Free(dom) software protagonists, real world pragmatists
2022 March 4 Friday 20:06
Recently tried to make use of 'Jitsi' for a video call, but then embarrassed to experience that a participant in the call could not entre the meeting room. Then became known that person was using 'safari' browser. Noone has time to do stupid typical techie advice such as "use another web browser", "update to latest software version", "install some other random software", etc. etc.. Participant proceeds to suggest a certain proprietary software product, works better with everyone concerned (not perfectly).
Free(dom) software programmers: test your software properly, with non-techie people (try find an elderly person, disabled person, a non-computer-science-degree person)...
Self-review, self-flagellation
"What would you do differently next time...?" is a common question that teachers ask themselves, or are asked to elicit a response, a dialogue. Actually the word actually used is "(self-)reflect", but this word causes discomfort. "Reflection" merely shows what is extant, but the complexity of the job demands recognition that audiences of pupils/students is not the same; whilst self-assessment of possible improvements is laudable, how can it be considered realistic when the future scenario will most likely be different? Self-review, yes; to "over-think", no thanks. A never-ending balance.
Webmention: 50 year anniversary 'limits to [economic] growth'
Reply: Jayati Ghosh
Of course too young to remember(!), it was a surprise to read about the existence of a report written fifty years ago about economic limits to the capitalistic imperative for perpetual growth. What bemused was the naive hope that fundamental change will arrive calmly, peacefully, etc.. To paraphrase a certain young lady: "blah, blah, blah". Apparently this club of elite people do important work: not sure what exactly, perhaps due to ignorance. Even a pseudo-pandemic has failed to address the fundamental cause, to quote Mamphele Ramphele: "greed that drives over-consumption". However, have proceeded to begin to read the original report! A copy of the video, available via 'TubEdu', a better video content host than the more dominant service which epitomises the problem to resolve(!)...
ulez expansion, again
Although predicted in an earlier post, amused at a press release to expand the tax revenue environmental climate crisis scam onto all boroughs. Yes, improve air quality (who would reject that aim), but the notion of being an active improvement to mitigate the alleged climate crisis, is comical. There was no mention of Londoners being compelled to purchase additional new renewable primary energy capacity, without which electric power vehicles transfer fossil fuel pollution elsewhere. At least there was an admission of the ultimate aim, a transition to a more lucrative future income based upon each kilometre travelled. There is already surveillance of public transport (payment via identification such as surveillance software mobile phone "app" (... me, "app-itisation is ubiquitous; a digression), or credit card); natural Orwellian progression for each car and/or person) to be fitted with some device to extract income for each movement on the road.
Broken web rant 3
2022 March 6 Sunday 11:20
Although the origins of bbc world service are unsurprisingly imperialistic, it is nice to enjoy some serendipitous content on occasion. This time, 'World of Wisdom' (self-explanatory title? ;) ). Proceeded to seek the atom/rss feed and the frustrations began (again). ctrl i, nothing; ctrl u, nothing but further obfuscation.
Although a quick ddg search engine query result found the desired podcast url, this was via a private usa company. Not good.
Broken web rant 4
2022 March 12 Saturday 12:47
In possession of an ancient mobile phone; understand it to be old with dimensions of height <120 mm ;). From the rss reader, have exported (opml format) a selection of feeds (weather and public transport information) for the phone, to use during travel around the city. Despite various attempts with various rss readers (e.g. ' rss reader', 'sparserss'), all fail to load opml file feed entries imported from newsbeuter. One of these programs at least states the error due to 'javax.net.ssl ssl protocol exception...'; as always these program "app" programmers' default assumption is that every technology user is a(n aspirational) computer science nerd...
Don't want to use proprietary, mysterious "apps"; want to use simple open source software tools with interoperable standards to work with multiple different programs and are slow (glacial!) to change...
Webmention: Teach electrochemical cells using number grids
Reply to: Louise Hussein
Not sure about the terminology "number grids" which appears to be a simple tabular arrangement of electrochemical cell information, often found in any good text-book (no the text-book should not be "ditched")
What should also be considered as another source of confusion, is the concept of "conventional electrical current" (electric current as flow of positive charge particles), in comparison to electron flow. Chemists most commonly care about electron transfer!
Broken web rant 5
Typical of technology businesses today, 'soundcloud' actively prefers rss obfuscation. For example, recently encountered the following podcast: Pearson edexcel science podcast '21. Cognitive science in the classroom. A review of the evidence – with Dr Tom Perry'. Interesting; haven't got ninety minutes or so to listen immediately, so let us find the rss feed and download and/or subscribe for a later time. The steps to overcome:
- use ctrl u to view web page source code
- use ctrl f to identify 'users:[integer string]'
-
url syntax for corresponding rss feed:
https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:[integer string]/sounds.rss -
in this example:
https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:896997040/sounds.rss
- url now suitable for addition to rss reader
Webmention: Resequence for success
2022 March 16 Wednesday 22:54
Reply to: Adam Boxer
Yes, a logical sequence of topics is important and may be considered of greater priority for chemistry cf. other subjects. The potential risk of "knowledge fragmentation" (i.e. failure recognise inherent relations of chemistry topics) is more likely to be indicative of teacher error, not necessarily pedagogical sequence. Formation of ions should be taught in the context of atomic structure, a better basis to connect atomic structure with periodicity of characteristics of groups of elements. Chemical bond is so critical, it deserves more time later in the curriculum before the more demanding quantitative content, namely the concept of the mole.
