gmichnikov

+1, ask both if you can defer so that you can keep your options open. (It might be worth asking around or looking around online first to make sure they won't get mad at the question.)

This seems like the most helpful response for someone like OP. Is the curriculum or syllabus of your class public?

This is my hometown, fun to see this here. I've never been, but it sounds great.

Mentioning Ewing but not Larry Legend... Ouch. Also Chuck Daly was the coach.

> We’ve been hearing about kids who are asking their parents for more tasks at home (whether it’s chores or family activities) every day so they can play Joon, so it feels like we are on the right track.

As a parent ... this might be the right track for you the game creator, but it is not the right track for the kids.

Just out of curiosity, do you see this as being different from open source curriculum and materials for teachers/schools/anyone?

I don't have a good recommendation there either, but I was wondering if it is necessary to restrict yourself to "homeschooling" curriculum in particular?

Wow, all of the comments on HN so far and all of the comments on the article's website say more or less that the article is terrible. Is there any merit to the article's claim that homeschooling should be more regulated?

The NYT article linked in this article has a lot more, posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22542662

I bet if you throw together a quick sign-up form and post it here soon you could get dozens of volunteers who would be willing to find the maps for a couple of places that you assign them and email them to you.

> It's just so hard to discount the functionality of a real keyboard in any school where typing (and consequently writing) matters.

Not to mention only having to charge one device (laptop) instead of two devices (keyboard, iPad), and not having to deal with any bluetooth connectivity issues with the keyboard.

My experience as a teacher, first in a school with iPads and now in a school with laptops, as that iPads are generally viewed as toys and laptops are generally viewed as work tools. I would never recommend that any middle school or high school buy iPads.

Having said that, I would love to hear about any notably positive experiences other teachers here have had with either iPads or laptops in class (email in profile).

Somewhat off-topic, but if you don't mind sharing, what would you say is the optimal Queens neighborhood for proximity/price/schools?

It's worth noting the similarities to the Common Core. David Coleman was one of the main authors of the Common Core and is now president of the College Board.

This article: "Sometimes, students will be asked not just to select the right answer, but to justify it by choosing the quote from a text that provides the best supporting evidence for their answer." "Going forward, though, students will get a source document and be asked to analyze it for its use of evidence, reasoning and persuasive or stylistic technique."

CCSS CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.1 Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.8 Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.

Success Academy Charter Schools (New York, NY) - http://jobs.successacademies.org/

Success currently operates 22 high-performing public charter schools around NYC. We are currently hiring a full-time Middle School Computer Science Teacher (previous teaching experience is not required) and a part-time High School Computer Science Teacher. We are also hiring a Product Manager for the Network-wide Technology team. If you're at all interested in working in education and having a direct impact on lots of great kids, please reach out to me.

I joined a charter school network in NYC last summer. I am working on a teaching degree simultaneously (there is classwork during the year, but the bulk of the work was/will be during the summers on either side of this school year).

I am teaching some 5th grade math and english in addition to computer science, though if the network is able to continue to grow, there are likely to be teachers teaching only 5th grade computer science in the very near future. Not many NYC middle schools (charter or otherwise), offer computer science to middle school students.

For what it's worth, my undergrad was in economics. I know enough to teach Scratch to 5th graders, though I wouldn't sign up to teach AP Computer Science. Like alistairSH, I also wonder where the computer science teachers are going to come from. Genuinely wanting to work with kids every day is more important than any of this though, in my opinion. Definitely feel free to email me if you want to talk more about any of this.

As a 5th grade teacher who teaches "computer science" among other things, I completely agree that this is great news. Kids love learning about basic programming concepts, and they deserve the opportunity to be exposed to programming at a young age.

If there are any other computer science teachers on HN, I'd love to hear about what you're up to (especially if you are using Scratch with young kids).

Congrats on launching. I am always excited to try new tools like this. The idea of having an intuitive way to save a series of steps in a spreadsheet interface without having to use macros or use R is definitely appealing.

