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Roland Gesthuizen

What are the 4 R's Essential to 21st Century Learning? | HASTAC - 79 views

  • Interestingly, unlike math, which can often be difficult to teach in all of its abstraction, algorithms do stuff.   Algorithms are operational.  You show kids how to use a program like Scratch or Hackasaurus and, very soon, they can actually manipulate, create, and do, in their very own and special way.   
  • the beauty of teaching even the youngest kids algorithms and algorithmic or procedural thinking is that it gives them the same tool of agency and production that writing and even reading gave to industrial age learners who, for the first time in history, had access to cheap books and other forms of print.
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    Cathy Davidson discusses the need for a fourth "R" -pertaining to "algoRithim" - It is important, she argues, because, "in the 21st century, we need [an]...expanded push towards the literacy that defines our era, computational literacy.   Algorithms are as basic to the way the 21st century digital age works as reading, writing, and arithmetic were to the late 18th century Industrial era." 
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    "The classic "3 R's" of learning are, of course, Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic.  For the 21st century, we need to add a fourth R--and it will help inspire the other three:  Algorithm. "
Martin Leicht

How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results - WSJ - 17 views

  • a shift from its founding philosophy of “organizing the world’s information,” to one that is far more active in deciding how that information should appear.
  • Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results. These moves are separate from those that block sites as required by U.S. or foreign law,
  • Far from being autonomous computer programs oblivious to outside pressure, Google’s algorithms are subject to regular tinkering from executives and engineers who are trying to deliver relevant search results, while also pleasing a wide variety of powerful interests and driving its parent company’s more than $30 billion in annual profit.
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  • Google made more than 3,200 changes to its algorithms in 2018, up from more than 2,400 in 2017 and from about 500 in 2010
  • testing showed wide discrepancies in how Google handled auto-complete queries and some of what Google calls organic search results
    • Martin Leicht
       
      Alternatives - Microsoft's BING - DuckDuckGo and Yahoo. check them out when you get time
  • Google said 15% of queries today are for words, or combinations of words, that the company has never seen before, putting more demands on engineers to make sure the algorithms deliver useful results.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      How do you connect your post/content to future searches? Tagging only gets you so far. Thus, Google "tinkers" with the algorithm to product "the best" results. Interesting & concerning!
  • ALGORITHMS ARE effectively recipes in code form, providing step-by-step instructions for how computers should solve certain problems. They drive not just the internet, but the apps that populate phones and tablets.
    • Martin Leicht
       
      Yet, we never (almost never) eat the same thing (recipe) twice in a day. We indulge ourselves with comfort food, yes. And we seek out new taste sensations.
Roland Gesthuizen

Sorting Algorithms - 23 views

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    Teach #cs4hs computational thinking with #scratch. Scroll down to see the sorting algorithm dancers.
Greg Brandenburg

: All sorting algorithms - 28 views

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    Graphical representation of different sort algorithms. Very helpful for helping students visualize this.
Justin Medved

The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media... - 24 views

  • Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers.
  • To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.
  • But what Demand has realized is that the Internet gets only half of the simplest economic formula right: It has the supply part down but ignores demand. Give a million monkeys a million WordPress accounts and you still might never get a seven-point tutorial on how to keep wasps away from a swimming pool. Yet that’s what people want to know.
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  • That’s not to say there isn’t any room for humans in Demand’s process. They just aren’t worth very much. First, a crowdsourced team of freelance “title proofers” turn the algorithm’s often awkward or nonsensical phrases into something people will understand: “How to make a church-pew breakfast nook,” for example, becomes “How to make a breakfast nook out of a church pew.” Approved headlines get fed into a password-protected section of Demand’s Web site called Demand Studios, where any Demand freelancer can see what jobs are available. It’s the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot. Writers can typically select 10 articles at a time; videographers can hoard 40. Nearly every freelancer scrambles to load their assignment queue with titles they can produce quickly and with the least amount of effort — because pay for individual stories is so lousy, only a high-speed, high-volume approach will work. The average writer earns $15 per article for pieces that top out at a few hundred words, and the average filmmaker about $20 per clip, paid weekly via PayPal. Demand also offers revenue sharing on some articles, though it can take months to reach even $15 in such payments. Other freelancers sign up for the chance to copyedit ($2.50 an article), fact-check ($1 an article), approve the quality of a film (25 to 50 cents a video), transcribe ($1 to $2 per video), or offer up their expertise to be quoted or filmed (free). Title proofers get 8 cents a headline. Coming soon: photographers and photo editors. So far, the company has paid out more than $17 million to Demand Studios workers; if the enterprise reaches Rosenblatt’s goal of producing 1 million pieces of content a month, the payouts could easily hit $200 million a year, less than a third of what The New York Times shells out in wages and benefits to produce its roughly 5,000 articles a month.
  • But once it was automated, every algorithm-generated piece of content produced 4.9 times the revenue of the human-created ideas. So Rosenblatt got rid of the editors. Suddenly, profit on each piece was 20 to 25 times what it had been. It turned out that gut instinct and experience were less effective at predicting what readers and viewers wanted — and worse for the company — than a formula.
  • Here is the thing that Rosenblatt has since discovered: Online content is not worth very much. This may be a truism, but Rosenblatt has the hard, mathematical proof. It’s right there in black and white, in the Demand Media database — the lifetime value of every story, algorithmically derived, and very, very small. Most media companies are trying hard to increase those numbers, to boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.
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    This is facinating!!!
Christopher Lee

