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Anyone else watch Richard Rusczyk's WTM conference session tonight?


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It looks like the page for accessing archived recordings of talks you've ordered is here (after you're signed in):

http://wtmonlineconference.com/my-account/recorded-sessions/

 

I don't have anything listed there yet though even though I signed up for quite a few - some of which were live over 5 days ago.  Anyone else see anything listed on that page in their account?

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It looks like the page for accessing archived recordings of talks you've ordered is here (after you're signed in):

http://wtmonlineconference.com/my-account/recorded-sessions/

 

I don't have anything listed there yet though even though I signed up for quite a few - some of which were live over 5 days ago. Anyone else see anything listed on that page in their account?

I haven't got any listed. I need to watch delayed because of time differences but I haven't seen one yet.

 

it must be their system because with similar things with other providers I have been sent a link withing a few hours.

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It looks like the page for accessing archived recordings of talks you've ordered is here (after you're signed in):

http://wtmonlineconference.com/my-account/recorded-sessions/

 

I don't have anything listed there yet though even though I signed up for quite a few - some of which were live over 5 days ago.  Anyone else see anything listed on that page in their account?

 

I have been checking that link almost daily. I see a video box for the AOPS session but when I click on it, I get an error:

The page you are looking for cannot be found.

It has been a week since the session, but looks like the video has not been uploaded.

 

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Does he mean proof writing or composition (English class) writing.

 

Either way it is important to be able to explain yourself and write in any field.

 

 

I understood that he meant both.

 

He talked first about the importance of writing clear communication. Later he talked about the importance of math writing and proof writing, not just in geometry, but for all math.

 

He did not recommend any particular writing course, but he did, of course, mention WTMA.

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Does he mean proof writing or composition (English class) writing.

 

Either way it is important to be able to explain yourself and write in any field.

 

I just got to this part - starts just before 22 minutes in. He wants them to be able to communicate well with others - and that means WRITING well. He values employees who can communicate well in writing since that's how he & his people help other people learn. He said it takes a lot of practice. Make them write for other people. Make sure they are rewriting as that is where he believes the learning happens on how to improve.

 

On the topic of math writing, he doesn't want you to force writing down intermediate steps on a young kid. His example was a 9 yr old. One thing he said is that if you have a kid who is just flying through math & not writing down their steps (but mostly getting them right), you can let them continue to do that. He said it will become obvious to them at some point when the work gets harder that they need to start writing down their steps in order to think through the problem. If you have a kid who is writing down a lot of wrong answers, he said you will have to keep asking what their thinking is so you can figure out where they are getting off track.

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What did other people think about this? If a child is at a 70% accuracy level on a page of straight-up computation, does that mean he's working at the right level? That doesn't sit right with me, but I don't think that's quite what he meant. 

 

I didn't watch his talk, though now I wish I had!  But the exercises in the AoPS books have a few "easy" problems before it quickly ramps up to the harder stuff.  If my kids don't solve the hardest problems, I don't sweat it, though we do read through the solutions for understanding.  I would say 70% might be a bit low for us, but there are definitely end of chapter challenge problems that we don't solve, and in fact, take quite some effort to understand the solutions.  

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I appreciated the emphasis on learning to code and a redirection to "written" code, not just graphical like Scratch.

 

 

 

Could someone elaborate on this?   What, according to RR, is wrong with using Scratch?  

 

We skipped Scratch, but I remember my dd's and I were highly annoyed by the graphical interface of the Lego Mindstorms programming language.  When we stopped FLL and learned Python, it was just a relief to be free of the mouse and just type in our commands.  

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Could someone elaborate on this? What, according to RR, is wrong with using Scratch?

 

We skipped Scratch, but I remember my dd's and I were highly annoyed by the graphical interface of the Lego Mindstorms programming language. When we stopped FLL and learned Python, it was just a relief to be free of the mouse and just type in our commands.

I am wondering about this too. I'd love to hear from those who know.

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I am wondering about this too. I'd love to hear from those who know.

 

I do some coding for my job and have a computer science degree. There is definitely a bias among programmers against using graphical interfaces to code. Graphical interfaces abstract quite a bit of what you're asking the computer to do. They do some of the work for you basically. All programming languages abstract to some extend (no one writes in binary) but graphical interfaces take it to an even higher level.

 

It's kind of like using a calculator to do higher level math - without understanding what the calculator is doing. No one approaches math that way and I don't think it makes sense to approach coding that way either. It will take longer to get to the point where you can produce something interesting or fun though - and that's where RR was saying that something like Scratch could be useful.  If you use it to introduce students to the possibilities or get them initially interested.  Just don't stay there for long without venturing into actually writing code. 

 

 

In addition to Python (which is widely used as an intro programming language) Rails is a popular choice for getting started with web development.  This is a good tutorial: https://www.railstutorial.org/book

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Could someone elaborate on this?   What, according to RR, is wrong with using Scratch?  

 

We skipped Scratch, but I remember my dd's and I were highly annoyed by the graphical interface of the Lego Mindstorms programming language.  When we stopped FLL and learned Python, it was just a relief to be free of the mouse and just type in our commands.  

 

I did not see the session but am grateful to all those posting highlights.

 

I for one find graphical "coding" to be very different than regular coding. It's much harder to think creatively with the boxes. It's almost as if they have to fit into a different space. Like, they fit together in certain ways like puzzle pieces. They're all arranged out there. Granted, I am not a computer scientist. So all my work is with really basic languages / markup languages like HTML, R/S, and SQL. But even in these, if you are using a graphical interface, you aren't thinking about the logic and nature of objects behind the code. You are thinking about how those pictures fit together as graphical objects and superficial, tertiary rules for the boxes, rather than the rules that govern the behavior of objects in the system's native space.

 

Like, suppose you have blocks for math. And you want to represent 2+2=4. Presumably, all of your two blocks are the same size. So you would lay them all out. But the reality is that you could have a table and a chair equals two pieces of furniture, or two chairs and two chairs equals four chairs. It's more abstract.

 

That's why I'm skipping the pictures with my kids. I just don't see the point. It's about using an artificial language to instruct a computer what to do. You don't want to be limited to pre-made sentences.

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I did not see the session but am grateful to all those posting highlights.

 

I for one find graphical "coding" to be very different than regular coding. It's much harder to think creatively with the boxes. It's almost as if they have to fit into a different space. Like, they fit together in certain ways like puzzle pieces. They're all arranged out there. Granted, I am not a computer scientist. So all my work is with really basic languages / markup languages like HTML, R/S, and SQL. But even in these, if you are using a graphical interface, you aren't thinking about the logic and nature of objects behind the code. You are thinking about how those pictures fit together as graphical objects and superficial, tertiary rules for the boxes, rather than the rules that govern the behavior of objects in the system's native space.

 

Like, suppose you have blocks for math. And you want to represent 2+2=4. Presumably, all of your two blocks are the same size. So you would lay them all out. But the reality is that you could have a table and a chair equals two pieces of furniture, or two chairs and two chairs equals four chairs. It's more abstract.

 

That's why I'm skipping the pictures with my kids. I just don't see the point. It's about using an artificial language to instruct a computer what to do. You don't want to be limited to pre-made sentences.

You described this so much better than I did. :) Thank you!

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