Coding for Kids
By Brian Rowe | June 26, 2009
At today’s Google D.C. Talk on Cybersecurity Harry Wingo Google’s Policy Counsel and Philip Reitinger of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security brought up the idea of teaching code at an early age to prepare for the future.
I was a little taken back, I had not anticipated strongly agreeing with many ideas under the heading “Developing a National Cybersecurity Strategy,” but this one is great. Code is a language & a pattern and in both cases children learn languages and patterns significantly faster and more thoroughly then adults. In working with children, ages 6 to 12, as a chess teacher during undergrad I was amazed at how quickly younger children could absorb complex tactics, it took them a fraction of the time it took older students or adults. Once those foundations were in place it then enabled the children to gain a deeper understand of how the game worked when they were older. I strongly believe the same is true of code, the earlier you learn code the more opportunities you will have to help creatively solve problems through code later in life. Early exposure to coding, not just seeing code but learning to play with it the way a child learns not just words but poetry and how to create stories when they learn a language, enables children to view the world from a perspective that is vital for creating a competitive advantage for the next generation.
Image from by vissago under CC-BY-NC
PS I am a little bias here, I learned to program in BASIC before the age of 9 on a commodore 64 (thx mom and dad), this has had a profound effect on the way I view the world.
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PK Intro and Conflicts of Interest
By Brian Rowe | June 5, 2009
Well just one week into my fellowship at Public Knowledge and my professional responsibility class from last semester is already coming in useful. My final project for the PR class was to craft an online statement of my philosophy of lawyering and a disclosure statement about any conflicts of interest, these have been posted here on the site and I will discuss them in more detail after I receive feedback from the professor. In starting at PK I wrote an intro blog post which included information on the paid fellowship I am on:
After graduating from Seattle University with a JD Brian Rowe relocated out east to Washington DC to spend the summer fighting to ensure that IP law is benefiting the public through the free flow of information as a Google Public Policy Fellow @ Public Knowledge.
Brian is an IP junkie that reads Boing Boing, /. and XKCD for breakfast before breaking into an light afternoon snack of recent federal appeals court case and amici briefs. Brian’s other projects include a legal internship at Creative Commons last summer, four years of work with the Washington State Access to Justice Technology Committee, and helping write Students for Free Culture’s bylaws.
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West Coast v. East Coast: Pt.1 Escalators
By Brian Rowe | June 4, 2009
Photo by vargklo under CC-BY-SA
This is an on going series of shorts I will be posting from my time in DC this this summer.
On the West Coast or at least in Seattle and Portland we realize that escalators move upon their own accord. You need not forcible walk up them to move. On the west coast it is considered rude to pass people on an escalators. One who passes on an escalator is viewed as pushy or aggressive.
This is not the case on the East Coast, some how people have confused escalator with stairs or even worse with those reverse escalators installed in gyms where people walk up stairs and go nowhere at all (I think they are called gerbil wheels). If you do not walk on the escalator you are expected to scrunch your body to one side and let other shove past you.
Even for me a highly caffeinated person in a hurry person the idea of walking on an escalator is somewhat a kin to installing ladders in elevators a bit insane.
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Motivating Kids in Suzuki
By Brian Rowe | May 14, 2009
Sarah, my wife, posted a great piece last week on how we work with Gwen to teach her violin. It demonstrates how to keep something as hard as violin fun for a 7 year old. If you have any comments, ideas or suggestion head over to her blog and let us know what you think:
Opening
My husband, Brian, and I have a child in Suzuki violin. We have a quirky way of practicing, and our violin teacher keeps telling us that we should tell other parents about it, because it really does work. So this blog post has nothing to do with technology (although it does have to do with lifehacking). It’s aimed at other Suzuki parents, so if you’re one of my normal blog readers and you have zero interest in music or motivating children, then move along. I’ll be back to my normally-scheduled tech blogging next week.
