I'm so surprised that the HNQ is still up. How cool for our little site!
For all that the majority of the foot traffic just passes through, we've gained >100 users in the last 24 hours, too, and a lot of them are doing some initial posting.
But if one reads the comment section, there's a comment (I'm going to guess @BenI. wrote it) correcting about the moderators, and a bit about the link only policy. So I think overall that post is great exposure for this site.
I got the "nice question" on the question I least expected it from. Astonished face
i can understand his frustration with the no link policy under the circumstances, and I thought that his adaptation (of including the short summaries) was fair.
That was my comment back, yeah :)
Like him, I prioritize the health of real resources for teachers over this single site - ultimately, I'm motivated by helping kids. I think this site can be great, and I understand that our format here has certain strengths, so I want to help distill CSE into the very best resource it can be. But he's not wrong that whatever serves the needs of the teachers is ultimately what serves the needs of the students best in the long run.
I saw it, yeah - I supported what you guys were saying, and it was the right call. I just also understood why he was frustrated, and I thought that the ultimate outcome was good
On that same page, when viewed via mobile, in the "also on.." section he has a link to "Will we loose CD teachers to industry?" which is shown to be 4 months old. It's a 404 page.
Note: It is still there, and it comes up when you go through his posts. But on mobile it looks like a dead link. Frustrating. Worse when you go to a site looking for answers.
I appreciated the links with context. I understand his point, and we walk a fine line as we bring a new demographic into the SE world. We want to be both welcoming and clear with rules.
The only reason I even tried to follow that link is because I recognized the comment poster and wanted to read what he'd said. Mobile gives me a 404 page. I had to search through the blog on desktop to find that blog post, then read the comment.
Mike Zamansky is an especially important person to bring here in the long run. He is very prominent in this field - among other things, AFAIK, he really was the first full time CS teacher in the US (he started in the 80s), and founded the first HS CS department, and he is currently founding (and in charge of) the new cs teacher program at Bard College - they begin accepting students next year.
That's not to say that we shouldn't enforce our rules. Everyone must follow the rules (including us and including him)
But we shouldn't be jerks, and convincing him of the value of this community will have an outsized impact on our development. He has a lot of followers and admirers
@BenI. I don't know about "Department" per se but some schools had thriving CS before the 80s. All my HS education was before that, and I found in-school computer classes (which I didn't take anyway) at every high school and junior high school I went to after ~74. The most memorable was in Minn. MECC
BTW That's the UNIVAC mentioned in my profile :) fond memories
I teach 13-14 year old boys an "Introduction to Computer Science" course in Oakville, ON., Canada. For most of them, it is their first structured coding experience.
Before we even touch an IDE, I have them walk through problems like this:
"Devise an algorithm that calculates a user’s paycheque...
@Ben, you should be able to "accept and edit" which makes the edit go through right away under your rep to edit, rather than your rep to accept. Too late now of course.
I teach 13-14 year old boys an "Introduction to Computer Science" course. For most of them, it is their first structured coding experience.
Before we even touch an IDE, I have them walk through problems like this:
Devise an algorithm that calculates a user’s paycheque.
The program wil...
I have to admit there isn't much "movement" in coding, and my waistline shows it, but learning should involve all three VAK modalities. And CS, being so thought oriented doesn't have natural movement to it. Have to create it, as you've done.
I suppose I could just edit the question, but it would make the answers already there not make sense. Better to just start multiple new questions, as per @Gilles suggestion.
I gotta say.... I love this site! Every question makes me weepy thinking about CS educators that were struggling in silence that now have a great resource.
Stack Overflow Extras (SOX) is a project that stemmed from the Stack Overflow Optional Features (SOOF) project.
The SOX userscript adds a bunch of optional features to all sites in the Stack Exchange network. These can be toggled on or off from an easy to use control panel (see screenshot be...
I'm kind of opinionated about CS education because I had some very good and very bad teachers. I also think that CS education should be more top-down and most of it seems to be bottom-up. I have an article in ACM about that coming soon.
@Peter I mean from the most abstract to the least abstract. For example someone I know (1st year CS student) is learning AVL trees but doesn't know why anyone would care.
Another popular question today (maybe the $64,000 question): "How can I help my students to think algorithmically?" https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/questions/690/how-can-i-help-my-students-to-think-algorithmically
I teach 13-14 year old boys an "Introduction to Computer Science" course in Oakville, ON., Canada. For most of them, it is their first structured coding experience.
Before we even touch an IDE, I have them walk through problems like this:
"Devise an algorithm that calculates a user’s paycheque...
Stack Overflow Extras (SOX) is a project that stemmed from the Stack Overflow Optional Features (SOOF) project.
The SOX userscript adds a bunch of optional features to all sites in the Stack Exchange network. These can be toggled on or off from an easy to use control panel (see screenshot be...
The Classroom
The Classroom