The future of War

Sam Pullara puts it well by referring to one of the advantages of static-typing as that the language can act as a metadata database i.e. an information source that can be systematically exploited by developers and tools (and not just IDEs).

However, I think the debate about the value of the (alleged!) overhead of static typing is sometimes a red herring. If you widen the issue to other overheads such as Java's thrall to OO and Patterns then the debate gets different. These to me are bigger conceptual overheads than typing. Bruce Eckel makes an interesting argument by looking at the difference in opening a file in Java versus python. Basically, the latter needs one memorable line of code, whilst Java requires a lot of invocation and boilerplate code that is difficult to remember. I do think patterns and OO are overdone, or at least unquestioned as paradigms. Everything has to pay its way, and in this sense the argument the Eckel makes doesn't really have anything to with data typing (but everything to do with finger-typing!). 


Of course language is not just lines of code. Really what we are talking about are wholes suites of technologies that play nice together. A language is generally part of a whole technological stack that includes development tools, web servers, databases, operating systems, even hardware. And of course you have to have people in that stack too - so a company may choose a language because of the number or the quality of the developers who are skilled in it for example.


All in all I think this means that the situation will become more complex and more languages will arise and gain traction but big languages will persist with huge market share. So the good news is that language wars are here to stay!

Recoding Variables in R: An Example

Recoding is pretty easy in R. You can use a control structure such as an if statement for binary factors e.g.

mnew$Assignable <- ifelse(mnew$Assignable == T, c("Assignee"), c("Non-assignee"))

 In this example I am replacing True False values with "Assignee", "Non-assignee". T is shorthand for TRUE which is an R type. The messy part about this is the c() vector that you have to create as a wrapper around the new factor value.

The computer scientist in me wants to keep the boolean values in there but whenever I try to do a graph or a table using this column of the data frame I end up with FALSE or TRUE as a label or a column heading.

R you Ready for Input Regime Change?

I'm learning R. It's brilliant. End of.

Ok not quite end-of. I tried Excel and SPSS first. I love Excel. In fact we have a long-standing co-dependant relationship. But it is time for cold turkey and here is why.

With all the hoopla about tablets and touchscreens I am suddenly back thinking about plain-old-typing. Sure it is slow, error prone and requires a large surface area to run your hands over to do it any way efficiently, but there are some things that GUI-driven modes are just terrible for. Working with data is one of them.

I have a big Excel file with 25,315 rows and about 27 columns. I am doing lots of stuff with it like averaging, summing, counting, filtering etc and matter how I layout the file, including using various tables, new tabs etc. sooner or later I find myself faced with...

The scroll of death^TM

There are neat tricks around this in Excel for instance you can select (highlight) a swathe of spreadsheet by using calliug Ctrl-G, typing the reference of the cell you wish to extend the selection to, then pressing shift and then Enter. TA-DA! This allows you for instance to select thousands of specific cells anywhere in your spreadsheet where dragging using the mouse would have taken days if not minutes.

But eventually you end up scrolling in a spreadsheet and you end up with some of your data in one place and the rest in another. It's horrible because scrolling is painful. Scrolling is not a good solution to anything.

Enter R. With a program like R the metaphor is different. There are no scroll bars. You cannot organise your data as you would in Excel, where the temptation is always to be able to "see" as much data as possible. Rather you don't care where the data is and you summon it as you need it. These incantations of the data are nor performed with palaeolithic scrollbars or mouse pointers. Instead we use the neolithic earthcrushing, shapeshifting technology that is the keyboard. The mighty artefact that puts the digit back into digital. Long live keys.

Learning is not the problem

Graduation versus Learning. People don't want to learn they wan't to graduate. This isn't their fault. In fact its ours. If we wanted people to learn we'd tell them to go read wikipedia, read the bible, read the works of shakespeare, read Jung, Popper, Knuth, Shirkey, Taleb, Buddah, Confuscius, Kawasaki, Seuss, Ellroy, Dawkins, Poe, De Mello, Buffet, Baudrillard, Diamond, de Chardin,  Herbert, Tolkien, Milton ; Listen to Bach, Tool, Domino, Earl, Dylan, Credence, Coltraine, White, Porter; get a job, get a life, make a friend, make an enemy, open your eyes close your eyes, watch tv, watch the wind, shout out loud, say nothing. The degree to which we confuse and conflate learning and graduation, that is to say idealisied learning (platonic) and institutional learning (socialisation) is clear when we consider turning the question "how can we learn better?" on its head and instead ask the ludicrious question "how can we learn worse?". It is clear that no matter what we do we learn. We can't help it. It's just how we're wired. Learning is clearly not the problem.

Screen Capture: All your lectures are belong to us!

Below are the slides and abstract of my talk for IT Sligo today:

• There is a also a  an archived version of my talk

Astract:

In a nutshell screen capture is the art of developing educational materials by capturing a video of what is happening on a computer screen. This simple process can allow rapid creation of rich-media instructional aides. In this talk I will present some experiences of mine and of my colleagues in developing these resources for students of Oscail in Dublin City University who are studying a Bsc. in Information Technology by distance education.

I will look at some tips I wrote two years ago on this topic and examine their continued relevance. The take-home message of this talk will be “publish or perish”, an exhortation to the educator to focus not on fancy production or editing of screen captures but rather on a process that involves a minimum of time and technical effort to create videos and get them to students. To finish I will give an overview of how we are using Camtasia Studio with Google Video as part of DCU’s roll out of Google Apps for Education and demonstrate some interesting aspects of this elearning platform.

Screen Capture All Your Lectures

View more presentations from Eamon_Costello.

Social Constructivism for Moodle (at last)

Moodle has been claimed to be based be a Social Constructivist pedagogy. It aint. Niall Sclater summed it up, when talking about the OU's adoption of the eLearning platform,  by pointing  out that "It can also be argued that LMSs are relatively pedagogy-neutral and and are merely shells in which to place content and activities".  I used to think that to argue whether one LMS or VLE is more learner-centric than another was a bit daft - no to mention that it feels suspiciously like using students as footballs in some elaborate game. But I change my mind. I'm very excited by the latest announcement from the OU that they have now baked in the very tools that Moodle should support if is to lay claim to a Social Constructivism that includes the studentStudents can build and develop their own communities using the power of Moodle outside of their prescribed virtual classrooms. . I'm really stoked by this idea. It also reminds me of Mahara and the social networking functions of that platform which I've recently seen hooked up to a DSpace repository. Social Constructivism is here, or to translate,  fun times ahead!

Victorian Learning Environment (VLE)

Today (while editing a student handbook) I am listening to Curtis Bonk author of the World is Open talking about the open movement and its potential impact on Education. He mentioned an alternative to Wikipedia (for wikipediaphobics) the Wikisource project. Actually it is a sister project (all part of the Wikimedia foundation). It aims to be a repository for primary sources, in contrast to Wikipedia which is a secondary source collection.

I took a quick look. Not knowing where to start I searched for Moodle (as I had just been writing a guide to Moodle for students). I found something unexpected. A reference to the word Moodle from the 19th century from one of my favourite (though neglected) authors, Charles Dickens. Wikisource does seem something pretty great. And so, without further ado, for your delectation, after extensive scholarly research, I give you the Victorian Learning Environment:

Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) because you can’t provide for Noodle!