If you already know you are going into a CS program, you already have experience coding and a coding mentor around to train you then yes, the AP CS course is probably not for you. If you're not sure you want to code for a living or if you think you do but all you've ever done is make it through a couple of basic python tutorials then you probably want to get some experience coding before you go and major it in.
Flames are ionised (i.e. charged) particles. If you have a strong enough electric field (which is really not the same as 'shooting electricity' as per the article) when the charged particles move through the electric field there will be a force on them perpendicular to their motion and to the field i.e. the flame will curve over into spiral.
That's for a magnetic field. Charged particles move along the direction of electric fields.
They're used to dealing with bad transportation and roads, no or spotty electricity, using pit latrines and poor medical care. Those problems are being worked on and are showing improvement. [Fermi problem: what would it cost to take say, Tanzania, and give it a complete first world infrastructure; highways, paved local roads, sewage treatment, electricity, water, trash pickup?] Does that mean you think that the rapid expansion of cell networks in Africa and the resulting connectivity is wasted or shouldn't have been done? Third world residents deserve access to the modern world and broadband is part of that.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in 1999 the internet (very slow shared connection) was 2 days away and cost 1$/hour. Now it's a couple of hours away from where I lived, half the price and 10x faster. That needs to keep expanding. I tried explaining what the internet was to a rural friend. He had *seen* a phone once 10 years ago. Now he has one. The internet needs to go that way. People deserve access to information. Hey, maybe they'll start to figure out some of the solutions to their problems themselves instead of relying on people to tell them what to do.
[5 years in the Peace Corps in rural West & East Africa.]
The University of Colorado also has something called PhET which is a different collection of applets for physics, biology, chem, earth science and math. The physics goes up to basic quantum.
I see now it does cover thermo and does seem to be Cal state standards compliant. I've run into your books before and I like them more than the lesser-of-evils textbook I ended up with. I've thought about trying to use it in class but for the reasons outlined above it's just not going to (officially) happen. I'll probably steal some of your problems though:).
As a California high school physics teacher I agree that your text will never be adopted by a public California high school. You have a picture of a beer for one, obviously encouraging underaged drinking. Plus it's not aligned to the state standards (you're missing thermo). Also every physics teacher has to agree on a single textbook in case a physics student transfers mid-year. That hasn't happened in the 4 years I've been teaching here so why we're catering to the random data point is beyond me. But the standards are the main problem. You see, the school board has to ensure that the book meets the state standards. They're not going to actually read the standards and the book and see if they match up (and they're really not qualified to determine that). But the major publishers also publish helpful guides that link all the standards to specific pages in the text so all the board members have to do is look at the guide and say "Yup, it's standards complient" or more precisely verify the existence of such a guide and deem that necessary and sufficient. Since you don't have such a guide the board can not legally adopt your text. I'm pretty sure the picture of a beer would prevent me from even getting it approved as a supplementary text (were I to ask rather than just use it.)
Incredibly low? TFA quoted the median salary for a teacher in their mid 30s as $74,000 a year. I'm sure many people would be happy to trade their "incredibly low" salary for that incredibly low salary.
I don't know what article you're reading but the one linked in the summary says nothing about the median salary of a teacher. The number $74,000/yr, which I assume you pulled out of your ass, is about $30,000/yr inflated over the actual value. Sure, after 30 years of teaching I'd be making that much, but not in my mid-30s.
Could you provide a little more info on the Sterling engine from a bike wheel and rubber bands? I'm a high school physics teacher (done most of what you mention) and I've tried two different hand made Sterling engine models, including the one from Make magazine two years ago or so. Couldn't get either one even close to working.
Yeah, I realize 20 years makes the memory a little hazy.
The older generation doesn't know they want it. My parents (~70 years old) resisted dumping AOL dial-up until they were more or less pushed into getting broadband. Now both of them have discovered all the high bandwidth stuff on the web that they actually like and want to watch like videos on gardening or quilting. They don't use it much to communicate, they're not on facebook or twitter, they use the internet for finding information they want and now really appreciate the bandwidth. With dial-up finding what they wanted was just too painful so the percieved value was very low.
