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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.

Comment Re:Tough. (Score 1) 77

They do have a customer agreement and that agreement specifies that it would only be sold to a company that would be continuing the service clear provided for the customers that still had time left on their membership. They were still pushing the $199 renew fee pretty hard even as they went out of business though.

Comment Re:And? (Score 1) 543

They do NOT issue sequential last four digits any more. They used to, e.g. my mother is a fraternal twin and she and her brother have consecutive SSN's, I too am a franternal twin however, the only thing that my twin sister and I share in our SSN's is the first five digits. The last four are unrelated.

Comment As a relatively recent graduate (Score 1) 699

I graduated from Central Michigan University in May 2008. While the current network policies may seem restrictive, I did live in the dorms during the 2003-2004 school year, and between xbox gaming and unlimited p2p filesharing, we had to survive with bandwidth that had the throughput of a coathanger. Average download speeds would rarely top the equivelent of dialup. I know that there is a plethora of affordable off-campus housing in Mount Pleasant, most of it with broadband included in the price of rent. If you aren't trapped by the horrible if-you-get-any-scholarship policy that makes you live on campus for two years, I strongly advise you to look into it.

Comment Goals (Score 1) 308

To begin with, I have not RTFA (damn you websense!) nor have I ever played WoW. But I can give some examples of addictive games that I have played, such as Sid Meier's Pirates! As many other posters have pointed out, one of the features that they feel makes WoW addictive is the social interaction. This has no appeal for me, which is why MMORPG's haven't ever really captivated me the way most single player games have. I think that the addictiveness has to take into account both the nature of the players and also the player's goals. In the case of Pirates! the game became very addicting because the quests that would be given to you could be accomplished in about 20 minutes each. This, coupled with a fairly intuitive control scheme using just the number pad on the keyboard made for a great pick up and play kind of game, but always having the ability to complete a particular quest in 20 minutes or less triggers a "just one more" kind of play style where I lose track of time and next thing I know I've been playing for 14 hours with minimal breaks. Having short, attainable goals that tie into a long term goal provides a sense of accomplishment that produces a desire to keep on playing without interruption.

Comment Just print them! (Score 1) 469

Reduce the size by half and arrange the pages side-by-side and print duplex. It doesn't take much paper, the batteries never run out, and it is more portable (in the case of up to a few books).

If you live in the West, ask your local library what book binding equipment they have. Often, libraries bind books since the covers wear down over the years. If you can get your book bound, the result is, well, like a library book! Some countries even have shops that will do this for you for a few US dollars per book. Here in Thailand, getting eBooks printed is one of my favorite activities.

(Shameless plug!) Recently, to teach myself Rails, I made a site (from 100% free software) offering convenient eBook printing and delivery: Siam eBook Printers. We discount books about open source too. It doesn't make much money, but it was possibly the most fun project I've ever done. Contact me if you want to know how it works!

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*

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