Somehow, I feel that I betray my cyberpunk heritage because I’ve recently found it entertaining to don extravagant neckwear. But, my recently conducted anthropological expedition has revealed evidence that I am in fact upholding a veritably geek tradition.

If you bother to get through all that distilled wisdom, you should consider reading the book yourself. Throughout the book DeMillo backs up his arguments by citing specific colleges, educators, and institutions that serve as example observations. I’ve only captured that part of the book which was germane to my goals; gathering blurbs that remind me of where education is headed in the next 20 years.

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1. Hand out small whiteboards to the students, and ask relatively easy questions, with short answers. They can work out the problem on the board and hold it up like an Olympic judge rating a performance. Responding this way cuts down the embarrassment factor of raising a hand and being the only one speaking.
2. When you pause for a question during lecture, do so dramatically, and don’t show any nervousness. Maintain eye contact with the audience! and wait patiently (until you feel that the lighting is going to burn through your skull). You are more nervous than anyone in the audience, and you let the ominous silence stir someone into speaking up.
3. If nobody is responsive to a question, then it’s ok to eventually aks for a show of hands or a thumbs-up/thumbs-down “How do you feel about this?” “Do you think there’s something overlooked?”.
4. In discussion, I was stepping through some code given in a handout. Instead of lecturing, I could have identified lines of code in different functions which were actually acting in concert and place them either on the whiteboard or on posters around them room. Then have students break up into groups and answer “Why is this line here? What is it doing for us?”. I had actually already identified these lines because I wanted to point them out during my walkthrough of the code. But, isn’t it better if you can get the students to do that identification themselves?
5. Hold in-promptu ungraded evaluations at the end of class. Students don’t put their name on the paper, nor are they required to turn it in. The reward for finishing the problem is leaving class early. The answers actually collected can be used as an assessment for student understanding, and used to adjust what material is presented in the next session.

So, I did none of these things. Actually, I didn’t even think of doing these things. Without brainstorming and consultation of what I could have done, I’d remain trapped doing the same boring routine. So, doing this consultation is remarkably valuable.

How can we apply this to programming?

• Q/A on StackOverflow
• Mary Poppendieck’s Talk on InfoQ
• Practice Drills by Steve Yegge
• List of Code Katas

Specific Resources you can use.

• The Algorithm Design Manual, by Skiena
• Effective C++, by Scott Meyers
• 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, by O’Reilly Publishing too abstract, not enough meat.
• LeetCode
• Introduction to Algorithms, CLRS
• TopCoder

Mary’s talk on InfoQ (above) mentions The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, from which we see the following patterns:

• Design focused exercises to develop specific skills. Like a music teacher creates a drill to practice a technique the student underperforms at.
• Practice repeatedly (it’s how the brain learns).
• Obtain immediate feedback (longer time delay => less chance for learning).
• Focus on pushing limits. You aren’t extending your abilities if you have 100% success.
• Practice regularly and intensely. Practice everyday, but at a level that you couldn’t sustain for more than 3hrs
• Systematic improvement consists of 1. mentorship 2. challenge 3. feedback 4. dedication

Moreover, you have to pay close attention to what you are practicing.

• Peter Norvig: The key [to developing expertise] is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes.
• Mary Poppendieck: Deliberate practice does not mean doing what you are good at; it means challenging yourself, doing what you are not good at. So it’s not necessarily fun.

One idea this gives me: Build a non-trivial program (simple interpreter, parser-generator, into AI project, into DB project, etc.) in a new unfamiliar language. Learn the idioms of code organization in that language, and how it approaches important design issues such as flow control, error handling/reporting, and code re-use different from the languages you currently limit yourself to.

The conference was cheap ($30) and quite short: 8am to 3pm, lunch and breakfast included. (I paid $70 for the hotel, just so I wouldn’t have to wake up and drive). It had enough presenters for several tracks. I was only able to goto 3 of the talks. The ones that I chose to attend must not have been very popular, because each audience was only about 4 people, including myself. That’s alright though, because it really gives you the opportunity to ask more questions, and get more information.

One presenter, Craig Whitmore, has been working with Norris Middle School students, teaching them to program via scratch. A few of his student are there because they didn’t get the elective class they actually wanted. But that doesn’t deter him from showing them the magic of programming. He finds that everyone has fun, and the students tend to divide up among those that are really into the artistic aspect and those that enjoy more the computational aspect. Most students are engaged by the ability to author their own games. Some of the highlights can be found here. He also teaches the science class, and was able to use scratch to simulate organic compound mixing, and have students identify an unknown material via testing. Scratch was appropriate, because the school couldn’t afford the chemicals involved (and it lowers the danger). He also has a book about it.

