Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. – Maya Angelou

Mr. Walker's Classroom Blog

  • I am using this article in class and as it may disappear I am keeping a local copy stored here.

    THE SOFTWARE THAT BUILDS SOFTWARE

    167345106-580.jpg

    Complex, specialized tools are often made from simpler ones. Machines are built with power drills; software is built with code editors. And so the future of computing depends partly on coding platforms in much the same way that the future of the movie industry depends on camera technology.

    Over the past five years, a rapidly growing San Francisco company called GitHub has become a dominant player in software development, largely because it has fine-tuned the tools used for “version control,” which is the process of logging all the changes made to a set of documents. Programs are fragile enough that even a small change—a single misplaced semicolon, for example—might cause it to crash. GitHub keeps track of those semicolons, and who put them where.

    (more…)

  • We are going to cover this in an upcoming “Question of the Day” for my courses and I have copied this article from The Atlantic.  Read the full article there for a more complete discussion, excellent related articles and other works by this author.

    Basic ability in the subject isn’t the product of good genes, but hard work.

    doviende/Flickr

    “I’m just not a math person.”

    We hear it all the time. And we’ve had enough. Because we believe that the idea of “math people” is the most self-destructive idea in America today. The truth is, you probably are a math person, and by thinking otherwise, you are possibly hamstringing your own career. Worse, you may be helping to perpetuate a pernicious myth that is harming underprivileged children—the myth of inborn genetic math ability.

    Is math ability genetic? Sure, to some degree. Terence Tao, UCLA’s famous virtuoso mathematician, publishes dozens of papers in top journals every year, and is sought out by researchers around the world to help with the hardest parts of their theories. Essentially none of us could ever be as good at math as Terence Tao, no matter how hard we tried or how well we were taught. But here’s the thing: We don’t have to! For high-school math, inborn talent is much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence.

    How do we know this? First of all, both of us have taught math for many years—as professors, teaching assistants, and private tutors. Again and again, we have seen the following pattern repeat itself:

    1. Different kids with different levels of preparation come into a math class. Some of these kids have parents who have drilled them on math from a young age, while others never had that kind of parental input.
    2. On the first few tests, the well-prepared kids get perfect scores, while the unprepared kids get only what they could figure out by winging it—maybe 80 or 85%, a solid B.
    3. The unprepared kids, not realizing that the top scorers were well-prepared, assume that genetic ability was what determined the performance differences. Deciding that they “just aren’t math people,” they don’t try hard in future classes, and fall further behind.
    4. The well-prepared kids, not realizing that the B students were simply unprepared, assume that they are “math people,” and work hard in the future, cementing their advantage.

    Thus, people’s belief that math ability can’t change becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    (more…)

  • 100-meter-scroll-1You’d better train your index finger before taking this challenge. Don’t hurt yourself. The 100 Meter Scroll is the brainchild of designer/developer Michael Vestergaard, and just could be the most fun thing you do today.

    Take the challenge, then tell me your best time.

  • Zookal, a textbook rental startup in Sydney, Australia, has announced plans to use camera-less drones to deliver books to its customers (demo video). Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from commercial drone service Flirtey, Zookal’s customers will receive books within minutes of ordering from a smartphone app. PandoDaily has more of the story.

  • the-ultimate-loss-planets-destroyed