The article reminded of a personal deviation from a typical textbook sequence:
Year 10 Atomic structure The periodic table Group 1 – the alkali metals Group 7 – the halogens Periodicity Transition metals Structure and bonding States of matter Ionic bonding Covalent bonding Bonding in metals Nanoparticles Relative masses, moles, equations Yield, atom economy Concentrations, titrations Volumes of gases Earth's atmosphere Greenhouse gases Climate change Atmospheric pollutants Earth's resources Extracting metals from ores Using our resources Corrosion Useful alloys Chemical changes Metals extraction, reactivities, displacement reactions Salts Neutralisation and the pH scale Acidity alkalinity Year 11 Electrolysis Thermodynamics Chemical cells, batteries, fuel cells Kinetics Crude oil Organic reactions Polymers, glass, ceramics, composites Earth's resources (Water) Earth's resources (LCA, resources recycling, agriculture) Chemical analysisAlways an amusement to hear the occasional student express relief at the end of mole calculation, with a diversion usually preceded by: " Ma'am/Sir, why we learning about geography in a chemistry lesson?"
Mercurial (document) version control for authors that use LaTeX
2022 March 21 Monday 19:58
A (social media: does this distinction matter any more?) post about the obscure ownership of 'overleaf' (courtesy of 'Jonny') reminded of previous attempts to perform document collaboration with LaTeX. Fortunately the memory is good and the resources have not moved, so listed below are some examples of how to collaborate without using 'overleaf'. Whilst the programmers utilise 'git' and repository host services exist for that software, 'mercurial' seems simpler to understand (biased opinion: used subversion before and mercurial seems most similar, hence the personal preference).
- Write collaborate LaTeX documents
- https://tug.org/pracjourn/2007-3/henningsen/henningsen.pdf (cited by aforementioned hyperlink)
- mercurial version control of text documents
Webmention: Police strip-searched a 15-year-old [African] girl at school. When will these abuses end?
Reply to: Henry Edward Hardy
Read the article, the subsequent, inevitable "report" (pdf document, that then usually gathers proverbial, literal dust on a government building shelf), further news articles about crowd protests, but perplexed. The attention is directed (seemingly) entirely at the 'Met'. The "elephant in the room" looms large: a racist school structure, local authority are able to hide behind anonymity (thus sanction) for their collective, deliberate actions to stigmatise, then failure to protect a(n African) child. It is understandable that a child and her family are protected, but the unfortunate consequence is a failure to address the systematic issue: racism and prejudice in the education system, which is of course far more pernicious that in other sectors of society such as a corrupt police service force.
"Fish rots from the head": unless rac/sex-ist teachers, managers are sacked and replaced by those who are not, culture change cannot be achieved. If the education system was so successful since the "national curriculum" was invoked, such instances, attitudes, behaviours would not occur.
"Are you a science teacher?"
2022 March 29 Tuesday 20:00
A phrase of irritration, recently prompted to write about by (strangely?) the announcement of a tennis player's retirement. Relevance to chemistry?
A tennis player may be able to help someone to begin badminton play (both sports use a raquet, yes???), but to become a proficient or expert player would (should) seem unrealistic. Yet, the three main scientific disciplines are considered "related" such that any teacher in one discipline is deemed capable to teach proficiency in another scientific discipline. No.
bett no show
The pseudo-pandemic caused the change in usual date (January, last time visited) of the event, to last week. Not convinced that it also caused the cancellation of a weekend day (i.e. Saturday) as part of the event duration, at least to facilitate visits by teachers. Once again, another example of education technology decisions being made for teachers, but not b(u)y (geddit? :) ) them. The web site of the organiser is also terrible and very poorly designed. Who cares about accessibility for all?
On a separate but related note, it has been noticed that with the ever tightening grip of amgaf upon centralisation and usa hegemony, some schools have cancelled or reduced usage of various education technology providers. The ability to provide (poor quality, un-intended market target) video conference software by these huge companies, has since been used to pursue other business interests, such as the ability to store students' personal data, homework, etc.. within their proprietary ecosystem. Not a good prospect for the future. However, with the ineptitude, poor strategic management and general insularity of the free(dom) software protagonists, there is no alternative.
False news, false education
The current "yoof" deserve a little technological sympathy; they are probably the first generation to encounter the problem of mass (mis-)information. Ironically, this makes the role of the human teacher probably more important, to help filter the poor quality/wrong information and perform the task of "education content curator" (edu-curator©?).
Consider the following example video of incorrect content. Admittedly, nice graphics (audio an annoyance), but the narrative exposes a weak comprehension of the difference between covalent bonds and intermolecular forces that involve dipole moments between water molecules and the solute(s) of interest. Unintended consequence, to demonstrate to gce a(s) students as an example of the dangers of dubious information sources out there...!
Socia media boredom
It had to happen. A legacy media outlet proclaims the "beginning of the end" of perpetual social media growth. Of notable interest is the sale of simple mobile phones (again), although the prices are far from "simple". A pity there was no mention of initiatives such as fairphone (but equally unaffordable).
Spring snow
Always nice to see trees in spring blossom. Enjoy the imminent holidays! :)