Anything that can get students, no matter how young, creating with the computer is a great thing. So much the better if they get the programming bug.

Another presenter, Catlin Tucker, an English Teacher of Windsor School District, talked about how to ‘flip’ your classroom. The idea of flipping the classroom is basically getting the student to do the boring, individual study at home; and do the engaging group stuff in the classroom. Some of her techniques including running a collaborative online discussion, usually kick-started by a video and open-ended question (spurs opinion and debate). She’s got students posting 3-5 full-length paragraphs with argument and analysis of their positions without specifying length as a requirement. But how do you get students to do the reading at home? By doing something fun enough in the classroom that those who aren’t prepared feel left out, and are sentenced to Cornell Notes or other individualized material review instead. It’s really cool that she’s able to engage the students, but I’m not quite sure how these techniques will scale to a college intro class of 150 students.

The keynote speaker, Jon Corippo, was fantastic. He wasn’t afraid to yell and shout, emulating the raw excitement that 3rd graders can feel when really interesting in something. He had audience interaction, by demoing some teaching techniques, and giving away a $1 to someone that could produce an appositive phrase (proving that almost nobody knows what that is, how sad our education didn’t stick, it must not have been engaging enough to remember) He showed some educational games that can engage a whole class. He also showed how you can teach plot device through youTube clips of commercials (as any good commercial is a 30-second drama). It works really well to give students scaffolding for a problem. Boxes and lines to fill in. After analyzing some work that way, you can then ask them to create their own works. The scaffolding, which identifies essential components, now operates in reverse, instead of breaking apart for analysis, it’s used to synthesize and gather pieces together.

He spouted out a large number of online and free resources for those working on a budget. For about $60 for an AppleTV, you can connect the iPad2 wirelessly to a projector: a walk-around tablet! Also, edubuntu, freetech4teachers, edutecher app, goo.gl which has analytics! and more that I didn’t write down.

Although the K12 isn’t my focus at all, it was interesting to see the problems they face, and the solutions they’re trying. The people there were wonderfully excited to be together and sharing. The only unfortunate part is, how small the representation, given the size of Kern County. How many teachers aren’t interested enough to improve themselves?

22 March 2007. The new version of the type system is compiled and tested today. This is about 12 days after I started the revision. The next problem, causing a core dump today, is that range types get frozen but are left unresolved at the end of MatchFunction, so we can’t be sure about coercions and run-time types at that point; we have to defer those until we descend again, during code generation. So there is some re-thinking and rewriting to do there.

23 March 2007. Sorting out the relationship between coercions and subtype tests. This has led to a realization that subtypes have to be tested twice: once when manifesting, without asking for coercions because they are unavailable in the presence of range types, and once during code generation after range types have all been resolved, at which point an error could occur. Also privatised expr_rec further, hiding it from its own subtypes.

28 March 2007. Finally finished working on the relationship between coercions and subtype tests. There were two problems: when the upper constraint is a meet type, and when the lower constraint is a variable. Solutions to both have now been documented, implemented and tested. The next step is to insert subtype calls, and the resulting coercions, during code generation.

As you can see, it’s a pretty high-level summary of the coding concerns for that day. This log runs from 2002 to 2008, and documents the progress of the project. Since, I’ve now moved to WebKit in my Information Flow project, I’ve also started keeping a similar log. Recording each minor milestone of implementation work. I’m expecting this log to help me write my thesis, as it will give me remembrance of details that I might otherwise forget.

I’ve also experienced a secondary benefit from keeping this log. The desire to grow the log, compels me to make progress in my work. I’m motivated to do tasks, just so I can mark them as done in the log. Additionally, since the log is geared toward recording smaller changes, I can break big todo’s up into a series of loggable items. I no longer get flummoxed by thinking of the sum total of work that might go into the implementation. Instead, I’m motivated by smaller tasks, which are easily accomplished.

Finally, the very act of documenting the work, and putting my thoughts into words, has helped to concretize my ideas and concerns. Instead of worrying abstractly about nebulous feelings, I now have mold them into precise explanations. Doing this helps me to realize which aspects are ignorable, and what specific actions I can take to answer the open questions.

Finally, I have a technique that allows me to make steady, targeted progress.

Let’s suppose that you are a student, struggling with some subject. The fact that you are struggling means that you have likely had some negative feedback, either in the form of low grades or lots of red ink all over your papers. These experiences can sour your mind to the material. You might find yourself, reacting negatively to the idea of studying, focusing or improving any skills involved. You might have developed an ugh field. At this point you stop studying, because you just can’t bear to think about the topic. This results in continued poor performance.

