring you three or four stories on that theme.
• Radiolab: blend of science and culture with Robert Krulwich, NPR science correspondent.

No wonder I have forgotten what boredom even is… there’s just too much syndicated content for it.

The TeraGrid is an NSF-funded grid computing endeavor in support of science and engineering research. This week, TeraGrid ’09 took place in Arlington, Virginia and the organizers added on a one day workshop for high school teachers. I was hoping to get some ideas on how to introduce parallel computing concepts early and maybe even get access to some TeraGrid cycles for education but that’s not quite how it panned out. More than anything, it reminded me of CS4HS and provided me with some ideas to pass on to this year’s organizers.

The day started with a quick mention of some videos modeling scientific phenomena from CMIST. We then got a long presentation from Shodor founder Bob Panoff on using their computational modeling tools for teaching math and science topics. Shodor (allegedly named for “Short Dork”) is a really neat non-profit based in North Carolina that provides all kinds of great free tools as well as workshops and internships in technology for high school students. For example, teachers could use their function grapher to get students to explore the effect of constants on trigonometric functions by having them graph 1 * cos(x + 0) + 0 and use the sliders to change the values of the constants. The rabbits and wolves simulation is a great tool for showing population dynamics complete with updating graphs of each species count and parameters to modify the type of world.

These kinds of materials are great “hooks” for math and science teachers to use in support of discovery learning (more on that in a future post). They can also be used to get students to think about building and using abstract models to represent real-world situations, a key part of computer science. A teacher could, Bob suggested, use the histogram activity to make a point about the importance of knowing how to interpret models and the assumptions they make. For example, looking at NBA salary data, a coach might slice the data into three ranges and use the resulting graph to claim that nearly all players are paid the same. By slicing the data into smaller ranges, though, players might claim that salaries are not equitable. The Shodor system makes that kind of “zooming” in and out on data really simple.

Given that we were nearly all computer science teachers, I felt this was the wrong crowd. These are cool, but aren’t there 101 different (and most likely inferior, I’ll admit) simulations like that online? Besides, this seems like a use of technology as a tool rather than an example of building computational thinking abilities. But Bob started his presentation with an interesting statement — he rather casually said something like “in CS, we’re starting with modeling rather than programming because there’s very strong evidence that starting with programming creates barriers that wouldn’t otherwise exist.” No one really blinked and the tone of the day was set. I’m uncomfortable with that position but have to think about it more before I can craft a coherent response. I do believe that using tools like Vensim to describe models in a lightweight way is a good first step but I’m not sure that manipulating a ready-made simulation such as those Shodor provides really is actively building computational thinking abilities. In the best-case scenario, strong students will build some sense of what makes a good model or abstraction by playing with many existing ones. Not all students are strong students. I think that using scientific computation as a hook for algorithm design and computer science is unrealistic for most kids in our urban schools.

Another theme of the day was discovery and exploration as the best teaching/learning strategy — “let’s get out of the way of students’ learning.” Certainly, for self-learners with strong family support and excellent role-models, this is an excellent strategy but I don’t think it works for the majority. We saw an interesting presentation on a great collaboration between a community college, a liberal-arts college and a couple of universities. Charlie Peck and his collaborators had brought their LittleFe cluster — a home-grown machine made of off-the-self parts for under $3000. They run a Linux distribution called Bootable Cluster CD on it and use it to teach parallel computing. This is where they lost me a little bit: from the presentation, they made it sound like their strategy was letting students loose on the machines and having them build cool stuff. Note that this could be a misrepresentation as I haven’t done much exploration to see whether they have more structured content available. Still, I think that for most people, this seems like a wonderful idea! Indeed, when I mentioned the need for structured instructional materials it kind of fell on deaf ears.

All this sounds pretty negative, but I really enjoyed the day. It was a good opportunity to meet some interesting people and to continue to figure out my own ideas on education and where computer science fits in. I’m definitely a minority in a lot of my stances (structured instruction over discovery-based learning, structured assignments rather than open-ended projects, deliberately ordered and linear curriculum pacing, early emphasis on basics, etc) so I have to be particularly careful in what I do to either be open to change when things don’t work or to have data to point to when challenged.

We’ve had our OLPC through the G1G1 program for long enough that I find myself entitled to an opinion. It’s not positive at all. We got ours mostly as a fun coffee table ornament, but also out of a sincere hope that it could have value for the developing world and that we could contribute developer hours to the project. Having wasted yet another long series of hours on OS woes, I’m about ready to call the whole damn thing a completely futile endeavor. I love the hardware and hate the software. Maybe Windows will make it easier to use. Harr.

Still, I think it has value, and I’d like to get it to a point where I can reliably use it as a travel computer. It’s small, light, cheap, not enticing to steal and has reasonable battery life, though nowhere near what promised. The default browser is mostly useless, but Opera is a very nice alternative. Skype on there works reasonably well. And I love, love, love the screen.

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“The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.”

“Has anyone considered the possibility that it’s just not fun any more?”
– Don Knuth, Stanford University, October 2006

SIGCSE caught me in an interesting place somewhere between extreme career-angst and profound passion for ongoing CS projects. Unsurprisingly, a number of the sessions I chose to attend had to do with computer science’s negative image and ways to overcome them. One of my favorites was titled Rediscovering the Passion, Beauty, Joy and Awe: Making Computing Fun Again. Everyone has a different theory on why computer science is losing its appeal: programming is considered boring, programming is fun but students find the rest boring, it’s too hard, the field is too competitive, there’s a perception of a lack of jobs, it’s considered antisocial…

One of the talk’s speakers, executive director of the CSTA, noted that the enrollment crisis that’s been plaguing us for a few years may in fact prove to be positive because it is forcing us to come together and reengineer the field’s identity. Really, there’s an element of truth in all of the perceptions listed above.

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I’m folding these gigantic shirts and shorts and boxers in the middle of the night and it occurs to me that the man they belong to is somebody’s son.

All of these people (kids, really) are somebody’s children and yet there they all are sleeping peacefully on the church floor as I do their laundry.

Me, with very different parents.

This weekend there's been waltzing to old time folk/bluegrass, fists in the air for local hip hop and crazy jumping for gypsy punk.

And now I'm alone in my apartment with shredded fingers having put away my heavy practice mute and the tears I can't seem to help when playing Meditation de Thaïs (Massenet).

I've found a use for YouTube… some of my true loves:

1. Massenet – Meditation de Thaïs
2. Bach – Air on the G String
3. Debussy – Clair de Lune

Transit centers are odd places during the week. Getting on and off the bus sometimes I have a hard time not laughing at being in a line of people dressed in the same jeans and sensible shirt, carrying the same timbuk2 bag, drinking the same coffee, wielding the same iPod/Zune and smartphone combo and reading the Economist. I'm out of place and I'm proud of it though I'm thinking more and more that there's a reason I don't seem to belong (that I actually don't). Some days that wears down on me and I don't quite feel like laughing anymore.

Transit centers are even stranger during the weekend. Pure desertion and you get the feeling that an entire bike could probably be assembled from the miscellaneous pieces remaining chained to their rack.

Speaking of buses… I feel like I get more than my fair share of weird attention in and around buses. A while back I was sitting there reading my book and got the feeling that a guy next to me was looking over way too frequently. Turns out he was making this:

Peculiar.