Suzuki is hard work
Learning an instrument is a life-long endeavor. It requires daily practice over a long period of time. If you’re like my husband and me, you’ve made the decision that it’s worth it. Our little one (I call her the geekling) is seven. She started Suzuki violin at the age of five, and she can’t remember a time when she didn’t practice every day. That’s hard work! However, our job as a parents isn’t to help her (or bribe or intimidate her to) struggle through the hard work. I’m going to tell you about the way we practice. It’s a lot of work for us. The difference is that we know we’re working hard. If all goes as planned, she thinks it’s playtime.
Trust your teacher
There’s a reason we hire teachers. Any violinist could tell a child the 1,001 things that they are doing wrong. Edmund Sprunger says in his great book, Helping Parents Practice, that his job as a violin teacher is to tell the child the one thing that will help them the most. A good violin teacher (ours is the fabulous Christine Dunaway) will tell you exactly what to practice at home. We, as parents, have a strong urge to correct our children. It’s hard to watch them practicing bad habits, but if the focus for the week is a good bow hand, let the other stuff slide. There are a lot of things to think about while playing an instrument, and trying to focus on them all at once will overwhelm you and your child. Your job as a parent is to practice what you’re told to practice. It’s a no-brainer.
Teach your child’s body
Suzuki is about repetition. It’s about muscles and neurons. Your child wants to be a great musician, and they want to perfectly execute everything you ask them to do. Telling your child “you’re just not trying, try harder” is incredibly demotivating. You and your child have the same goals, you just need to help her whip her body and her brain into shape. Try using body and brain terminology with your child. Saying “you’re having trouble with that fast spot in Allegro” is really different from saying “your fingers are having trouble with that fast spot in Allegro”. The latter is both more accurate and more productive. The problem isn’t that the geekling always forgets the c-sharp, the problem is that we need to work together on strengthening that neural pathway, because it sure is stubborn! Get it?
Motivation
Just like adults, children need a good reason to follow directions. I think we all know that “because I said so” isn’t a good reason. We quickly learn that our children think “because it will make you a great musician someday” isn’t a good reason. There is a very important difference between adults and children here. Adults want the real reason. Children want a reason. This is the really important really hard work you need to do: making stuff up. Here’s an excerpt from a recent practice I did with the geekling:
“oh no!”
“what’s wrong?”
“gremlins have just kidnapped the willow princess, and somebody has to go save her!”
“I’ll save her!”
“okay, they took her into a dark cave. you’re not afraid of the dark, right?”
“no way! what do I have to do?”
“there’s water in the cave, but fortunately there’s a rowboat. To row the boat, you need to play the first four measures of Perpetual Motion three times with a perfect bow hand, then we’ll get to see what’s at the end of the cave.”
“okay”
“get into a good play position, here we go!”
You get the idea. If she forgets about her bow hand, then we’ve lost an oar and we need to go back to the mouth of the cave and start over. We’ve done dinosaur hunts and rock concerts and even saved the world from global warming. Take whatever excites your child this week, and roll with it. If I’m having a lousy day, and not feeling particularly creative, we’ll use a book or a myth (The Ramayana works great) so I don’t have to make up the structure. The teacher tells us what to practice, the story provides the motivation, and all I have to do is put the two together.
It’s a totally flexible method too. If she’s doing great, or it’s taking longer than I expected, then a gryphon swoops in and flies us to the end of the cave. If I feel like a little more practice is necessary, then there’s a gnome at the end of the cave who needs us to row him to his brother’s place so we can all get scuba suits because the kidnappers went underwater. We also throw in a liberal dash of Choose Your Own Adventure, giving her two (or more) productive choices to turn the story in a certain direction. We always end the lesson on an incredible victory, and she’s happy to practice the next day.
Our child is particularly kinesthetic, so we also include activities like “you’ve been sprinkled with fairy dust. put down your violin and touch every doorknob in the house so the fairies can come in.” We’ll toss a coin to decide what to do, or have her collect 8 pencils by playing something eight times, but then actually let her get a pencil out of the drawer each time she plays it. If she’s extremely wiggly, we’ve even been known to have her run around the block in the middle of a lesson then come back and play.
