133 karma · joined September 16, 2015
The author of this article nails it: there's nothing quite as motivating as adding "Poop" to the title of a real web page. Also, you can Inspect Element and get what is effectively an IDE. Is JavaScript the best language? No, it's inconsistent and confusing. But, so is English, and a lot of people learn English first - because it is practical to do so.
Another option that can be useful are Google Sheets. If they are a certain type of kid, they might like logging all of their toys in a spreadsheet and finding the total of the toys and making charts. Of course, most kids will find this boring... but you can also use Google Scripts to do something like scrape a subreddit and store it in Drive [1], which could be fun.
However, why not start with Scratch, or Snap! [2]? They are powerful enough (especially Snap!, I think you can define new data types in it...) and so much less intimidating.
[1] http://ctrlq.org/code/19600-reddit-scraper-script [2] http://snap.berkeley.edu/
Everyone I know in law is dissatisfied with every part of their tech stack. If someone could come up with an integrated SaaS solution, and be SUPER careful about compliance... they would be printing money.
One of the coolest experiences I've had: one of my students managed to end up in my class for 6th, 7th and 8th grade math... Then 7 years later I hired her as an intern! She totally crushed the internship. Meaningful relationships with students like that, where they still check in occasionally and give me updates on how they are doing and tell me how I changed the way they see things... that is something I miss a lot.
This is a case of the evidence not fitting the theory well, so people complain about the evidence. If the browser/DOM/HTML/JS ecosystem "technically" is terrible, but in practice dominates the competition, then there is something about it that is better. This is not a fallacy, but a simple supply and demand argument.
1. File an annual private school affidavit. 2. Maintain an attendance register. 3. Instruction must be in English. 4. Instructors must be capable of teaching. 5. Provide instruction in the courses commonly taught in the public schools (e.g., language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and driver training). 6. Maintain immunization records or personal beliefs exemption. 7. Maintain a list of courses of study. 8. Maintain a list of instructors with their addresses and qualifications.
This is MINIMALLY enforced. If the parent has a teaching credential, the rules are even more lax "The child must be taught for at least three hours a day, between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., for 175 days each school year in the several branches of study required to be taught by the public schools and in the English language."[1]
On a related side notes, private schools also do not have to follow the curriculum set for public schools. There are even some public schools that are exempted from parts of the mandatory curriculum (charters).
I agree that any science-for-the-public reporting tends to do a bad job of conveying the inherent uncertainty in current research, but I feel like this was not terrible.
http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/homeschooling/unschooli...
"Unschooling is a branch of homeschooling that promotes nonstructured, child-led learning. There’s no set curriculum or schedule."