Twenty to thirty military trainees is not the same as 40 freshmen in public school, 20 of whom really don't want to be there and won't work without direct personal supervision, 10 of whom have special needs or learning disabilities, and 5 of whom are going to drop out/have a protracted stay in juvenile hall/spend a while in continuation school before getting a GED and are only interested in pushing your buttons to see what makes you blow up. Those are real numbers from my personal experience by the way.
I can see your setup being usable for some groups of students but you assume the teacher has control over the class set up. I have 8 fixed lab tables in two parallel rows. My other computer use options are the library with computers scattered around the periphery, or the computer room which has 6 round tables with 6 computers on each one. If you can tell me how to make good instructional use of computers in those situations while being able to monitor everyone's computer usage then I'm all ears (eyes?).
I like to call that supervision--a skill teachers are supposed to have.
Yeah, keeping track of every click of every student in a room full of 40 computers all facing different directions is a skill I have. I can read minds to fully know the intent of all my students also so if anyone even thinks about playing a flash game or looking at porn I'm on them before they can even click.
Absolutely. Right now the available ones are still much too expensive (a few times the cost of a phone). You get some unexpected problems when you try to find a place to charge a cell phone in the sun in rural Africa though. It has to be in a place where it won't be trampled by cows or goats, pecked at by chickens, used as a toy by wandering children or carried off by an opportunistic thief.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural part of Tanzania from 1999-2002 and I went back to visit this last summer. When I arrived in 1999 there was one cell network in the country. It was in the (then) capital and most populous city of 2 million people, it had a capacity of 50,000 and was maxed out. A couple of competing companies starting setting up towers and by the time I left they had covered the major cities and arteries of the entire country. When I went back this last July the companies had moved out into the villages and most people in the country had local cell coverage. The area where I had lived was very hilly and somewhat remote so I thought that they would never get coverage out there but they had it.
You don't buy a plan like in the US, you buy a phone ($30 for a cheap model) and then you buy minutes (leading to some of the shortest phone conversations I have ever heard). People who live in areas without electricity find ways to charge them. Someone might buy a generator and set up a side business charging phones. Some people have to bike hours to the nearest town with electricity.
The difference in how people communicate was astounding. Kids away studying could keep in contact with their families back in the villages. Kids who had met in school but lived in different places kept in touch (I reunited a number of my former students by passing cell phone numbers around). Farmers could keep in touch with people in the markets. It was an amazing change.
I've been using this site for 6 years and it is an excellent resource. It's not very much like a wiki however. It's not user-editable and I believe most of the submitters are academic types like professors at the University of Dar. It still doesn't hold a candle to the Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu though. That book has many more words, better example usages and the occasional proverb that uses the word.
And when else could I post my favourite methali ya kiswahili to Slashdot and have it be vaguely relevant?
Ukimwiga tembo kunya utapasuka mkundu. If you imitate an elephant shitting you'll burst your asshole.
Lovely site. I followed links to the homepages of six different projects listed in three different categories and got six 404's in three different languages.
The same odd shaped piece would be nice. What it does is wait until you have just one box left to finish a row and then gives you squares until you have to cover that box up. It's not really very fun.
For example -- you think Americans living abroad are exempt from paying taxes?
Well, actually they are if they make less than $70,000 and the income is not from the US government.
http://www.familyhaven.com/careers/travelcareers/t axesabroad.html
If they want to use this in high schools and middle schools then that assumes that all their students have computers with a word processor. What about all of the lower income kids at schools that don't allow after school activities (like using school computers) like public schools in NYC? It's a tool for the middle and upper classes that will give their teachers more time for their students and leave the teachers in poorer areas still overworked and struggling to keep up. It won't be feasible where it is needed the most.
What? Single gear bikes are not necessarily direct drive like a unicycle. You can put a ratchet in there so you keep moving even without pedaling (think about going down a steep hill with a direct drive bike). Don't you guys remember that single gear bike you had as a kid that you stopped by pushing backwards on the pedals? I think it had some brake on the rear axle but I wasn't interested in bike mechanics when I was 7, it had nothing visible on the tire though.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a good explanation by a physicist who thinks about experimental validation of quantum gravity here.
If you already know you are going into a CS program, you already have experience coding and a coding mentor around to train you then yes, the AP CS course is probably not for you. If you're not sure you want to code for a living or if you think you do but all you've ever done is make it through a couple of basic python tutorials then you probably want to get some experience coding before you go and major it in.
