Ryan Collins

🕹️ Do Something Great! 😄

Author: ryan

  • #tlah Managing your class list in a spreadsheet, part 2

    When we last visited our spread sheet, we used formulas to cut apart a list of names in our class that resulted in the following spreadsheet:

    Our great class

    Today, we will learn some more programming techniques in our quest to create another column in our spreadsheet which would have the students full name in the format Firstname Lastname. To create this full name column, you might try:

    =B2+C2

    Ugh, what’s this #VALUE! result? In this instance, it is because you tried to use the + operand on data which cannot be added. This means we need to talk about data types. We’ll touch on two today, number and string (for those that know, a number data type can be a very complex beast, but we’re trying to keep it simple!). A number data type is basically anything numeric. 19 and 87 are two numbers. We can add those two numbers and get 106. A string is a data type that can encompass letters, numbers, and symbols. Luke is a string as is I am your father. But, 19 and 87 can also be strings, it just depends on what you want to do with them.

    With strings, you don’t add, you concatenate (yes, that’s a real word, go look it up!). When you concatenate Luke and I am your father you get LukeI am your father (no space between Luke and I because the original strings don’t have a space). You can also concatenate 19 and 87 to get 1987. The operand to concatenate is &. So for our example in Column D we will use the & to concatenate the two fields:

    =B2&C2

    Oh, so close! But now we have LukeSkywalker, we want a space between them. To add the space, we just concatenate a " " in between the two cell references:

    =B2&" "&C2

    And violĂ ! We have a new column with the users Firstname Lastname:

    mygreatclass-firstname-lastname-l.png (640×292)

    How would you write the formula to create a username which consists of the last two digits of the grad year, last name, firstname?

    p.s. All posts in the series – Managing your class list in a spreadsheet

  • ❂ Libraries are the future

    Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

    I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure.

    It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.

    Interesting start, although the prison planning story appears to be an urban myth without any source.

    But later Mr. Gaiman hits pay dirt:

    I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

    It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

    And not just for the use of the word tosh. This needs to be shouted from the rooftops, posted in every school, said at every parent/teacher conference.

    Via: Neil Gaiman On Why Libraries Are the Gates to the Future – Slashdot

  • The first woman programmer, Ada Lovelace

    Ada Lovelace, an Indirect and Reciprocal Influence

    When I heard that Ada Lovelace Day was coming, I questioned myself, “What do I actually know about Ada Lovelace?” The sum total of my knowledge: Ada was the first woman programmer and the Department of Defense honored her contributions to computation in 1979 by naming its common programming language Ada.

    A few Ada biographies later, I know Augusta Ada Lovelace to be an incredibly complex woman with a painful life story, one in which math, shame, and illness were continuously resurfacing themes. Despite all, Ada tirelessly pursued her passion for mathematics, making her contributions to computing undeniable and her genius all the more clear. Her accomplishments continue to serve as an inspiration to women throughout the world.

    I’m always fascinated by what some people have gone through to succeed, especially when I’m dealing with minor complaints such as “it won’t print”.

    Via: Slashdot

  • Replacing the library

    The End Of The Library | TechCrunch

    I know this sucks. Libraries have been an invaluable part of human history, propagating our culture and knowledge over centuries. But recognizing the changing times and pointing out the obvious shouldn’t be considered blasphemy. It is what it is.

    The internet has replaced the importance of libraries as a repository for knowledge. And digital distribution has replaced the role of a library as a central hub for obtaining the containers of such knowledge: books. And digital bits have replaced the need to cut down trees to make paper and waste ink to create those books. This is evolution, not devolution.

    Interesting points on where we may be going with libraries. But is there a future without libraries? I don’t see them disappearing, but I do see them morphing into something else. Just like the shift over the last 30 with school libraries, I mean, library media centers. 🙂

  • Jumping the curve in education

    Education 3.0: Embracing Technology to ‘Jump the Curve’

    …the education sector is focusing far too much about what existed yesterday, some about what exists today, and very little about what will exist tomorrow. He challenged the “Choice Architects” of today to stop creating employees for the jobs of yesterday and start focusing on careers of tomorrow.

