It's interesting that so many people view a college degree as nothing more than a career opportunity. I actually just completed my Computer Science degree at Penn State, and I can't tell you the number of times I heard people say "I'm only here so I can a degree and then get a job." I think many have lost sight of what a degree represents. It represents a desire for knowledge, to move beyond simple facts and figures and programming. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with those who simply want to program, but a college degree should represent so much more.
When I received my degree, I did not say, "Oh, good, now I can get a job. That's all this degree is good for." To me it represented the culmination of almost four years of hard work, in which I did study Computer Science, but I also studied Latin, Jazz music, and many other topics.
Unfortunately, the mentality in college has changed, not just in computer science. The notion of "I hate going to college, but I need a degree to get a job" is growing. College is becoming more of a votech sort of education. I'm not implying that there is anything wrong with a votech education, but there are institutions that specialize in such things.
So in response to the question, no, you cannot get a college degree in a year. To do so would really be an insult to what the degree represents. It represents a dedication on one's part to learning, to expanding one's mind. And really, that can't be accomplished in one year.
For anyone interested, here is a paper (in Postscript format, on the parc FTP server) from 1993 by David Goldberg and Cate Richardson of PARC discussing unistrokes. It looks like the foundation for the strokes is there. I wonder how Palm's version measures up to their tests.
This mentality in education is frightening
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Yo - Pay Attention!
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· Score: 5
Having this kind of "business" consumers vs. sellers mentality in education could really contribute to a descrease in the quality of that education. I know that concept has been prominent here at Penn State University--that the students are consumers who pay for a service, that is, their education. Unfortunately, this has created lazier students who demand higher grades, because students realize that they are in control. Trying to compete with the Internet, television, and other forms of media to compel students can only make the situation worse.
It is no secret that the classroom experience, for the most part, bores students when compared to the high-paced, personalized media of today's mass media market. But I don't think the answer to captivating students is to integrate and use this technology as a replacement for traditional teaching methods. Once the education system tries to compete with mass media for young people's attention, it sets itself up to become a competitor, which could be a very dangerous game to play. Whereas media has in many ways taken a presentation-over-content approach in order to gain viewship, education cannot afford to compromise subject matter in an attempt to "defeat" television, Internet, etc. To do so is to compromise one of the very foundations of education.
I'm certainly not arguing that the new forms of media have nothing to offer in education; quite the contrary, they can be a powerful tool when used as a supplement. Technology allows the presentation to be altered, the content to be more easily accessible (class notes on a web page, online discussion forums). Nonetheless, it is important to keep the distinction between the two. I mean, imagine if class were like the Internet...students looking at a large monitor as the professor jumped from page to page, each with vital information. But what if in an attempt to keep the students interest, the professor only spent about five seconds on each page? Most of the information would be skipped, lost. As Brooks said in The Shawshank Redemption, "The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." If that mentality overtakes the education system, it'll be even worse off than it already is.
I can't believe that the 6 hours of additional footage and 7 deleted scenes are being released on the first DVD release. I mean, shouldn't it go a little more like:
Original released
Enhanced version with new super-duper THX2 sound
A month later, re-release in theaters with the deleted (2 second) scence included
Release of DVD with deleted scences
Release of "limited edition" behind-the-scences DVD
That would seem to follow better the George Lucas release schedule, don't you think?
I owned a Palm for about a year. Then, one day I was with some friends and managed to fall on my side, with my Palm in my pocket. The thing shattered. I didn't really have enough money to get a new one, so I didn't bother to replace it.
The next month or so was crazy; I couldn't remember assignments, appointments, or phone numbers very well. But after that month, I found myself able to keep it all straight in my head. It was at that moment I came to this conclusion: The Palm resulted in a decreased memory ability! It was at that point I realized that breaking my Palm was quite a blessing in disguise. I'm frankly glad to be rid of it.
So if your reasoning for getting a PDA is to help remember appointments and the like, I'd actually recommend against it, but instead focus on ways to try to better remember things without any assistance. Yes, it takes some time to get used to it, but in the end I think it's highly beneficial.
I haven't had a lot of experience with it, but SmallTalk is a great language for learning object-oriented principles, because it is purely object oriented; everything in the language is an object, from integers to windows to text and all methods act on an object. In that respect, it's a bit closer to "human thinking" than most programming languages.
I did not study SmallTalk until my Programming Languages Concepts in my junior year here at Penn State, but I wish I had studied it earlier. My initial reaction to the language was it would make a perfect "introduction to programming" language, particulary object-oriented programming.
Squeak is a great implementation of SmallTalk, very intuative design and easy to examine classes, objects, and methods.