And it's on sale. Guess I'm not getting much done today.
Flames are ionised (i.e. charged) particles. If you have a strong enough electric field (which is really not the same as 'shooting electricity' as per the article) when the charged particles move through the electric field there will be a force on them perpendicular to their motion and to the field i.e. the flame will curve over into spiral.
That's for a magnetic field. Charged particles move along the direction of electric fields.
They're used to dealing with bad transportation and roads, no or spotty electricity, using pit latrines and poor medical care. Those problems are being worked on and are showing improvement. [Fermi problem: what would it cost to take say, Tanzania, and give it a complete first world infrastructure; highways, paved local roads, sewage treatment, electricity, water, trash pickup?] Does that mean you think that the rapid expansion of cell networks in Africa and the resulting connectivity is wasted or shouldn't have been done? Third world residents deserve access to the modern world and broadband is part of that.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in 1999 the internet (very slow shared connection) was 2 days away and cost 1$/hour. Now it's a couple of hours away from where I lived, half the price and 10x faster. That needs to keep expanding. I tried explaining what the internet was to a rural friend. He had *seen* a phone once 10 years ago. Now he has one. The internet needs to go that way. People deserve access to information. Hey, maybe they'll start to figure out some of the solutions to their problems themselves instead of relying on people to tell them what to do.
[5 years in the Peace Corps in rural West & East Africa.]
The University of Colorado also has something called PhET which is a different collection of applets for physics, biology, chem, earth science and math. The physics goes up to basic quantum.
I see now it does cover thermo and does seem to be Cal state standards compliant. I've run into your books before and I like them more than the lesser-of-evils textbook I ended up with. I've thought about trying to use it in class but for the reasons outlined above it's just not going to (officially) happen. I'll probably steal some of your problems though :).
As a California high school physics teacher I agree that your text will never be adopted by a public California high school. You have a picture of a beer for one, obviously encouraging underaged drinking. Plus it's not aligned to the state standards (you're missing thermo). Also every physics teacher has to agree on a single textbook in case a physics student transfers mid-year. That hasn't happened in the 4 years I've been teaching here so why we're catering to the random data point is beyond me. But the standards are the main problem. You see, the school board has to ensure that the book meets the state standards. They're not going to actually read the standards and the book and see if they match up (and they're really not qualified to determine that). But the major publishers also publish helpful guides that link all the standards to specific pages in the text so all the board members have to do is look at the guide and say "Yup, it's standards complient" or more precisely verify the existence of such a guide and deem that necessary and sufficient. Since you don't have such a guide the board can not legally adopt your text. I'm pretty sure the picture of a beer would prevent me from even getting it approved as a supplementary text (were I to ask rather than just use it.)
Incredibly low? TFA quoted the median salary for a teacher in their mid 30s as $74,000 a year. I'm sure many people would be happy to trade their "incredibly low" salary for that incredibly low salary.
I don't know what article you're reading but the one linked in the summary says nothing about the median salary of a teacher. The number $74,000/yr, which I assume you pulled out of your ass, is about $30,000/yr inflated over the actual value. Sure, after 30 years of teaching I'd be making that much, but not in my mid-30s.
Could you provide a little more info on the Sterling engine from a bike wheel and rubber bands? I'm a high school physics teacher (done most of what you mention) and I've tried two different hand made Sterling engine models, including the one from Make magazine two years ago or so. Couldn't get either one even close to working.
Yeah, I realize 20 years makes the memory a little hazy.
The older generation doesn't know they want it. My parents (~70 years old) resisted dumping AOL dial-up until they were more or less pushed into getting broadband. Now both of them have discovered all the high bandwidth stuff on the web that they actually like and want to watch like videos on gardening or quilting. They don't use it much to communicate, they're not on facebook or twitter, they use the internet for finding information they want and now really appreciate the bandwidth. With dial-up finding what they wanted was just too painful so the percieved value was very low.
Twenty to thirty military trainees is not the same as 40 freshmen in public school, 20 of whom really don't want to be there and won't work without direct personal supervision, 10 of whom have special needs or learning disabilities, and 5 of whom are going to drop out/have a protracted stay in juvenile hall/spend a while in continuation school before getting a GED and are only interested in pushing your buttons to see what makes you blow up. Those are real numbers from my personal experience by the way.