I opened the March Madness example linked to on TC. I don't really understand how to trace what it is that has changed from one step to the next. Is there a simple way to do that? Is there another example you would recommend to understand how the steps work?

Try this as well: https://www.google.com/flights/explore

You appear to have reduced "sports" to "American football". There are a lot of sports out there. Most of them do not come with risks of debilitating head injuries. Participating in sports is a great way for people to stay healthy, build confidence, be part of a team, etc. By and large they are a great thing for kids. I can't imagine how one would find data for this, but I imagine that the percentage of sports-loving parents who push their kids to be pro athletes is about zero.

I'm yet another person interested in the noob side of this setup (I'm in NYC).

My assumption, based on nothing, has been that a person in my shoes would be more likely to interfere than anything else.

I am curious to hear if those with experience feel differently. Beyond wanting to help someone out, etc. are there other motivations for someone with experience to want to do this?

While we're off topic, it's amusing that anyone would take the subway from 23rd and Park to the Strand. Perhaps Project Glass will have an option to promote healthy choices.

Looks nice overall. A few thoughts: It would be helpful if folders showed a "Modified" date. I find the background image slightly distracting. Why not replace the word "document" with the type of document? It would be nice to have an option to see bigger thumbnails in photo folders.

Slightly off-topic, but hopefully others can benefit as well:

I am learning to program on my own, and I have tried some of the CodeSprint Fall 2011 questions (http://csfall11.interviewstreet.com/recruit/challenges/dashb...). Often, I find solutions that "work", but that score poorly because they exceed the time limit (e.g. Card Shuffling, 3/10, 9 points).

What books should I read (or what videos should I watch, etc.) to get better at things like this? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

In some stores you can spend your Best Buy gift card on an Amazon gift card.

I don't think change in this area is going to come from within (unless the reason for change is financial). If/when it happens, I think it will be the result of external pressure that comes from things like Khan Academy and open-source textbooks proving themselves to be better than paid textbooks.

I've thought about working on a free site to help parents/students locate the best free online math resource that can help them with a specific question, worksheet, homework assignment, etc. As a tutor, I've frequently heard from parents that they know these types of things exist on the internet, but that they have no clue how to find the right Khan video that will help with tonight's homework.

If anyone is interested in this sort of thing, please get in touch.

This is not true. Calculating a log by hand would be the same process every time.

Factoring quadratics is mostly the same every time, while factoring in general is not, and graphing definitely is not.

Graphing, in particular, is a crucial math skill, because it forces you to understand what is actually going on with each function. As a rule, students who have no idea what a graph is going to look like before they press "graph" also don't understand many important underlying fundamentals.

There is no reason middle/high school students should be using graphing calculators on a regular basis. Scientific calculators for things like logs are fine, but beyond that the calculator replaces actual learning.

This is interesting, I especially like the Scrubbing Calculator. While I am not sure how it would handle math above Algebra 1, I think this could be great for building intuition in Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1, which are the most important years of math education, in my opinion.

I tutor some 11-14 year-olds who are studying these sorts of things, and it's incredible how many of them can look at something like 100/0.08 and have absolutely NO idea what neighborhood the answer should be in. (For example, they might accidentally multiply, get 8, and never think twice that the answer couldn't possibly be 8 because it has to be above 100.) Something like this might be really helpful in building intuition about the relationships between numbers.

No. See http://members.shaw.ca/jazzace/ace/hoop/rulediff.html for a variety of rule differences. See http://www.raptorsforum.com/f/f6/differences-between-nba-eur... for some more thoughts.

Could you please expand a little bit on this answer from the FAQ:

"Hacker School is currently only for people who already know how to code."

How well must an applicant know how to code?

I apologize if you've addressed this elsewhere, but do you have any specific suggestions beyond http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ for a beginner (who knows basic HTML/CSS but not much else) trying to learn Rails?

I've been using RailsTutorial, and while it's packed with info, I feel like I would benefit from a more solid understanding of many of the basics.