Five Prius sightings today – of the more recent models, one was silver, one blue, one black. I also managed to spy a blue 1st generation Prius, which I’ve never seen. The last one was a white 1st generation. Cool.
Oh, and farmer’s markets are fun.
Word.
Computers and Human Reason – PRGM COMHR 1
Associated Term: Summer 2005
CRN: 40041
Status: **Web Registered** on May 22, 2005
Assigned Instructor: Ab Van Etten
Grade Mode: Credit/No Credit
Credits: 8.000
Level: Undergraduate
Campus: Olympia
According to the instructor, this covers stuff like Javascript, ASP, DOM, XML, and database design — all stuff I should know for my web development work but never picked up. That alone makes it worth it in my view.
I’ve had the chance during the last few weeks as the quarter winds down to think about my own philosophy behind teaching. This stems out of both my work as a writing tutor in the College’s Writing Center and as a lab aide for Logo programming with the Designing Languages and Algebra to Algorithms programs this quarter.
I’ve always had a deep appreciation for teaching, which has deepened since I started working in tutoring positions, and deepened even more as a lab aide. As a lab aide, the strategies are basically exactly the same as they are when tutoring — lead the student to the answer for whatever question they’re asking. However, the process requires more breaks from that strategy: if a student doesn’t understand something, lab aides are expected to clue them in a bit with a nudge in the right direction, which usually means giving them some portion of the answer.
I’ve found that, as a lab aide, it’s very easy to understand what the lab is asking for, and it’s also easy to know the answer to the lab (so long as you’ve done the appropriate preparation beforehand), but it’s very hard to convey what the lab is about, much less convey the answers, to students. Thus, I’ve really been struggling this quarter with coming up with good ways to explain and relate concepts back to work that they’ve already done.
I found this especially true while in the lab last Thursday. The lab itself had to do with fractals — specifically, the Koch Snowflake (also known as the Koch Curve). The process of creating the fractal is very easy — using a standard triangle, “kink out” each side in order to create a level two Snowflake. Then, to create a level three Snowflake, use all the sides in a level two snowflake and “kink” those out. The Wikipedia entry has a graphic that shows the progression quite nicely. This is basically just the same idea applied over and over. It can be applied recursively (though that’s not really a great solution), but it’s actually better to implement it recursively for levels three and up. For levels two and one, it’s better to have a separate procedure to draw them, since the logic is so different.
Relatively straightforward, but very hard to explain when you’re not supposed to give students the answers.
While the strategies are really quite similar, the result is quite different — as a writing tutor, the final result of any session with me isn’t necessarily an answer, unless the student brings in a very specific question. Most often, in addition to an answer, students get an idea of what needs to be done next in order to allow their writing to grow. Not so as a lab aide — the process stops once the student gets the answer. They can certainly move on to other projects, and we, as aides, will help them find the answer for that project, but there is no sense of programming as a process. Which is ironic — programming is a process, but that process isn’t as obvious as it is in writing.
My philosophy as a tutor has always been that writing, as a process, needs to be nurtured and recognized. Academic writing may be perceived as boring, but it sets students up with an important life skill if taken advantage of properly: the art of written communication. My job as a writing tutor is to help inspire and install that art, and to help students realize that the process is ongoing. You can’t stop after a single draft (though there are exceptions to this); one has to keep going. With programming, the process very definitely stops — once the program’s written and it runs, at least in an academic environment, you’re done with it and probably won’t touch it again.
It’s true that that’s not true in the software world at large, but for the purposes of my lab aide work, it’s good enough.
I found this browsing the local job listings. No explanation needed.
BEER
No exp. Many positions Call: (360) 357-4206
Source – Olympian – Olympia, WA
We had the chance to travel up to Port Townsend a week ago and visit a school friend of ours. The lure was that he was starring in a series of one-act plays put on as part of a local festival, and since neither Amanda nor I had ever seen him act, we decided that this was as good a chance as any. We called Enterprise Rent-A-Car and set up a reservation with them, then called our local office and asked them to pick us up at 7:45 Friday morning.
Then we called to confirm the day before, and the person who answered told us that they couldn’t pick us up at 7:45 Friday morning, but 8:00 was doable. Okay.
Amanda and I were up early, getting ready, when, at 7:40, we hear a knock on the door. You guessed it, they used the original time we had specified before whoever told us that it had to be 8AM stuck their nose into the whole situation. We had been anticipating an 8AM pickup, so our poor Enterprise representative had to wait outside while we finished getting ready — probably an additional 10 minutes.
