The only reason I can't imagine closing the "elevator pitch" one is because I have to use that literally dozens of times a year at my job
The students don't know what the difference is, the parents don't know what the difference is, the administrators don't know what the difference is, my coworkers don't know... etc, etc, etc.
It could be, though, that I'm responding to my professional need here, and projecting that onto the question, even though the question itself is poorly phrased
Tag proposal number 2:
Merge code-style and coding-conventions into coding-style
Upvote if you agree, downvote if you disagree, or answer if there are additional considerations.
When teaching a subject, there are points that need to be grasped before advancing to more. Making sure students do grasp that seems critical. Does best practices cover the idea of verifying that they do, in fact, have it or else finding a new way to present it?
In my experience, people who have programmed before, whether they're professional or not, almost always consider imperative programming to be obvious. They're usually skeptical that a concept such as variable assignment could be difficult to learn.
On the other hand, in my limited experience (te...
@EllenSpertus But how meaningful is it to someone at another college? in another country?
This warrants a meta discussion, but my gut feeling is that these tags are too ambiguous to be useful: different usanians would put different material in them, and non-usanians would have no idea what they mean.
In a round-about way, yes. I think picking any formal body outside of CSE to determine what CS is in our context would be a mistake. Yet, we do need some kind of line in the sand for our own version of "on-topic".
Maybe we should define it in a meta discussion. Now that we are 1 month old, we might be able to start such a discussion, and actually have it lead to a useful conclusion.
In addition, "what is CS" is only part of our on-topic list. There's also best practices, which impact CS educators, but are not actually CS in themselves.
I don't think a meta discussion, or a chat discussion, will - or should - reach a definitive conclusion, even with consensus. A better approach is to allow it to be organic, and deal with edge cases as they appear, on a case-by-case basis. Hoping to establish a trail of precedent for the future.
To pull one from our short history: online saftey.
Useful things can be a plan of action to dealing with edge cases. A sort of "generification".
like a list of things to check about a question that borders on the topic. For example: Checking if there's a question already on the site that covers any intersecting grounds. While the site is small, this is a possible thing to do.
I am trying to think of a lesson plan about html, and I am looking for a good way to explain the concept of the structure of an html file.
I was thinking if the subject would be better understood if firstly xml was described in general. What I had in mind is teaching a basic xml block:
<rootEle...
Here's what my notes have for that one: Not sure that front-end belongs here either, it really is about teaching HTML. lesson-ideas might apply to. This is one of the few candidates for the proposed introductory-lesson tag
I realize that getting the students motivated to learn the subject is often a problem. Even more so when sections of the class can become dry. Students who rapidly grasp some of the concepts can be especially challenging to keep motivated as well. It seems that a common technique is to get the st...
Desktop publishing is using the computer to generate publications, without going through other channels, like editors and typesetters. Computer to press.
Your mods to the post make it look like I know what I'm doing.
oh. I used n++... But yes, I have some experience with Lyx, LaTex and writing lab reports, which look like scientific publications... So not exactly desktop publishing, but I know my formatting ;)
It's lovely. Meta is about the site. A meta filled with humor reflects a healthy site, I think... Users are more focused on building the site, rather than on inter-use competition...
Well, it goes back to "you get the site you build"
@GypsySpellweaver I'm reading through your meta list now. For 1, I think the edits you propose would be good, but they certainly deviate from the askers intent.
I'm all for retagging all the things. I'm not so sure about editing the body of the question, especially if it would make answers seem less relevant and deviate from the authors intent.
@GypsySpellweaver some sites use sheets for this. Many do, I think. I remember seeing links in meta discussions on quite a few. Might be imagining it, but still...
Should we allow programming questions? This question is really a question about "How can I avoid this error" wrapped in "How can I teach my students to avoid this error".
MySQL like all full DB systems supports lots of concurrent operations, within normal transactional and locking restrictions. You're best off solving your particular problem by asking a question on stack overflow.
I think you shouldn't set students the task of managing queueing etc. The complexi...
I have had this problem myself: Before I turned 19 and just kind of... fell into coding, I used to think programming is something incredibly hard that only child prodigies and people with a 160+IQ could do (a view often reinforced by Hollywood stereotypes) and that I just wasn't smart enough.
S...
I dislike the question because I disagree, in principle, with working against people's will in general, but I'm trying to put my distaste aside. Does it belong on an educator's SE?
(And thank you for being willing to come out here! Your wisdom is always appreciated)
Question on how to make students do one thing or another are on-topic on MESE, especially if they are not motivated or are anxious to do it; we even have a tag anxiety
One might also object it is "too broad". However, in my opinion it is important to recognize that "too broad" is a notion relative to the size of the site. On a small site broad-ish question work better.
Still for this specific question some clarification might be good "What tools are there to show her it is much easier than it looks at a glance?" is just pretty vague. They might try to identify what they feel makes it look hard at a glance.
I think different people might find different aspects make it look hard.
What they have in mind specifically could be useful to know.
I think I will delete the question. It doesn't actually put to words what I wanted to ask, and I haven't been able to find any better phrasing that could work.
Oh, and for what it's worth with the cs0 and cs1 tag proposals: both mean very little to me as someone not involved in the US education system; seems quite US-centric to me. Just something to think about