Article reaction 11/30

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This article really resonnated with me as a woman of color trying to enter the tech-space, and my desire to enter the field of tech and computer science education in the future. Moreover, it caused me to reflect on parallels between Turing's pedagogical method, and what I learned working in Next Generation Learning.

The future of learning - both k-12 and adult learning - is student-centered. It automatically creates a more welcoming learning environments, which is one of the aspects to Harvey Mudd's approach. I also see a theme of building community and a network in order to uniliaterally increase chances of sucess. I was happy to see that the initiative was faculty-led, likely allowing their effort to be more agile, responding to what isn't working.

Framing Computer Science as creative problem solving not only seems valid, but effective, and would have 100% grabbed me as a freshman when instead I was intimidated to take CS classes. I'm excited to see this approach scaled nationally, and hope that it catches on quickly.

New Yorker - Empathy Article Response

Prior to reading this article I had only really thought about job growth being disrupted by increased automation in production, I had not really considered the impact of share economy that much farther than its affect on taxi drivers, but realize now that its so much more expansive than that, and that automation is affecting industries within their whole "economic ecosystem". We can't think of the economy in the same terms that we previously have. This reminds me, again, of our current outdated education system - which absolutely is interconnected with our economy. In order to modernize k-12 education we need to require computer science, which I consider to be a fundamental 21st Century skill, especially for future generations when they enter the work force.

It was also good to have a reminder of the "real world filter bubbles". I definitely experienced this in my upbringing, at an international school in Germany, and at a small liberal arts college in rural Central New York. It is so easy not to think or see outside of yourself and those you regularly get into contact to.

HubSpot Article

I really enjoyed this article, and came away with a few key questions:

• Has the startup image become cliche?
• What value do blog articles have/add when companies do them? Is there blog saturation?
• What are the ups and downsides to the "office as playground...infection"?
• Why do startup employees come across as being entitled? Where does this entitlement come from? Is it the "company code"?
• How much coolaid is too much coolaid?
• Why do startups operate as if on islands? Wouldn't there be more innovation if they collaborated?
• Why do tech startups all seem to operate in the same way? Why, especially if they aren't profitable, is the model being copied over and over again?
• If business model is the focus, shouldn't profit be a focus?

I have worked at a small startup, multiple non-profits (which inherently need to have lean operations), and political campaigns, which are essentially short-term start-ups themselves. As a job seeker, I have looked for perks such as some of the ones described in the article. After reading this article, my main takeaway is that PRODUCT is important, in addition to culture compatibility. Clearly I'm mission-driven, but if there isn't a strong product, how can there be a strong mission? That seemed to be the main disconnect for Hubspot. A company that starts as a sales operation is going to be all-talk.

Cheating in Computer Science

I found this article to offer a valuable perspective. Coming from the field of "next generation learning" I'm familiar with the idea of competency based learning and think that this is what the author is getting at. Moreover, I was reminded of something educator Tony Wagner wrote as referenced in "A More Beautiful Question" - that knowledge is at our finger-tips, it is no longer valuable or unique simply to know something thanks to google and other search engines, we need to focus instead on innovation, and instead of teaching facts we should be teaching how to innovate, how to solve problems. Does the definition of cheating need to change? Does the 'how' of learning need to change?