Category: education

a mozilla prizes for teaching ethics in technology

mtadros

Mozilla announced $2.4 Million in Prizes for Schools Teaching Ethics Alongside Computer Science. The first round of winners were announced: the winners’ proposed curricula are novel – They include in-class role-playing games to explore the impact of technology on society. They embed philosophy experts and social scientists in computer science classes. They feature “red teams” that probe students’ projects for possible negative societal impacts. And they have computer science students partner with local nonprofits and government agencies.

The winners will receive awards of up to $150,000, and they span the following categories: public university, private university, liberal arts college, community college, and Jesuit university. Stage 1 winners are located across 13 states, with computer science programs ranging in size from 87 students to 3,650 students.

Read more here: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/04/30/2-4-million-in-prizes-for-schools-teaching-ethics-alongside-computer-science/

Defending the humanities in a brave new world

mtadros

Before anything else, literature has always been my passion. Not code, not technology, and certainly not math. Nothing therefore concerns me more than when I see students trying to learn the dry, hard skills with little or no knowledge of, or for that matter interest in, great literary works. I have noticed in my almost 20 years of teaching, that when I make simple literary references, such as ‘Oh this sounds Orwellian’ or ‘yes, it’s a brave new world’ – I am met with quizzical or blank faces. The joke is on me. Read More …

list free university courses

mtadros

I have been writing about MOOCs here on this blog for a long time and have listed many open source courses. This week, however, 200 universities launched 600 free online courses in all fields including Computer Science, Mathematics, Programming, Data Science, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education & Teaching, Health & Medicine, Business, Personal Development, Engineering, Art & Design, and finally Science.

Here’s the full list that Dhawal Shah combined on Quartz. The courses are all on Class Central, the majority of which are on Coursera.

Kagan’s structures

mtadros

Kagan structuresHow can we engage students in our classes? There are many great articles on the web on this topic, and perhaps one of the most prominent are the Kagan structures:  Kagan, S. & Kagan, M. Kagan Cooperative Learning. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Publishing, 2009.

There are 5 essentials in the Kagan structure for education:
1. RallyRobin
2. Timed Pair Share
3. RoundRobin
4. RallyCoach
5. Stand Up, Hand Up Pair Up

Which one to use and when is up to the teacher’s discretion. However some great guidelines are given in Clowes, G. The Essential 5: A Starting Point for Kagan Cooperative Learning. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Publishing. Kagan Online Magazine, Spring 2011. www.KaganOnline.com