I can see your setup being usable for some groups of students but you assume the teacher has control over the class set up. I have 8 fixed lab tables in two parallel rows. My other computer use options are the library with computers scattered around the periphery, or the computer room which has 6 round tables with 6 computers on each one. If you can tell me how to make good instructional use of computers in those situations while being able to monitor everyone's computer usage then I'm all ears (eyes?).
I like to call that supervision--a skill teachers are supposed to have.
Yeah, keeping track of every click of every student in a room full of 40 computers all facing different directions is a skill I have. I can read minds to fully know the intent of all my students also so if anyone even thinks about playing a flash game or looking at porn I'm on them before they can even click.
Aisee! Mambo vipi? Nilikaa karibu na Njombe, mbali kwako. Nilipokwenda nilisafiri miji mbali mbali kati ya Dar na Njombe.
Yeah, pretty weird, but then it's no secret that there are plenty of geeks in Peace Corps.
Absolutely. Right now the available ones are still much too expensive (a few times the cost of a phone). You get some unexpected problems when you try to find a place to charge a cell phone in the sun in rural Africa though. It has to be in a place where it won't be trampled by cows or goats, pecked at by chickens, used as a toy by wandering children or carried off by an opportunistic thief.
I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in a rural part of Tanzania from 1999-2002 and I went back to visit this last summer. When I arrived in 1999 there was one cell network in the country. It was in the (then) capital and most populous city of 2 million people, it had a capacity of 50,000 and was maxed out. A couple of competing companies starting setting up towers and by the time I left they had covered the major cities and arteries of the entire country. When I went back this last July the companies had moved out into the villages and most people in the country had local cell coverage. The area where I had lived was very hilly and somewhat remote so I thought that they would never get coverage out there but they had it.
You don't buy a plan like in the US, you buy a phone ($30 for a cheap model) and then you buy minutes (leading to some of the shortest phone conversations I have ever heard). People who live in areas without electricity find ways to charge them. Someone might buy a generator and set up a side business charging phones. Some people have to bike hours to the nearest town with electricity.
The difference in how people communicate was astounding. Kids away studying could keep in contact with their families back in the villages. Kids who had met in school but lived in different places kept in touch (I reunited a number of my former students by passing cell phone numbers around). Farmers could keep in touch with people in the markets. It was an amazing change.
I've been using this site for 6 years and it is an excellent resource. It's not very much like a wiki however. It's not user-editable and I believe most of the submitters are academic types like professors at the University of Dar. It still doesn't hold a candle to the Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu though. That book has many more words, better example usages and the occasional proverb that uses the word.
And when else could I post my favourite methali ya kiswahili to Slashdot and have it be vaguely relevant?
Ukimwiga tembo kunya utapasuka mkundu.
If you imitate an elephant shitting you'll burst your asshole.
Lovely site. I followed links to the homepages of six different projects listed in three different categories and got six 404's in three different languages.
The same odd shaped piece would be nice. What it does is wait until you have just one box left to finish a row and then gives you squares until you have to cover that box up. It's not really very fun.
For example -- you think Americans living abroad are exempt from paying taxes? Well, actually they are if they make less than $70,000 and the income is not from the US government. http://www.familyhaven.com/careers/travelcareers/t axesabroad.html
This will be sure to boost the effeciency of travelling salesmen everywhere.
If they want to use this in high schools and middle schools then that assumes that all their students have computers with a word processor. What about all of the lower income kids at schools that don't allow after school activities (like using school computers) like public schools in NYC? It's a tool for the middle and upper classes that will give their teachers more time for their students and leave the teachers in poorer areas still overworked and struggling to keep up. It won't be feasible where it is needed the most.
What? Single gear bikes are not necessarily direct drive like a unicycle. You can put a ratchet in there so you keep moving even without pedaling (think about going down a steep hill with a direct drive bike). Don't you guys remember that single gear bike you had as a kid that you stopped by pushing backwards on the pedals? I think it had some brake on the rear axle but I wasn't interested in bike mechanics when I was 7, it had nothing visible on the tire though.