Some people (like my husband) can do this sort of storytelling on the fly. I usually need some prep time to look over my lesson notes and form a story outline beforehand. Do what works for you.
In closing
I hope that helps. All my work is public domain, so feel free to share this with friends, copy it, publish it, whatever. I won’t sue you. I would appreciate if you keep my name attached and let me know if you liked it and where you’re passing it on. Good luck with practice!
A print-friendly version of this post is available at http://sarahdavies.cc/suzuki.html
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Best Practices for Blogging
By Brian Rowe | March 27, 2009
Two weeks ago in my International Human Rights Clinic we had a class on press releases without one mention in the readings of how to promote press online. My critical response for the week focused on how to blog. Here are the highlights:
- Add visuals - Visuals draw people to text, they also get you hits from Google image search.
- Make headlines simple and direct, do not hide the ball with a witty headline
- Add meta data and tags to increase Search Engine Optimization
- Use broadcast tools to promote the press release - Twitter, Facebook, Digg, reddit, your blog, your orgs blog, list serves, Slide share, YouTube. In the human rights context use Witness for videos and for legal docs use JD Supra.
- License your work for others to share your message with Creative Commons Licenses (this blog is under a public domain dedication)
- Consider using multi media - a cheap 5 min video will get you 10X the number of hits a text post will over the long term
- Provide links to related works
- Invite community feed back - open comments
- Enable community action - do not just give people a story give them a way to take action!
- Provide links to related articles - see end of post
- Make it easy for your reader to educate themselves through the press release with links. (to wikipedia or relevant sites)
- Promote others that are talking about the same topic (see Cory’s video at end of post)
- Keep it short 200- 400 words at most
Cory Doctorow: How to be an uber blogger:
Further reading:
Slate Review of Huffington’s guide on how to blog
Four steps to a great Nonprofit Blog by Sarah Davies
Take Action: Start a blog through Wordpress
Topics: Blogs, Creative Commons, SU Law | 1 Comment »
ACLU v. Big Brother: Dueling Bus Ads
By Brian Rowe | February 27, 2009
ACLU is stepping on Big Brother’s toes again, this time by informing bus riders their civil rights with an ads on buses that inform riders of their rights. Although this time Big Brother is not taking it quietly, they are fighting back with a propaganda ad aimed at convincing you to give up your rights. Here are the dueling public service announcements:
The ACLU wants you to “Know Your Rights” while the Republicans want you to believe that “Cooperation is always better then confrontation!” If you rights are not worth fighting for what is? In a state that has a history of internment camps, I am not sure the Republicans could pick a worse slogan.
ACLU sign article in the Peninsula Daily News
Republican’s Big Brother sign article in the Peninsula Daily News
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Slides for Law of the Commons
By Brian Rowe | February 24, 2009
I often use Slide Share to post slides from talks. This is my fist time trying Google Docs. Here is how the slides turned out:
Over all I think slide share has a much better interface for sharing slides. I like the community aspects of Slide Share. The only advantage I see to using Google is the ablity to easily edit the slides. Although I am not seeing a quick way to simplely export the slides without going through Google docs.
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Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal Part 4 (questions) Final
By Brian Rowe | January 27, 2009
“Law must be taught in primary school, it is a social science. We must demystify the law, as it stands many people do not understand the law.”
“Peace starts With Access to information”
Questions: How did this process effect you personally?
Batya Friedman: The project is draining, I have to sleep 10 hours a day, but it makes me happy to be able to contribute.
Don Horowitz: It was a great experience and it was a saddening experience. The process has been draining.
John Makay: standing on a memorial for 250,o00 thousand dead I just wanted to be alone away from people.
Question: How will these be used?