    When the available quantity of information in almost every field and with regard to almost every concept doubles every 4-5 years, it is impossible not to have significant change arise.

    “Focus on the careers of tomorrow…”

  • And you think you know someone who hates Microsoft Word

    Why Microsoft Word must Die

    I hate Microsoft Word. I want Microsoft Word to die. I hate Microsoft Word with a burning, fiery passion. I hate Microsoft Word the way Winston Smith hated Big Brother. Our reasons are, alarmingly, not dissimilar …

    Microsoft Word is a tyrant of the imagination, a petty, unimaginative, inconsistent dictator that is ill-suited to any creative writer’s use. Worse: it is a near-monopolist, dominating the word processing field. Its pervasive near-monopoly status has brainwashed software developers to such an extent that few can imagine a word processing tool that exists as anything other than as a shallow imitation of the Redmond Behemoth. But what exactly is wrong with it?

    I’ve moved to formatting with Markdown in most of my writing, with a smattering of Google Docs. I don’t remember the last time I used Word (although I do fire up LibreOffice from time to time). In a lot of businesses Word is integrated into a lot of workflows that would be hard to replace.

  • See what happens when a father decides to do his daughter’s eight grade homework

    My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

    I have found, at both schools, that whenever I bring up the homework issue with teachers or administrators, their response is that they are required by the state to cover a certain amount of material. There are standardized tests, and everyone—students, teachers, schools—is being evaluated on those tests. I’m not interested in the debates over teaching to the test or No Child Left Behind. What I am interested in is what my daughter is doing during those nightly hours between 8 o’clock and midnight, when she finally gets to bed. During the school week, she averages three to four hours of homework a night and six and a half hours of sleep.

    Three or four hours of homework a night is crazy!

  • The little computer that could

    Raspberry Pi: one million units made in Britain landmark passed

    The Raspberry Pi started life as an idea to bring computing in schools back to the era of the BBC Micro in the early 1980s, which inspired children to learn how a computer worked and allowed them to discover what was possible through learning to code.

    “What was needed was a return to an exciting, programmable machine like the old BBC Micro; and it had to be affordable, say around ÂŁ20, so every child could potentially have one,” explained Eben Upton co-founder of the Raspberry Pi at its launch. “Computing wasn’t being seen as the exciting, vibrant subject it should be at school – it had become lacklustre and even boring.”

    I’ve been studying how we could use the Raspberry Pi in out classrooms. The lack of monitors with DVI or HDMI connectors have been a stumbling block, along with the lack of Flash and mediocre performance as a desktop. Although, that’s not the role the Raspberry Pi was designed to fill, it would be a good entry into the classroom.

  • Finding a school Chief Technology Officer is hard

    Education Week: Talented Chief Tech Officers Hard to Find for K-12

    Like technology itself, the job description of the district chief technology officer is changing rapidly—and often dramatically—as public education transforms around it, and through it.

    That’s why keeping up with the demands of the K-12 CTO’s job can be difficult, because relatively few of these professionals are schooled in the perfect marriage of skills on the instructional and technical sides to make the best decisions for districts.

    Probably related to the article I posted yesterday. It’s amazing how difficult the problem of managing educational technology in schools can be today trying to bridge two worlds.

  • Half of districts don’t have have a full time technology director

    Many Districts Go Without a Chief Tech Officer

    Even as schools juggle a daunting array of evolving technological demands, federal data show that roughly half of districts do not have a full-time chief technology officer or technology manager whose sole job is to oversee all digital needs. Those needs include ensuring that technology contributes to improved classroom instruction, as well as making sure it works properly.

    I applaud those districts that are able to make it work without a technology coordinator.