Teaching Programming - It makes students carry themselves differently

I just found this topic and the discussions intriguing.

Last week I was writing up report cards for an Introduction to Programming class I taught recently. In addition to their academic performance, students at my school are assessed on courtesy and respect in every class they take. I noticed something interesting as I was compiling scores for the class: these were the highest courtesy and respect scores that I had ever seen for a whole class.

Why Every Company Needs To Be More Like IBM And Less Like Apple

While Apple has been wildly successful, IBM’s Social Business is much more attainable and sustainable than what Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky describes as Apple’s genius led, culture of fear. For the genius is always, as Benjamin Disraeli and later Peter Drucker predicted, succeeded by a “lieutenant of Marines” who understands the business but nothing else. So the company is only left with an innovation vacuum.

In IBM’s social business culture, the genius lies in the 400,000 employees who are free to create...Read more

Of course, Apple is mostly a consumer organization, and consumers want things that "just work". IBM's mission is quite a bit different, providing custom solutions to organizations across the planet. Still, interesting thinking. Check the ROI chart.

Getting Started - RAILS!

As we work toward open micro-assessment platforms, a couple of tutorials.

Ryan Bates has really hit a new level of excellence with Railscasts lately, and he hasn't forgotten the brand-newbie, either. Last week he ginned up #310 Getting Started with Rails, a fantastic how-to from "where-to-find-Ruby."

Of course he lists other tutorials among the resources.

A commenter also pointed out the promising-sounding The Intro to Rails Screencast I Wish I Had by Jeffrey Way.

 600 Years Ago Today (6th Jan. 1412) – Birth of Joan of Arc

How many of today's grads even know who this is?

Learning Registry Updates

One project I follow loosely is a USG interagency Learning Registry. To be honest, I'm still not clear on why or what it is, and it reminds me (at the surface) of many a similar project of the past.

Today, the good folks there have pre-published a bit of a graphic, which may help:

There's also a video: http://youtu.be/gT7YKwmwOoA

Education: Prescription or Subscription?

Can education take a cue from the relationships people have developed with WebMD and other health sites? Dave Edwards looks at this over at GettingSmart.

Even the professional development (PD) models in many schools still reek of “this is what you should know/be doing . . . ” and teachers aren’t given ample time/opportunity to provide feedback and more importantly, input for change. Our students feel like school is “boring” because they have very little choice in how and what they learn. Teachers feel like because of standardized testing, they are told what to teach and how to teach it. This trickles down and students become very disengaged.

I'm focusing these days on creating such a service; to also help push the "time-in-seat" method of granting K-12 credit over the edge.