Patricia Boiko: We want to make the material available for remix and mash up. (Brian: need to talk to them about licensing and see how serious they are about this)
Questions: Why did we only use caucasions ?
Patricia Boiko: It was not intentional it was a product of
Question: do we (the UN) have a right to run the tribunal if we ignored the genocide at the time
Ron Slye: The perfect is often the enemy of the good. The UN failed to act at the time of the Genocide. The US made a mistake as did the UN by not intervening. But this does not mean that we should not try to help now.
Question: What can we do now in Rwanda, Darfur and the Congo?
Don Horowitz: We need to get this information out in more ways then online, through cell phones and flyers to start dialogues. Education is the key but the answer is not clear.
Max Andrews: Much of the issues are tied to extreme povery and a lack of education. We must address the underling issues. We need real comperhensive education in Africa.
Question: What about Darfur and Congo?
Batya Freidman: We ahve the potential to evolve as a society. We are at a point where we can change. One of the great gift of this tribunal is rape as genocide, it allows us to start conversations about issues that have been unspeakable and unaddressed in the past. These changes take years.
Closing remarks:
Don Horowitz: We need to use this work to impove future tribunals
Bayta Freidman: Next steps:
Never again Rwanda we want to put these materials in the hands of youth to create videos to use in discussion groups.
We also want to make these videos accessible to legal community.
We need to also make this available to the people, we want the only limits to be the human imagination. We are only asking for knowledge about how it is used.
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Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal Part 3
By Brian Rowe | January 27, 2009
Justice and reconciliation do not go together. Criminal prosecutions relive the most horrific moments of the Genocide. Another process is need to move forward. (I will look into which interview brought this up once they are posted online. The interview clips are passing so quickly with so much to talk about)
Brian: This shows how much work is still needed after the tribunals.
Innocent until proven guilty, is a basic human right. At the end of the day some of the people brought up on charges were found not guilty.
When speaking on why treat those who commit genocide with respect and a comfortable prison the answer brought a reactions from the crowd “We are treating them better and that is what gives us the right the judge them” - Max Andrews. I think what he meant is that we must treat them with human rights and dignity even when judging or we are committing crimes our self.
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Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal Part 2
By Brian Rowe | January 27, 2009
Legal systems exist to enable other systems to deliver basic human rights - Don Horowitz:
Access is key to this project not just access to the first world but also access to the people in Rwanda and to the rest of the world - Batya Friedman
After opening remarks we viewed a short clip from a one of the early UN investigators followed by a discussion of the multiple interperations and communities can . 10,000 people a day died in the 1994 genocide, ending with a total of nearly 800,00 deaths. The genocide also created an enormity refugee problem.
Next there was short clip from Washington Supreme Court Justice Robert Utter disscussing the impact on international law.
A little more about the project 10 people from the Seattle legal and academic community left in September and spent 4 weeks in Rwanda collecting 70 to 80 hours of interviews. 49 interview were conducted during these weeks. They started the interviews with 3 questions Where where you in 1994? When and how did you hear about the genocide? When did you chose to join the Genocide Tribunal?
This was the first Genocide tribunal to recognize rape as a form of genocide. Unfortunately with limited resources the crime of rape was the first charge that was dropped.
The nest set of clips brought up a very difficult problem, one of the witness a lawyer was working with ran into a tough ethical and professional issue problem:
Lawyer: are you ready to go forward and testiy?
Witness: I have one problem?
Lawyer: What is the problem?
Witness: I never told my husband I was raped.
Lawyer: Why did you not tell your husband?
Witness: If I told my husband I would not have a husband.
How do you deal with this ethical issue, do you risk her family and home to prosecute genocide?
“Judges don’t give blessings they need blessing to do justice” - Don Horowitz
One of the the interviews, with an Assistant UN General, pointed out that lots of resources have been spent on the criminals but very few resources have been spent on the victims. Furthermore our mission is not complete until we help the victims.
Note: The “s are paraphrase for main points not exact quotes
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