Anyway, when we were ready, we stuck our head out the door, shook hands with the guy, and he showed us down to our truck.
Wait — our truck? The reservation was for a compact, but apparently Enterprise regards some trucks as compacts. This particular one was an orange Chevrolet Colorado four-door cab. Not really what I expected, but okay. I suspect that it was only a half-bed rather than a full-bed truck, which is probably what qualified it as a compact.
We made good time back to the local Enterprise office, where our representative asked us whether we wanted another car. I decided that a truck would be okay (I may never want to own one, but driving one should be interesting, right?), so we signed the paperwork and off we went. Since the truck only had an eighth of a tank of gas left, we ran to Safeway and refueled. I had forgotten that the price of gas keeps going upwards recently, so the refuel was a bit of sticker shock, but that’s okay. Plenty of gas and a good car is a good combination. We picked up our stuff at the apartment, then went off to the College for our staff meeting at 9AM.
When we left campus, we took Highway 101 north towards Port Angeles, then cut across Highway 20 to get to Port Townsend. We got there without much fanfare (though we got slightly lost in Port Townsend itself due to somewhat vague directions). We wandered around Port Townsend for a while, then went to dinner at a pizza place in town. Afterwards, we went to see the friend of ours in the plays — very good, and all quite entertaining.
Saturday, we wandered around downtown Port Townsend and peeked into a lot of little shops, then had lunch at The Public House — very good food. As a group, the three of us had the lamb burger, fish and chips, and pacific burger. We then went back to where we were staying until dinner, when our friend had to go to his Saturday night performance. That left Amanda and I once again wandering downtown looking for a place to eat. For lack of someplace cheap and/or not crowded, we ended up going back to The Public House, which had a fairly good live musician playing. Good dinner, too — Amanda and I had two plates of the chicken penne without tomatoes. Very rich cream sauce, though the portion size was a little on the low side for me. Still good.
We went back and watched Airplane! on DVD until I had to go running out the door to pick up the friend of ours at the theater, since I had offered earlier in the day. Bringing him home, Amanda and I went to bed.
We left at about 10AM the next morning. This was fairly uneventful, though the fact that I had to keep pulling over to let people pass and that I once had to speed up in order to avoid being rear ended, both times on 101, seems to me indicative of the modern driving habit. I routinely go the speed limit, but I still felt pressured to pull over on at least four different occasions.
Sad.
Anyway, we got back into town and stopped by the Blue Heron Bakery to see if they had anything that Amanda could use her gift certificate on. They didn’t, but at least we now know what selection they have. Returning the truck, we had driven about 210 miles round trip — not bad, considering that the first 501 miles of the trip were free of surcharges.
Business and Society – PRGM BUSSO 01
Associated Term: Fall 2005
CRN: 10141
Status: **Web Registered** on May 17, 2005
Assigned Instructor: Cynthia C. Kennedy
Grade Mode: Credit/No Credit
Credits: 16.000
Level: Undergraduate
Campus: Olympia
Possibly temporary registration, possibly permanent. We’ll see.
Useless information of the day: I try to count the number of Toyota Priuses I see when I’m out and about. So far, the maximum number of Priuses I’ve seen in any one day is 12, and that was while in the Seattle/Eastside region several weeks ago. I didn’t blog it, though — whoops.
I went back home on Friday and saw 11 while in Seattle and on the Eastside. On Saturday, I saw another 8 while in the Lynwood/Alderwood Mall area (between there and home, of course), and on Sunday, I saw another 8 in the Olympia area. Yesterday, I saw 5.
It’s really quite heartening to me to see the number of Prius owners going up. I have to admit, though, that I have no idea how many of these sightings may have been repeat sightings of the same vehicle — that’s more likely in Olympia than anywhere else, since this is a smaller community.
Tidbit of the day. Enjoy.
I’ve decided that I’m going to enroll in Business and Society: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is while my application for Student Originated Software: Designing and Implementing Real-World Systems (SOS) is processed. That way, if I decided not to take SOS, I’m enrolled for something that actually works for me.
I submitted my application for SOS to the program faculty — it’ll take a week or two to hear about whether it’s accepted or not.
My registration time ticket is tomorrow (May 17) at noon. I’ll post the results.
I’ve brought the layout of this blog into line with the rest of my personal site. Hopefully, it’s a little more visually appealing.
My work on this is still in progress, though, since the WordPress theme that defines this layout isn’t complete. I’ll finish it over the next little while, probably (though I might just let it sit for a bit before then).
For anyone interested in transitioning from Movable Type to WordPress, this article from Burningbird covers it fairly well. There are also a few useful links here.