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Comment One Solid Reason for Homework (Score 1) 192

I haven't been in the classroom since close to the year 2000, so I don't remember the study names. What I do remember is that there were studies, plural - studies, that showed that when you learn how to do a new task or learn new information, that using that information or practicing the task within 24 hours increases the chance of it being remembered by a large percentage. That's over 25 years ago for me, and I'm not going to claim it's at a certain percentage, but I know it was WELL over 50%. So if you learn a new process in Algebra, or a new move in ballroom dance, and you don't practice it within 24 hours, you have a lower chance of remembering it. But it was at least over a 50% increase in your chance of remembering it IF you reinforced it by going through it within 24 hours.

I preferred to use homework as practice - not as learning new material (although that might help if it includes reading for the next day's class). I also worked in psych treatment, which meant I taught more than one subject - I had the odd mix of science and math plus English (lit and grammar). So I'd assign reading overnight that gave us more chance for discussion (discussion, not lecture!), and the math I assigned was to use what we had learned in class. For science, I'd actually prefer to assign reading for what we had done that day, compared to what we would do the next day. That way students found the reading easier, it went faster, and they'd bring in a few questions the next day that we could review (before moving on to new material).

When I grew up, I was forced to go to a prep school where we had 3 or more hours of homework a night, plus we were required to stay for some form of athletics, so I rarely got home before 6 PM. With that in mind, I was selective about homework. For the time I was teaching in public schools (as opposed to my time teaching in treatment), the dept. heads and supervisors jumped on me for not giving enough homework or for assigning science material we had reviewed in class - pretty much everything about my homework system offended the dept heads or supervisors.

Comment Re:It's got nothing to do with appeal (Score 1) 89

I started lurking in 4K enthusiast groups to see if they were all cracked up to be. The arguments about relative quality of various BD/4K releases isn't even the most interesting part.

It turns out that there are a lot of issues with set top boxes playing particular disks. The disks themselves also seem terribly fussy.

Comment Re:Would Pablo Escobar pass these tests? (Score 1) 259

Educational standards have been declining for a long time. It hasn't just recently gotten bad because of Corona. Both math and English instruction have declined to the point that people like you are making excuses for remedial instruction in college.

The sabotage is intentional even if those doing it don't think they are engaging in sabotage. This is painfully obvious if you interact with the K12 education system.

Parents these days have to more to repair the damage done by professionals.

Comment Re:Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score 1) 79

You're correct that Woz is brilliant, and did brilliant things, but it's completely incorrect to discount what Jobs did.

But what did he do that actually counts as innovation? What new did he bring into the world?

Some of his logic designs were amazing. I was learning digital logic when I got my //e and started studying schematics. (The //e was a generation removed, but had some features from the ][ series and I studied those as well.) For one example, the ][ disk drive. Just as a quick and simple example, he had a 7400 chip needed and used 1 ro 2 of the NAND gates on it. He used the other gates as amplifiers from the disk signal. Not something that was at all standard at that time (don't know if it is now). That's the one I can remember, but he was using ONE gate as an amp instead of at least one, if not three more chips. Things like that kept the costs down more than most would think.

I can't remember other examples, but his habits of having to keep chip counts down, so he could make what he wanted when his family didn't have a lot of money, came through in a number of ways in his designs.

Comment Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score 5, Insightful) 79

They really should be honoring Steve Wozniak instead. He's the one that did the work, did the innovation, made a floppy disk drive work for a price lower than anyone else could imagine by innovating. He's the one who did the designs and made it all possible. But Jobs was more visible and knew how to capture headlines.

Seriously, Jobs and Apple would have been NOTHING without Woz doing the kind of stuff he can do.

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Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what one is talking about nor whether what is said is true. -- Russell

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