I understand that it can be turned off, but I'm looking at it more from the author's perspective. And yes, I know that there is a META tag to turn off the feature for authors, but still, there is an outside force attempting to alter the message of one's work. I mean, how smart can these links honestly be? What if I created a pro-open source page and Microsoft links things in my page to pages that present arguments against open source? Yes, they do have the right to believe what they want to believe and to try to set forth those ideas, but not by overshadowing my message as an author. One might argue that they have a right to do this, perhaps even under free speech and the First Amendment, but the fact is, one's free speech rights are only protected up to the point when it does not infringe upon another's free speech rights. If you ask me, someone else even trying to take control of what I write and link it to other places is infringing on my free speech.
Look at it this way, though: What if you wrote a book that was to be published and the publisher added all sorts of footnotes referring people to other books and articles? Footnotes can be a rather annoying distraction in a book, and I have a feeling links added by Microsoft would be the same. An author of a book wouldn't stand for such additions, and I don't think there is any reason we should, either. If someone wants to do further research on something on my web page, he can go to a search engine and type it in.
You know, I bet Metallica and Dr. Dre would feel a lot different if their record company had developed the software. They would have said it was a wonderful way to spread music around the world and to people who might normally not buy their albums. But instead it is piracy and evil, evil, evil. I'm not saying that musicians shouldn't protect their work nor that we have a right to download whatever we want, but--since the people who have problems with Napster are thinking in $$$--they'd probably make more money if they worked with Napster.
For instance, although I'm not a huge Limp Bizkit fan, I think they have the right idea having a free tour sponsored by Napster. If I'm not mistaken, Fred Durst even said he doesn't care that Limp Bizkit songs are out on Napster because those who really want the album will go and get it, mp3s or no mp3s. And I think the most telling sign is this: Limp Bizkit fans certainly seem a lot happier right now than Metallica fans....
If Metallica and the music industry is "successful" and shuts down Napster completely and then record sales drop because people won't buy albums they haven't previewed. I can only speak for myself, but I know that of all the mp3s I have, I probably would have only bought one or two of the albums containing the songs if I didn't have the mp3s. By the same token, I have bought four or five CDs because of the mp3s I downloaded and couldn't get out of my head. So in the end, the recording industry has actually benefitted from the presence of mp3s. Maybe if they'd take a second and look at their record (as in higher than ever before) sales and the beginning of the popularity of music on the internet, perhaps they'd see a correlation?
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It's interesting that so many people view a college degree as nothing more than a career opportunity. I actually just completed my Computer Science degree at Penn State, and I can't tell you the number of times I heard people say "I'm only here so I can a degree and then get a job." I think many have lost sight of what a degree represents. It represents a desire for knowledge, to move beyond simple facts and figures and programming. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with those who simply want to program, but a college degree should represent so much more.
When I received my degree, I did not say, "Oh, good, now I can get a job. That's all this degree is good for." To me it represented the culmination of almost four years of hard work, in which I did study Computer Science, but I also studied Latin, Jazz music, and many other topics.
Unfortunately, the mentality in college has changed, not just in computer science. The notion of "I hate going to college, but I need a degree to get a job" is growing. College is becoming more of a votech sort of education. I'm not implying that there is anything wrong with a votech education, but there are institutions that specialize in such things.
So in response to the question, no, you cannot get a college degree in a year. To do so would really be an insult to what the degree represents. It represents a dedication on one's part to learning, to expanding one's mind. And really, that can't be accomplished in one year.
For anyone interested, here is a paper (in Postscript format, on the parc FTP server) from 1993 by David Goldberg and Cate Richardson of PARC discussing unistrokes. It looks like the foundation for the strokes is there. I wonder how Palm's version measures up to their tests.
Having this kind of "business" consumers vs. sellers mentality in education could really contribute to a descrease in the quality of that education. I know that concept has been prominent here at Penn State University--that the students are consumers who pay for a service, that is, their education. Unfortunately, this has created lazier students who demand higher grades, because students realize that they are in control. Trying to compete with the Internet, television, and other forms of media to compel students can only make the situation worse.
It is no secret that the classroom experience, for the most part, bores students when compared to the high-paced, personalized media of today's mass media market. But I don't think the answer to captivating students is to integrate and use this technology as a replacement for traditional teaching methods. Once the education system tries to compete with mass media for young people's attention, it sets itself up to become a competitor, which could be a very dangerous game to play. Whereas media has in many ways taken a presentation-over-content approach in order to gain viewship, education cannot afford to compromise subject matter in an attempt to "defeat" television, Internet, etc. To do so is to compromise one of the very foundations of education.
