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2011

  • 2 min read

University Teaching – homework, tests and grades?

I am about a week from beginning teaching my course at Brandeis University. The curriculum is a little different from last year, focusing on mobile software engineering and game development. This is different from last year, where we focused both on web and mobile software engineering.

The structure is that we teach during june and july, 4 days a week, and the students end up with 3 courses worth of credits. The students are both graduate and undergraduate. Given the time frame you can see that it's an intensive boot camp-like experience. It's a lot of work and a lot of fun.

So with my mind on teaching, curriculum, homework assignments and grading, I made note of "The Poor Quality of an Undergraduate Education", an article about higher ed in the New York Times:

"In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester.

The average student spent only about 12 to 13 hours per week studying — about half the time a full-time college student in 1960 spent studying, according to the labor economists Philip S. Babcock and Mindy S. Marks. (from The New York Times)

There are serious questions about how much homework is enough or too much. There are also serious questions about grading. I ponder these, from a newbie 's perspective - after all this is only my second year teaching at Brandeis.

I happen to think that the greatest learning happens when a student is struggling to solve a difficult problem or trying to formulate and defend a subtle opinion.

I also think that while I work hard at preparing a good lecture, that the most I can expect is to get the student excited about learning a topic, help them find perhaps the key concepts that they need to try and understand and give them excellent feedback on the work they are doing.

So we grade on homework and class participation/performance. There are no tests. However, many argue that grading itself is not a useful tool. If the student is motivated and works hard they learn, and if not they don't. After all, in the real world you don't have tests and you don't get grades, right?

I kind of agree with that. For me, grading is not about the final grade, when all is said and done. It is about the daily 'marks' on homework and other deliverables - they act as a motivator and a focuser of student effort to spend time on things that seem to lead to the greatest learning.

(remember, I'm a newbie 🙂 )

  • 1 min read

[GEEKY] REST and the PATCH verb

Last year when teaching REST concepts at Brandeis University I proved the truism that there's no better way to learn about something than to try and teach it. We (all) wrapped ourselves around the axle trying to understand HTTP "PUT" versus HTTP "POST" and learned new english words like Idempotency. I won't go into the whole story because it's kind of long.

< gross simplification> But one of the keys ideas that is tricky to understand is the difference between PUT and POST in REST as it is implemented using HTTP. PUT replaces a specific resource (think of it as a record for a specific key) while POST creates a new resource. < /gross simplification>

So I was interested to see that there's a move afoot (no idea how serious this will turn out to be) to add a new verb to HTTP/REST, to change an existing resource - not replace it like PUT does, or add a whole new one like POST does, but change one or more parts of it. In effect, it "Patches" it. Seems like a useful idea

Here's the draft RFC change

  • 1 min read

[GEEKY] Magic Rails Applications with Hobo

Another tidbit I came across at RailsConf is Hobo. I haven't tried it myself but did just go through the screencast and tutorial. I think it's worth a closer look.

"Hobo is a plugin for Ruby on Rails that brings a number of extensions—some small some large—to Rails application development. The common theme to these extensions is rapid development.

Like Rails itself, Hobo encapsulates a number of opinions about web application development. The opinion that is most central to Hobo is this: we have found that there is a great deal of similarity from one web application to the next. Much more similarity in fact, than is supported by today’s frameworks. We would rather implement this stuff once." (from Hobo Web Site)

The question with these kinds of packages is whether they are flexible in the right ways or whether they will get in your way when you try to do what you need to do. I can't answer for sure.

If you are looking for a further accelerator for building Rails apps, Hobo is a good option to explore.

railsconf

  • 1 min read

[GEEKY] Yes, Virginia, Rails DOES scale

Why doesn't every one love Rails? I am surprised when I run into someone (Pat?) who's not so sure about Rails. Usually it's about scalability.

[I warned you this is a geeky post]

When I am designing or building a system and am questioned about whether writing it in Ruby or Rails is a good idea. Or if someone asks me my opinion or for advice about whether it makes sense that his or her developers are recommending Rails for a big site.

What I believe is that scalability has to do with the overall system architecture -- caching, queueing, horizontal scalability and so on. It does not have to do with the programming language. (What the LivingSocial guy said about this wasn't quite as polite - he said "get better developers!!!")

I am at this conference, RailsConf, overflowing with hard-core Rails fanatics, so the sample is admittedly biased. But I did pick up some fact-based tidbits.

Did you know that two of the biggest web sites out there today are built totally on Rails? And I don't mean Twitter. No, LivingSocial.com and Groupon.com. Both huge. Both perform beautifully. Both written totally in Rails.

'Nuf said?

railsconf -- What, can't I use hashtags in a blog post?

  • 1 min read

MSFT and Skype, my angle

Check this post Why Microsoft bought Skype from I, Cringely:

There is so much to write about but I’ll begin with Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion. The pundits are debating whether this move by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes good business sense, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. The better approach is to wonder what would have happened had Microsoft not bought Skype? Based on the high price alone I’m fairly confident that Ballmer felt he had no choice but to buy. In fact I’m fairly certain he felt that not buying could have doomed Microsoft.

Ok there's not much to add to this story, except one angle. In my view, this is good for Google. Say what? Microsoft is probably going to doll up (or ruin) Skype with all kinds of Microsoft specific crap making it heavy and ugly if you are not a Microsoftie.

Now you might argue that most of the world is a Microsoftie, and I assume you are right. But I wonder whether that is true of the millions of Skype users.

I know for my own sick mind, Skype began losing it's luster as it made it's Mac client bigger and uglier. That will only get worse. For my own sick mind, again, I am now more attracted to Google Voice than I was before.

If my own sick mind represents a sizable group, this can actually end up helping Google and hurting Microsoft.

Crazy?

  • 1 min read

People forgot about iPhone 1.0

Funny to read this:

"The story started in 2007, with the release of the first iPhone. Led by its enigmatic leader Steve Jobs, Apple gave developers their first real taste of independence from the carrier oligarchy. The iPhone’s beauty was manifold, but first and foremost, it allowed developers to build applications and sell them for a fee — to users who could conveniently tap their iTunes account to buy things through the iPhone’s App Store. This bypassed the control of the carriers, which had long dictated what phones featured on their “decks.” (from How HTML5 will kill the native app)

Don't you remember (it's not so long ago) that when the iPhone came out, Apple and Steve Jobs were vehement against opening it up to developers? This is from October 1, 2007:

"We have been trying to come up with a solution to expand the capabilities of the iPhone by letting developers write great apps for it, yet keep the iPhone reliable and secure," Jobs told developers at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. That solution was Web-based applications, which is sort of like being told that you can't buy a DVD because HBO shows that movie every month or so, and it was met with tepid applause by Apple's developers." (from "Trouble in iPhone Paradise")

  • 1 min read

Mac Mystery

Just reaching out you mac experts. I used to think I was one, but this one has me stumped.

Using Safari, every so often, while I am doing something (what?) shrinks the fonts of the page being displayed. In other words, does the equivalent of a Command/- or Command/+. It seems to have something to do with dragging the mouse while doing something else.

I know that a command-0 restores things normally. I also know that control- double-fingered-drag will enlarge the whole screen, that is, zoom in on the pixels. This is something else.

I can't figure it out and neither can google. Do you know?