Creating a Wordsearch using Google Spreadsheets - 1 views

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    SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009 Creating a Wordsearch using Google Spreadsheets I'm a fan of alternative learning and testing techniques. Back when I was the teaching assistant for the "History of Video Games" class (yes, that's a real class), I gave the final exam as an illustrated crossword puzzle. It was surprisingly hard to find software for creating that crossword, so I hoped to make a Spreadsheets gadget to make it easier. Unfortunately, crossword-solving algorithms that run entirely in JavaScript are hard to find, and I gave up and went for second best: a wordsearch gadget. (A big thanks to Robert Klein for the wordsearch JavaScript library.) Here are steps for using the gadget: Create a new spreadsheet, and put a list of words in the first column. (Or, alternatively, use an existing spreadsheet that has a column of words you're interested in). My sample spreadsheet has a simple animals wordlist: Click on the "Insert" menu and then select "Gadget..." This presents you with various categories of gadgets to choose from (similar to the iGoogle directory). My gadget isn't yet in the gallery, so you'll need to select "Custom" and then type in the URL to the gadget: The gadget will appear embedded in the current worksheet, and it will prompt you to select a range of data to send to the gadget. Select all the cells that contain the desired words, and you should see the Range text field update with the range. If it doesn't work, you can always manually type it in. You can now customize the number of rows and columns. The default is 10 by 10, but if you have more words, you likely want a larger wordsearch. Click "Apply", and see the generated output. You have a few options for how you use the wordsearch. You can play with it immediately, inside that gadget, or you can use the option on the gadget menu to move the gadget to its own sheet and use it there. Note that each time you reload the spreadsheet, the wordsearch will be randomly generated with a new layout - so
Diana Irene Saldana

Computer Science Unplugged | - 48 views

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    CS Unplugged is a collection of free learning activities that teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. The activities introduce students to underlying concepts such as binary numbers, algorithms and data compression, separated from the distractions and technical details we usually see with computers. CS Unplugged is suitable for people of all ages, from elementary school to seniors, and from many countries and backgrounds. Unplugged has been used around the world for over fifteen years, in classrooms, science centers, homes, and even for holiday events in a park!
Steve Kelly

What would an exceptional middle and high school computer science curriculum include? -... - 48 views

  • What would an exceptional middle and high school computer science curriculum include?
  • This isn't a complete answer, but one thing the very first introductory classes should require is that the students turn off all their electronic computers and actually learn to walk through  algorithms with a computer that exists only on paper. (Or, I suppose, a whiteboard or a simulator.) This exercise would give the students a grounding in what is going on inside the computer as a very low level.My first computer programming class in my Freshman year of high school was completely on paper. Although it was done because the school didn't have much money, it turned out to be very beneficial.Another class I had in high school, that wouldn't normally be lumped into a Computer Science curriculum but has been a boon to my career, was good old Typing 101.
  • If you followed the CS Unplugged curriculum your students would know more about CS than most CS grads:http://csunplugged.orgIt's a really great intro to basic computer science concepts and very easy for students to understand.  Best of all you don't even need a computer per student if your school doesn't have the budget,
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  • For younger students, I think that the ability to make something professional-looking, like a real grown-up would, is paramount.  Sadly, I think this means that LOGO and BASIC aren't much use any more*.
  • So, we have a few choices.  You can try to write phone apps that look just like real phone apps, design interactive websites that look just like real interactive websites, or do something with embedded systems / robotics.  Avoid the temptation to make these things into group projects; the main thing every student needs to experience is the process of writing code, running it, debugging it, and watching the machine react to every command.
  • It is important to consider what an 11 to 18-year old is familiar with in terms of mathematics and logical thinking. An average 11-year old is probably learning about fractions, simple cartesian geometry, the concept of units, and mathematical expressions. By 15, the average student will be taking algebra, and hopefully will have the all-important concept of variables under his/her belt. So much in CS is dependent on solid understanding that symbols and tokens can represent abstract concepts, values, or algorithms. Without it, it's still possible to teach CS, but it must be done in a very different way (see Scratch).
  • At this point, concepts such as variables, parenthesis matching, and functions (of the mathematical variety) are within easy reach. Concepts like parameter passing, strings and collections, and program flow should be teachable. More advanced concepts such as recursion, references and pointers, certain data structures, and big-O may be very difficult to teach without first going through some more foundational math.
  • I tend to agree strongly with those that believe a foundational education should inspire interest and enforce concepts and critical thinking over teaching any specific language, framework, system, or dogma.
  • The key is that the concepts in CS aren't just there for the hell of it. Everything was motivated by a real problem, and few things are more satisfying than fixing something you really want to work with a cool technique or concept you just learned.
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    Great resource for teachers (especially those of us not initially trained in Computer Science) about what should 'count' as Computer Science.  Worth the read!
Brad Belbas