I'm certainly not arguing that the new forms of media have nothing to offer in education; quite the contrary, they can be a powerful tool when used as a supplement. Technology allows the presentation to be altered, the content to be more easily accessible (class notes on a web page, online discussion forums). Nonetheless, it is important to keep the distinction between the two. I mean, imagine if class were like the Internet...students looking at a large monitor as the professor jumped from page to page, each with vital information. But what if in an attempt to keep the students interest, the professor only spent about five seconds on each page? Most of the information would be skipped, lost. As Brooks said in The Shawshank Redemption, "The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." If that mentality overtakes the education system, it'll be even worse off than it already is.
I can't believe that the 6 hours of additional footage and 7 deleted scenes are being released on the first DVD release. I mean, shouldn't it go a little more like:
That would seem to follow better the George Lucas release schedule, don't you think?
I owned a Palm for about a year. Then, one day I was with some friends and managed to fall on my side, with my Palm in my pocket. The thing shattered. I didn't really have enough money to get a new one, so I didn't bother to replace it.
The next month or so was crazy; I couldn't remember assignments, appointments, or phone numbers very well. But after that month, I found myself able to keep it all straight in my head. It was at that moment I came to this conclusion: The Palm resulted in a decreased memory ability! It was at that point I realized that breaking my Palm was quite a blessing in disguise. I'm frankly glad to be rid of it.
So if your reasoning for getting a PDA is to help remember appointments and the like, I'd actually recommend against it, but instead focus on ways to try to better remember things without any assistance. Yes, it takes some time to get used to it, but in the end I think it's highly beneficial.
I haven't had a lot of experience with it, but SmallTalk is a great language for learning object-oriented principles, because it is purely object oriented; everything in the language is an object, from integers to windows to text and all methods act on an object. In that respect, it's a bit closer to "human thinking" than most programming languages.
I did not study SmallTalk until my Programming Languages Concepts in my junior year here at Penn State, but I wish I had studied it earlier. My initial reaction to the language was it would make a perfect "introduction to programming" language, particulary object-oriented programming. Squeak is a great implementation of SmallTalk, very intuative design and easy to examine classes, objects, and methods.
I understand that it can be turned off, but I'm looking at it more from the author's perspective. And yes, I know that there is a META tag to turn off the feature for authors, but still, there is an outside force attempting to alter the message of one's work. I mean, how smart can these links honestly be? What if I created a pro-open source page and Microsoft links things in my page to pages that present arguments against open source? Yes, they do have the right to believe what they want to believe and to try to set forth those ideas, but not by overshadowing my message as an author. One might argue that they have a right to do this, perhaps even under free speech and the First Amendment, but the fact is, one's free speech rights are only protected up to the point when it does not infringe upon another's free speech rights. If you ask me, someone else even trying to take control of what I write and link it to other places is infringing on my free speech.
Look at it this way, though: What if you wrote a book that was to be published and the publisher added all sorts of footnotes referring people to other books and articles? Footnotes can be a rather annoying distraction in a book, and I have a feeling links added by Microsoft would be the same. An author of a book wouldn't stand for such additions, and I don't think there is any reason we should, either. If someone wants to do further research on something on my web page, he can go to a search engine and type it in.
You know, I bet Metallica and Dr. Dre would feel a lot different if their record company had developed the software. They would have said it was a wonderful way to spread music around the world and to people who might normally not buy their albums. But instead it is piracy and evil, evil, evil. I'm not saying that musicians shouldn't protect their work nor that we have a right to download whatever we want, but--since the people who have problems with Napster are thinking in $$$--they'd probably make more money if they worked with Napster.
For instance, although I'm not a huge Limp Bizkit fan, I think they have the right idea having a free tour sponsored by Napster. If I'm not mistaken, Fred Durst even said he doesn't care that Limp Bizkit songs are out on Napster because those who really want the album will go and get it, mp3s or no mp3s. And I think the most telling sign is this: Limp Bizkit fans certainly seem a lot happier right now than Metallica fans....
If Metallica and the music industry is "successful" and shuts down Napster completely and then record sales drop because people won't buy albums they haven't previewed. I can only speak for myself, but I know that of all the mp3s I have, I probably would have only bought one or two of the albums containing the songs if I didn't have the mp3s. By the same token, I have bought four or five CDs because of the mp3s I downloaded and couldn't get out of my head. So in the end, the recording industry has actually benefitted from the presence of mp3s. Maybe if they'd take a second and look at their record (as in higher than ever before) sales and the beginning of the popularity of music on the internet, perhaps they'd see a correlation?