It’s really surprising how easily, and often this can happen. I’d conjecture that it’s a bug in how our brains learn (Temoral Difference Learning). But, there are ways of getting past it (Defeating Ugh Fields in Practice). Clearly low grades, while providing a strong indicator that current performance is slipping or below standards, provides a negative reinforcement that can disengage a student altogether. And no amount of teaching, regardless of the methods, will get a student to incorporate the material into their mental world if they aren’t emotionally prepared and psychologically willing.

From a strictly rationalist perspective, a student receiving a slipping grade should realize that immediately redoubling their efforts into studying is the necessary remedy. Humans are not strictly rational, and have built-in cognitive short-cuts and emotional biases, so it is vitally important for any educator to make explicit what is expected. And not just in terms of course material, but in terms of performance. We need to catch students early, before it becomes too late.

Furthermore, I think that teacher intervention is necessary. I think, related to the Dunnign-Kruger effect is the inability (or denial) of students to realize their situation. I conjecture that poor performance in the classroom is strongly correlated with poor aptitude in ‘life skills’. The cognitive biases that lead a student to ignore the grading indicator, also leaves em feeling helpless. Ey likely don’t realize (because ey is used to having everything pointed out by a teacher) that remedies exist, and are readily available. Information about improving any aspect of your life is out there, just do a web search, but most people (esp. the ones that need to) don’t think to do it.

So, I believe, knowing these aspects about human cognition, that the educator bears a responsibility to remind the student, that they had better get back on track before it becomes too late. That a bad grade on a quiz or a homework servers as an indicator mechanism, not as a judgmental sentence. To recommend learning resources, time management classes, study skills exercises and find out which of these is appropriate to the situation. To show a student that ey are not powerless. All of this, must happen before the formation of an ugh field, or the incorporation of inability to the students identity (“I’m no good at math.”).

We also do a disservice to our students every time we propagate some common cultural myths.

• Becoming an expert isn’t innate, it’s a result of 10,000 hours practice.
• It’s possible that you’re practicing wrong. If you’ve hit a plateau, seek strategies to move beyond.

So, if you feel overly frustrated, and that is getting in the way of your learning. The first thing to do is try extra studying. However, even this attempt could prove ineffective. If you, you might have to admit that the material is beyond your ability to assimilate or understand it, and that, for the time being, you might not be prepared for it. It should be OK to spend 3 months focusing on something else, and then revisit the topic. The experiences you have in that time will likely have prepared your mind for the material. (Not everyone is ready to assimilate a message at the same time).

However, I think it would help our education system enormously, if we just taught students that hard work, and concentrated effort really do pay off. Let’s look again at that book I’ve been reading, Standards for Our Schools, for a good example of what I’d want changed.

One of the interesting differences between the Japanese approach to elementary education and the American approach is the way each nation thinks about study skills. We Americans tend to think that students will somehow pick up the study skills that they need on their own. The Japanese do not believe that and devote time and effort in the early years to direct instruction on the subject of study skills.

Teachers in Japan routinely teach first graders how to organize their desks, use the bathroom, and other activities. Later the students are taught how to organize their pens and pencils and still later how to take notes that will enable them to summarize and reconstruct the logic line of a lecture or conversation, make an outline, organize a notebook, and so on. They will teach them, too, just what is expected of them in the classroom.

My personal experience.

In one sense I’m lucky. I was a smart kid, I liked the academic environment. I got good grades. I attended advanced placement classes. I wasn’t valedictorian, because I learned laziness. I found most lectures boring, and I didn’t practice any material. I was even able to figure out how to do math problems I’d never seen before, during a test. (That actually only happened once, but how often can you say “I know more coming out of that test than I did going in”?). As soon as I hit college, and the material got more challenging, the competition raised the bar; my lack of study skills, and poor education habits took began to show.

I strongly feel that I should have been better prepared, esp. since I was one of the ‘smart’ students from my High School. I’d done well enough, for long enough, that I didn’t lose my engagement entirely or acquire a learned disability; but I did stop enjoying my classes, and I did begin to feel that I’d gone astray. However, even though my grades started slipping; they never got low enough for a counselor to point me at better study habits or workshops. Consequently, I feel that I’m now just mediocre (but in academia, I’m comparing myself to really awesome and amazing people, so it’s a very high bar).

But, I believe it is possible for people to change, and become better. Else, why have an educational system at all? We really need to incorporate classes surrounding the aspects of personal development and interaction. And we need to do this at the High School or Middle School level, so that everyone can benefit. No matter what profession we end up going into, they all share a need for effective time management, positive attitude toward change, and a commitment to continuous learning.

