Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Submission + - For Every Student Who Masters the Mainframe, IBM Will Feed 4 Children for a Day

theodp writes: At part of this week's IBM Z Day event, looking-for-young-blood IBM is teaming up with tech-backed K-12 CS nonprofits Code.org and CSforALL and calling on students 14-and-up to Master The Mainframe during the 24-hour code-a-thon to open doors to new opportunities with Fortune 500 companies. "The rewards for participants are substantial," explains Big Blue. "For every student who finishes Level 1, IBM will donate to the UN World Food Programme #ShareTheMeal. [...] In celebration of IBM Z day, we will double the donation for all students that complete Master the Mainframe Level 1 between Sept 15 — 30 2020. Just 1 hour of your time will feed 4 children for a day."

Comment Re:LOGO writer? (Score 1, Interesting) 353

I am currently reading "Mindstorms," by Seymour Papert, which is the namesake of the LEGO product for building intermediate robotics. The concepts of that product and its language—LEGO/LOGO—are inspired by Mr. Papert's work therein. Read it. Let's compare notes afterward, because I'm afraid that your questions betray your all-too-easy view of "education." To the questions:

  1. "What coding languages should be considered?" All language; specifically (unto each child), the language that child uses—primarily—in communicating outside of that person's self. Around these parts, that's most usually English or American Sign Language (or, perhaps, Signed English). Start out with epistemology: be up-front and honest (if you are willing to do this) that the class is going to be primarily a safe place to—as an undercurrent to the purpose of attendance—think about thinking ("metacognition.") Speaking of that "purpose of attendance": it sounds as if you want to simply check off some tacky ticky boxes on a form to "certify" that the children have "done the work." To each one, ensure that person has a reason for being there, because you owe each a personalized curriculum. If they are required to be there (compulsory attendance), it's spoiled and can't be considered true "learning" (which is *always,* I contend, autodidactic).
  2. I recommend LOGO, particularly because it has a "body-syntonic" application. This ensures you (and others who use it) may surmount the "nerds vs. jocks" stereotyping that could happen, often portrayed in popular media in the LOGO age.
  3. If you must indoctrinate "the class" to a particular language, use LOGO. Use the "get up and walk around and figure out how *you* think about walking a circle, then write it down" type of lesson plan, the subroutine instructions that build up into a palette of useful examples of geometry, and the opportunities for functionalization. It's also a good foundation, I've decided, for having folks think in a slightly less-absurd way about points, lines, curves, and positions, because the Turtle (cursor/caret) has *direction,* as well as position, and is therefore more vector-y (i.e., real-world applicable) than simple point-based systems-"frozen"-in-time.
  4. "Are there are any self-guided coding websites that can be used by children to learn coding using guidance and help online?" With this, you make it known that you're not really willing to develop. Read a book. Or do you want a "teach children to use a self-guided coding website" website to help you? I don't ask it to be rude, but to help you gain an enthusiasm for the position of being entrusted with young learners. If going down that road, instead of having each come up with (a) what learning is, (b) where learning comes from, and (c) when to learn (i.e., a reason for learning) as the first day activities, just know that the children (as a whole and each, individually) aren't stupid (don't label them such, even in your thoughts), and any misconceptions they garner from substandard, non-individually-catered learning materials will be on your head.

Comment Excellent News (Score 1) 136

As an on-the-outskirts "hipster," I understand this as a glimpse into the future, where we've learned from the mistakes of the digital age. Though digital's "always-on," "always-streaming" (as private electronic storage of music has become passé) form is good for those who want a "quick hit" of a Top 40 "quick hit," we've lost the listening experience of the "art of the album" -- not to mention actual "album art," which represents a hold-in-one's-hands physical artefact: a manifestation of music, made real. It means more to buy a physical album. Some of us have found this to be true with dead-trees-type books, already.
The Internet

OpenLeaks Founder 'Crippled' WikiLeaks 278

SETIGuy writes "Former WikiLeaks programmer Daniel Domscheit-Berg sabotaged WikiLeaks in a manner that threatens the anonymity of leakers, according to a WikiLeaks spokesperson. Since leaving WikiLeaks, Domschiet-Berg has become one of the cofounders of OpenLeaks. This raises the question: if you had material to leak, would you trust it to someone who has already jeopardized the anonymity of leakers at a site where he worked?" Domscheit-Berg denies claims by WikiLeaks that he damaged the organization or 'stole' material, but did say he took roughly 300,000 documents with him when he left. An anonymous reader notes related news that WikiLeaks is attempting to get around donation blocks by selling a line of T-shirts.
NASA