update on Warner Music (UPDATED) (AGAIN) (Lessig Blog) - 0 views

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    This is a video of a talk that Lawrence Lessig (Professor, Stanford Law School) gave for an organization. In his talk, Lessig provides a powerful and piercing analysis and critique on the impact that legal restrictions on the re/use of media resources has on creativity and cultural production. During his talk, Lessig shows some remarkably creative mash-ups videos on YouTube to exemplify the kind of creativity/cultural production that is possible through ubiquitous digital media. Ironically, the organization that hosted the talk received a notice from Warner Bros Music after posting a video of the Lessig's talk on YouTube, which, according to Lessig's blog, "objected to its being posted on copyright grounds." Warner Brother Music Group has implemented content-id algorithms (i.e., technology that detects the digital "fingerprint" of corporate-"owned" copyrighted works) through media hosting services, including YouTube, FaceBook, and others. When the video of Lessig's talk was posted, it was 'dusted' for fingerprints of WBMG copyrighted works. The detection system identified the soundtracks in the YouTube videos Lessig showed, as materials to which they held copyright. Both the video of Lessig's talk and the blog conversation regarding WBMG's objection are must-see resources.
Randolph Hollingsworth

Maps of Citations Uncover New Fields of Scholarship - Research - The Chronicle of Highe... - 33 views

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    ...by a a team led by two biologists, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West, and a physicist, Martin Rosvall,- "The work builds off the thinking behind the Eigenfactor score, a method of assessing journals' relative influence that Mr. Bergstrom and Mr. West unveiled in 2007. The Eigenfactor algorithm takes into account the source of citations. A citation in a high-profile journal like Nature, for instance, counts for more than a citation from a journal only a handful of people ever see or cite. That's a more nuanced way to evaluate a journal's standing than the widely used impact factor, which tracks how many citations a journal gets but does not weight the sources."
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    Wow researchers can engage with the human side of research thru viewing connected networks, they can find the patterns in data sets and discover new fields as they converge amongst many possibilities... You can see overview where your research fits in etc too.
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    This is fascinating. I'm trying to figure out if this is something that could become useful to undergraduates learning about research. It seems like it has potential to reveal connections, trends, and patterns for students just starting in a discipline. It certainly makes disciplines seem less rigid and confined (which I think is a good thing).
Jon Tanner

It is Personal and Dangerous Now | Rethinking Learning - Barbara Bray - 54 views

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    "Teachers need to know how to facilitate a different kind of learning environment that is flexible, personal, and creative. Personalized learning means that learners own and drive their learning not the technology using algorithms based on performance that controls learning. Learners need to learn how to think on their own. This will not happen if adaptive learning systems control how and what they learn."
Martin Burrett

Busting the myths of AI in education - 10 views

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    "When you mention Artificial Intelligence (AI), you're likely to get a variety of responses ranging from the fear that robots will take over our jobs - and our lives - to the conviction that it will transform our future for the better. Now that AI is becoming an integral part of organisations such as NASA, the NHS and even your local council, is it time for education to embrace the power of AI? I believe that it is. While algorithms will never be a substitute for a good teacher, there are some exciting new ways that AI can help schools to spot patterns of progress, or identify pupils who are having difficulties with their learning."
Martin Burrett

A.I. Duet - A piano that responds to you. - UKEdChat.com - 24 views

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    A.I. Duet is a great Artificial Intelligence computer piano keyboard that responds to sequences input through your computer keyboard. Developed using Google's Magenta project, the algorithm uses a neural network to learn how to respond through to the key strokes. Simply use a keyboard, use your computer keys, or even plug in a MIDI keyboard. A.I. Duet is built by Yotam Mann with friends on the Magenta and Creative Lab teams at Google.
Martin Burrett

Teachers: Is AI Coming to Take Your Job? by @AIConf2018 - 16 views

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    "Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic at the moment, with estimates varying wildly about how many jobs will be replaced by machine learning algorithms. Whatever the outcome, in reality, it is clear that schools will need to change, in order to prepare their students for the resulting impact on society and the skills needed for future employment."
Nigel Coutts

Supporting Mathematical Thinking through the Eight Cultural Forces - The Learner's Way - 18 views

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    At the heart of mathematics are a set of connected thinking dispositions. The mathematician uses these dispositions as the cognitive tools of their trade. While the traditional imagining of mathematics might be all about the accurate application of well-rehearsed algorithms and processes, in the real world of mathematics, it is all about the thinking. As we consider what our students need from their mathematical education, we should not overlook the importance of these dispositions. 
Nigel Coutts

Do We Truly Understand Place Value? - The Learner's Way - 11 views

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    James Tanton shattered my understanding of the vertical algorithm. More than that, he helped me to see how poorly I understood place value and that many of my students function with the same misunderstanding. What made the experience more humbling was that it took him less than two minutes to do this.
Martin Burrett

Polyup - 10 views

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    "A superb 3D coding platform for building the skills to build simple code and to understand the basics of algorithms. You can also create your own game levels and share them using a QR code."
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