It’s not enough for educators to have a strong background in teaching methodologies, but we must also know how the brain learns, how positive and negative reinforcement affect readiness to learn, the psychology of learning, and incorporate that knowledge into strategically counseled guidance. To really be an effective educator it’s not just about knowing how to present the material, it’s also about showing/demonstrating/explaining how knowledge is acquired.

So, I have to leave with a quip.

Geniuses aren’t. They practice, and with better techniques. They’ve learned to teach themselves.

To illustrate the point, we will describe a typical Japanese math class. The teacher presents a problem at the beginning of the class and asks the students to work at the problem at their desks. The teacher circles the classroom with a clipboard, making notes on the different strategies the students are using to solve the problem. What she is looking for is an array of strategies that reflect different levels of sophistication. After she has collected what she believes to be a sufficiently varied set of strategies, she calls a halt to the individual work and begins to ask individual students, one at a time, to come to the chalkboard and share with the rest of the class the strategy he or she devised for solving the problem. Rarely does the teacher announce that the result of the strategy is wrong, even if it is patently wrong. To the contrary, the teacher is working hard to build student understanding of the reasoning underlying good solutions by exploring many different ways of getting both good and not so good answers. Everyone in the classroom knows — and does not need to be told — that a particular answer is wrong or right.

Because the teacher deliberately brings to the board students whose approaches represent different levels of sophistication, every student in the classroom has a chance to see someone using a strategy very like the one that he or she used. Thus the instruction is highly individualized, because each student gets to see the whole class discuss the strategy that student used. But unlike our approach to individualization, all the students are engaged all the time in the work of the whole class. Throughout, the emphasis is on understanding the concepts employed and on real mastery by all the students of each concept. It is education for thinking, the very opposite of the American stereotype of Japanese education.

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Jim Stigler has made extensize videotapes of both American and Japanese classroom teaching that vividly illustrate these points. We strongly recommend that you obtain these videos through the Web site established to support the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, which can be ordered through the U.S. Department of Education’s Web site.

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For the Japanese teacher, disaster consists in not having enough examples of different types of reasoning among her students. Large class size is more likely to produce a wider range of examples of different student strategies for solving the problem than small ones. The Japanese teacher is not particularly worried about boring the swift or leaving the slow behind because both can get quite a lot out of the instructional technique we have just described. The swift are not bored an the slow are not often left bewildered — despite the fact that there is no ability grouping!

I’ve had the opportunity to instruct both a second-course undergraduate class in data structures (ICS 22) and an upper division course in programming language concepts (ICS 141). I’ve noticed that about 1/2 my class is dozing off or distracted by their cellphones/laptops. I don’t blame them, I should focus more on entertaining presentation. However, the American lecture-style class organization does not do an effective job of maintaining student interest. (Our teaching advisor David Kay has mentioned that there are studies that show humans are really only able to pay attention in 20 minute intervals)

But I feel sad for the students that already know the material. If we had a rigorously standards and metric-based curriculum, then they would be able to test out of the class (and given full credit for their demonstration of concepts). Instead, the instruction is largely hands-off. Demonstrating, often with only one small example, the concepts or data structure that is needed for the homework assignment. And I’m fortunate to have inherited really, damn good programming assignments from my predecessor Alex Thornton. The real learning happens in those assignments. But is obviously more effective if (a) the student goes to the Lab, and (b) the Lab TA/tutor is knowledgeable and committed to student learning. However, we defeat ourselves, because after the first year of mandatory fundamental classes, has the lab sections have optional attendance. Also, we do not require the Lab TA to be a teacher of concepts: they usually walk around and help those individuals that look like they are struggling. Rather, the Lab could be run more like the Japanese instructional system described above. This would greatly assist the other students (I don’t want to label them slow) who didn’t pick up on the material in lecture, or are struggling with how to turn their ideas into working code.

Secondly, I’ve noticed that with these relaxed policies. The students who struggle continue doing so for their entire undergraduate career. I believe that there are several psychological reasons for this:

• Ey probably develops an ugh field around the homework or material.
• Ey allow that field to distract them with cellphone/laptop during class.
• Ey aren’t attending college of their own conviction. Rather, ey’ve likely just gotten in as the next step in life after high school.
• Ey don’t have experience with self-discipline, self-motivation or self-study. That is, ey don’t know about “getting things done” or “how to be more effective”.

Looking back at all this material, not only could we do a better job as educators, using more effective, scalable techniques, such as the Japanese. But, we should also require our students to go through at least one personal psychology class, so that they realize “work begats results” and it takes “10,000 hours to be an expert” and don’t get discouraged by thinking “that everyone else has it so easy”.