Boeing Releases Details On New Crew Capsule 66

FleaPlus writes "Boeing has released a number of new details on its CST-100 manned space capsule, being developed in collaboration with commercial space station builder Bigelow Aerospace. Competing with SpaceX's Dragon capsule, the vehicle is designed to be compatible with existing Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9 rockets, and is planned to carry seven people in a capsule 'a little smaller than Orion, but a little bigger than Apollo.' Funding was jump-started this year with $18M of fixed-price Commercial Crew Development money from NASA, which requires completion of several fabrication and demonstration milestones this year (heat shield, escape system, landing tests, etc.) in order to get the full payment."
Image

Publishing Company Puts Warning Label on Constitution 676

Wilder Publication is under fire for putting warning labels on copies of historical US documents, including the Constitution. The label warns "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today." From the article: "The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they 'might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.'"
Wine

Wine 1.2 Release Candidate Announced 165

An anonymous reader writes "After evolving over 15 years to get to 1.0, a mere 2 years later and Wine 1.2 is just about here. There have been many many improvements and plenty of new features added. Listing just a few (doing no justice to the complete change set): many new toolbar icons; support for alpha blending in image lists; much more complete shader assembler; support for Arabic font shaping and joining, and a number of fixes for video rendering; font anti-aliasing configuration through fontconfig; and improved handling of desktop link files. Win64 support is the milestone that marks this release. Please test your favorite applications for problems and regressions and let the Wine team know so fixes can be made before the final release. Find the release candidate here."
Games

More Evidence For Steam Games On Linux 256

SheeEttin writes "Back in November 2008, Phoronix reported that Linux libraries appeared in the Left 4 Dead demo, and then in March, Valve announced that Steam and the Source engine were coming to Mac OS X. Now, Phoronix reports that launcher scripts included with the (closed beta) Mac version of Steam include explicit support for launching a Linux version."
United States

Journal Journal: Madisonian Compromise 3

I'm still hearing people talk about how Madison said in 1789 that we should impeach a President who fired a "meritorious officer," used as a defense of impeaching Bush today.

Enso Gives Keyboard Commands to Windows Users 234

illuminatedwax writes "The Wall Street Journal's Walter S. Mossberg's latest column is a writeup on a new software system called Enso. Enso is from a small software startup called Humanized, led by Aza Raskin. The software allows Windows users to do common tasks, like launching programs, spellchecking, or Googling for search terms, but what's interesting is that it allows you to do these tasks from within any program in Windows by use of the keyboard. From the article: 'There are two initial Enso products, which can be downloaded at humanized.com. One, called Enso Launcher, allows you to launch programs and switch among windows via typed commands. The other, called Enso Words, allows you to do spell-checking, even when the program you're using doesn't include that capability, and to look up the meaning of words. Both products also include a simple calculator and the ability to launch Google searches.' Humanized says that users will be able to program their own commands for Enso in future versions."

Flickr Patenting "Interestingness" 95

tjcrowder noted that Boing Boing is reporting that Flickr has filed for a patent on a system for determining "interestingness". From the patent application abstract: "Media objects, such as images or soundtracks, may be ranked according to a new class of metrics known as "interestingness." These rankings may be based at least in part on the quantity of user-entered metadata concerning the media object, the number of users who have assigned metadata to the media object, access patterns related to the media object, and/or a lapse of time related to the media object." So basically, nobody else can use tags to label files. Totally original thinking from the folks at flickr. *cough*

Cell Phone Use May Be Bad For Your Sperm 120

imaginaryelf writes, "WebMD reports that researchers have found a link between hours of cell phone use and sperm quality. 'In a study led by researchers from The Cleveland Clinic, men who used their cell phones the most had poorer sperm quality than those who used them the least.' We Slashdotters know that correlation does not equal causation, so further research is needed to understand the link, but just in case, maybe men should cut back on the hours of cell phone use?"

Slashdot Top Deals

"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of watching television." -- Cal Keegan

Working...