Following an inspiration
I went to see the movie Julie & Julia yesterday, and I really liked it, way more than I expected. I remember Julia Child from her TV show when I was a kid. I can’t remember. Either my mom or my grandmother (or both) used to watch her show regularly. I wanted to [...]
Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
Why I do this
Posted in Art, Education, tagged julie & julia, plato, plato's cave on August 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Does computer science have a future?
Posted in Analysis, Education, History, Information Technology, Math & Science, flame, tagged alan kay, computer science, data processing, science, scientific computing on August 12, 2009 | 12 Comments »
Update 8-17-09: I’ve revised this post a bit to clarify some points I made.
I received a request 2-1/2 weeks ago to write a post based on video of a speech that Alan Kay gave at Kyoto University in February, titled “Systems Thinking For Children And Adults”. Here it is. The volume in the first 10 [...]
“I’m not a scientist, but I play one on TV…”
Posted in Education, Math & Science, flame, tagged Boulder, daily camera, global warming, pseudo-science on July 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
“A man must learn on this principle, that he is far removed from the truth”
– Democritus
Science is a way of thinking. As Neil deGrasse Tyson has said, “It is a philosophy of discovery.” I reflected recently on what being a scientist is really all about. Good scientists are constantly trying to change their perception of [...]
The beauty of mathematics denied
Posted in Education, Math & Science, tagged aesthetics, Art, mathematicians, mathematics, school, university on June 19, 2009 | 5 Comments »
“So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?”
– from “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd
I’ve taken some time to get back into the subject of mathematics, and secondarily math education. This [...]
Boulder High students protest teacher layoff
Posted in Education, tagged Boulder High School, protest, students, teacher layoff on May 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
video courtesy of The Daily Camera newspaper, Boulder, CO.
Boulder High School (or perhaps it’s the Boulder Valley School District) has laid off a social studies teacher, Chris Barnes, because of budget cuts. Such are the inevitable and in this case cruel losses of a severe recession. Apparently he’s not just any [...]
Inexcusable: BVSD teachers walk out just before finals
Posted in Education, News, tagged boulder valley school district, bvsd, teacher protest on May 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I don’t have a dog in this fight, since I graduated high school more than 20 years ago, and I don’t have kids in school. I am a citizen who’s concerned about educational issues though. So I thought I’d weigh in.
I saw this story yesterday that 80 BVSD teachers in Broomfield, CO. had called in [...]
Getting an education in America
Posted in Education on April 26, 2009 | 8 Comments »
I like keeping myself informed about what’s going on with education. I’ve been increasingly alarmed about what is happening at our universities. It began first with a sense of alarm several years ago when I read that at universities like Princeton and Harvard, going back to the 1980s, the arts and humanities had been taken [...]
The benefits of CO2
Posted in Education, Government policy, Math & Science, tagged carbon dioxide, EPA, photosynthesis, plants, science on April 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
“We will restore science to its rightful place”
— President Barack Obama at his inaugural address
I heard this past weekend that the EPA has classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant that is hazardous to public health, and therefor needs to be regulated. What I feel is being left [...]
My journey, Part 3
Posted in Education, History, Programming, tagged computer as medium, computer history, computer science on December 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
See Part 1, Part 2
College
I went to Colorado State University in 1988. As I went through college I forgot about my fantasies of computers changing society. I was focused on writing programs that were more sophisticated than I had ever written before, appreciating architectural features of software and emulating them in my own projects, and learning [...]
The computer as medium
Posted in Education, History, Programming, Squeak, Technology and Software, tagged alan kay, chris crawford, computer, culture, etoys, gutenberg, History, media, medium, printing press, Programming, societal influence, Squeak, squeakers, squeakland, writing on September 14, 2008 | 13 Comments »
In my guest post on Paul Murphy’s blog called “The PC vision was lost from the get go” I spoke to the concept, which Alan Kay had going back to the 1970s, that the personal computer is a new medium, like the book at the time the technology for the printing press was brought to Europe, [...]
