Sublime Text? Sure, doesn't have the long tail of extensions, but surely most people don't need those. The biggest issue with ST being the fact that it costs money...
Even if you don't like the current administration, the rank and file are still out there doing valuable work. The government is more than ICE; it also administers welfare, funds research, collects taxes, and distributes social security payments to the old and infirm.
Scotland is almost certainly innocent, though the Scottish people may not be.
Anyhow, the worst crimes of colonialism/genocide were mainly conducted by the English (including invading/killing plenty of Scottish, Welsh and Irish people).
Laptops can be useful: they can (and should) be locked down, and there’s lots of digital media that teaches effectively, probably even better than anything on paper.
(EDIT: Actually, probably not better than paper. I remember a study that note-taking by hand produced significantly better scores than typing; moreover, drawing is easier on paper, and some assignments are better drawn. But laptops can still be useful, and some assignments (like coding) are better digital. So ultimately, I think laptops should be incorporated alongside pen-and-paper.)
For 2) I agree with the general idea (“static” websites should never be slow), but the aforementioned digital media includes some that can run on low specs. Worst case, you can give students PDFs of physical assignments (with form elements to put answers); but I’m sure there are some minimal websites with K-5 material.
Laptops are NOT useful for any reason in a school classroom below the 9th grade or so. No, not even for test taking, educational videos, or interactive demos.
Maybe for computer science classes, but even there I'd prefer to use shared desktop computers.
There is a lot of research that shows that the depth of understanding the material directly depends on the amount of effort you put in. Or that actually writing down things by hand increases the amount of recall.
And to add to this, it looks like fine motor skills also directly influence brain development and may improve the IQ. The association of higher IQ with better fine motor skills is now well-established, but it also might work in reverse.
There’s a big difference between “having a tool available” and “using it all the time for everything.”
We are not talking about replacing writing and reading on paper.
I was fortunate that my middle and elementary schools had computers. They weren’t used all day long. We used them to do things like learning typing skills and look up references on library computers. I remember using an old Apple II program (old even back when I was in school) in an applied technology class where we designed a car and tested its performance. Yes, before 9th grade. The whole class was kind of like an introduction to some engineering concepts, which involved a rotation of different stations we would go to where we did some interactive assignments. It was both fun and inspiring, and, dare I say, a computer was involved.
I’m now just remembering that we even learned BASIC programming in 8th grade!
One of my most fond memories of middle school was a mock publishing competition where students wrote essays and stories and pitched them to other groups of students acting as publishers with a budget. I remember using interesting fonts on the titles of my typed out stories to try and stand out and market myself.
Later in high school (admittedly, after the grade 9 cutoff you prescribed, more on that later), we used them in a multimedia class to learn to do basic graphic design as well as writing proper business letters to request permission from magazines to use their covers for a multimedia project. (Of course, with fair use, we didn’t have to ask, but the whole point was to learn to properly contact and communicate with business professionals).
I can’t imagine what it would be like if my school didn’t have the funding to have these tools available to teach what we now know are essential life skills. I probably wouldn’t have ended up making well above median income in the technology industry.
I think your 9th grade cutoff is particularly silly. You can start subjects like algebra before high school. You really think there are kids doing formal classes like programming and digital design/art before high school? Go look into some of the curriculum course list for some of the top middle and high schools in the country.
> There’s a big difference between “having a tool available” and “using it all the time for everything.”
Not really, when the tool ends up just pushing everything out.
> We are not talking about replacing writing and reading on paper.
Yet this is EXACTLY what has already happened. A lot of laptop kids literally can't write. Not even in block letters.
> I was fortunate that my middle and elementary schools had computers.
That's the thing. You had computers for CS classes. I had a somewhat similar experience, starting with ZX-Spectrum. I think this is actually great, especially if you start with something basic like Apple II.
But you did not have them on your desk at all times. You had to learn math and language by actually writing things in a physical notebook with a pen.
> I think your 9th grade cutoff is particularly silly. You can start subjects like algebra before high school.
Why the heck do you need computers for algebra?!? School-level algebra is something that is literally better done without any calculating tools.
> You really think there are kids doing formal classes like programming and digital design/art before high school? Go look into some of the curriculum course list for some of the top middle and high schools in the country.
Formal classes with desktop computers that STAY IN CLASS after the lesson are fine. Having access to a computer _after_ school is also fine.
I’m not sure why you’re assuming I meant “computers at desks with unfettered access at all times.” Computers being portable doesn’t mean unfettered access. That wasn’t how my school’s laptop carts worked.
I also never said to use computers for algebra, I brought that up to point out that middle school curriculum is quite advanced because you thought that kids below grade 9 shouldn’t use them at all. But there are middle schoolers using computing devices to make digital art, deliver multimedia presentations, edit videos, and program robots. The prescriptiveness dictating computers are just for computer class is incredibly outdated.
I suggest you spend a little more time reading my comment to understand the underlying meaning a little more.
I think them being locked down is a big part of their agitation. But we live in a sue first society so the school has no choice but to lock them down. It's not like the 90's when I was in school. We were allowed free reign to tinker with the machines.
The human is responsible. How is this a question? You are responsible for any machines or animals that work on your behalf, since they themselves can't be legally culpable.
No, an oversized markov chain is not in any way a human being.
To be fair, horseless carriages did originally fall under the laws for horses with carriages, but that proved unsustainable as the horseless carriages gained power (over 1hp ! ) and became more dangerous.
Topics are otherwise incredibly useful even with a small number of people, if you want to carry out parallel & wide-ranging conversations on different timescales. Implicitly designing for a single topic per channel forces chats to be ephemeral and makes it very hard to have long timescale discussions.
Eg. If I'm discussing buying a house or a career change (personal) or a new business strategy for my company (work) I don't want all conversations dumped into a single river. Slack's model of threads within a channel feels too schizophrenic; Zulip's model of multiple conversations arranged loosely by theme (and accessible from the sidebar) is much better.
Catch-all topics are good for the ephemeral stream of chatter.
Some might say that chat should be only for ephemeral stuff, but then that is basically avoiding the essential complexity (of long term conversations) which must live somewhere to enforce some Procrustean simplicity on the chat platform.
My frustration with the flow, is that you’re forcing me to make a decision at a point where I don’t really know if a thought/idea/comment I want to share will rise to the level of warranting the organizational overhead of making it a “topic” vs just a little toe in the main stream.
I haven’t used Zulip in a while, but can’t you reorganize messages/topics after posting? I remember that as being one of the biggest advantages over Slack for exactly this reason (the Slack equivalent is “I wish I’d known to reply in a thread, because oops, this topic took over the channel”).
I've seen some small firms crash and burn too, though. The problem is small firms are easy-come, easy-go; they don't have enough reputation at stake. Not sure what a good solution is.
You could have contracted 5 small firms for £400k each (which, for this project seems frankly seems excessive) and even if a couple failed to deliver you'd have gotten 3 separate products to choose the best quality one from, £148k to legally chase up the firms who failed to deliver, and still had £2 million left over.
I agree a good solution isn't easy to come up with, but the status quo is certainly an outrageously awful one.
There are dozens of "small firms" with plenty of reputation at stake. Or how about a "medium-sized firm". There's quite a few, probably a few hundred-thousand, options inbetween "PWC" and "my mate's nephew studying computer science".
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