I’ve never been a fan of policing student behavior in my classes. I don’t take attendance, I’m pretty generous when it comes to late work and making up assignments, and I try to make participation in class something that’s organic rather than something structured and forced. In recent years, this hasn’t necessarily gone well. For example, the undergrad class I’m currently teaching has lousy attendance, and I struggle to get anyone except the 3-4 same voices to contribute to class discussions.

I’m normally a big “break is break” advocate, but family illness meant being behind on work, which meant taking over my father-in-law’s WFH setup today to finish a syllabus and course shell I needed to prep so other instructors could work off them.

I remember the first Floppotron, and 3.0 continues to be delightful. I may have to show this in class next year. link to ‘This PC orchestra, built from 512 floppy disk drives, is wondrous to hear and behold - The Verge’

Discussing networks in class today, which is as good an excuse as any to show a clip from Battlestar Galactica. Computers without networks is one of the most interesting worldbuilding details in that show.

I got to teach counting in binary today, and it might be one of my favorite things to teach. Not every day you get to deconstruct and reconstruct your students’ understanding of numbers.

Small sample size (and very non-representative), but my summer students seem to be on board with treating internet access as a public good. Hope for the future!

There are a lot of joys in teaching, but there’s something awesome about being able to assign students to watch a scene from 1992’s Sneakers—the world’s finest hacker movie.

Proposing a new syllabus on department’s class on fundamentals of hardware and software, and I’m adding reflections on equity, society, culture as they relate to ICT. Tech isn’t just technical.

Can anyone recommend a good video essay, blog post, etc. on the absence of networks in the Battlestar Galactica reboot? Need it for a class. (Also frightened by the possibility that BSG is “too old” for my undergrads to know about).

One of the biggest perks of teaching in an ICT program is the ease with which scenes from the fantastic 1992 hacker/heist movie Sneakers can be worked into one’s lectures.

Teaching a summer class that includes fundamentals of computer hardware. Peak so far was this morning, when a student came in excited that she’d been able to follow along watching someone replace a server motherboard.