tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15695021830193706202023-11-15T09:17:33.178-05:00Kat on a WireKathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-71138904333119376342013-10-07T04:26:00.000-05:002013-10-07T04:26:33.573-05:00Social power in computing and its affect in early CS educationReading a NYTimes piece this morning that summarized work on how people tend to dismiss those with less social power in a given situation. The article is unfortunately titled around money, even though the point of the article is much broader, looking at the implications for public policy if high-power people dismiss those below them.
I'm thinking about the impact of this in education, Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-11239290726129530202013-09-21T05:58:00.000-05:002013-09-21T06:08:29.080-05:00Mediating Differences in Computing Skills in the same ClassroomI just came across Ross Penman's post on the problems of computing education. Ross is a 14-year old web programmer from Scotland. His description of his school's computing curriculum is depressing, particularly the descriptions of the various ways in which it inadvertantly turns students off from computing. These ways include the impact of old software and technologies that Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-39723129884901429032013-09-21T04:48:00.001-05:002013-09-21T08:43:29.224-05:00Zen SabbaticalsI've just finished reading Natalie Goldberg's 1993 memoir "Long Quiet Highway". It focuses on her intertwined paths into writing and Zen, exploring the idea of writing as a form of practice (in contrast to traditional seated meditation). Natalie's writing turns me inward, and perhaps not surprisingly, it brought my attention to sabbatical.
Fundamentally, sabbatical is about focus. &Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-75882882963674193492013-08-26T05:13:00.000-05:002013-08-26T05:13:48.127-05:00Time to unpack "everybody learn to code"Two articles crossed my path this morning: (1) a NYTimes editorial on the impact of technology and automation on middle-tier jobs (arguing that middle-tier jobs will need to integrate using automated data with human skills of adaptation and communication); and (2) a Slate piece from a software engineer striking back on the recent "everyone should learn to code" frenzy (roughly: quality coding is Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-38461757386838662662013-08-25T14:17:00.001-05:002013-08-25T14:17:37.441-05:00When does sabbatical start (and what is it, really)?I'm bemused by how my thinking about sabbatical has evolved over the last several months. (I am on sabbatical for the entire upcoming academic year):
Having front-loaded my entire teaching load to the fall semester last academic year, I gave my last pre-sabbatical lecture in December. I was conscious of it being my last lecture for over 18 months. Under the "Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-64021528875717274482013-06-13T20:23:00.000-05:002013-06-13T20:23:47.749-05:00Good enough for MOOCs?As a computer science professor who is interested in learning, it's natural that I've been thinking about and following the whole MOOC-mania. I'm partly interested from a research/tech perspective (just how much is online learning capable of, given time to develop?), and partly from a job-survival one (what's the likelihood of my line of work disappearing before I retire?).
A friend's Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-37179184860346593252013-05-05T06:20:00.001-05:002013-05-05T06:21:05.522-05:00Resurrecting a blog, a professor, and a courseI'm now on sabbatical, next due in the office in August 2014. Been thinking this would be a good excuse/motivation to resurrect the blog (quiet for the last 5 years), but hadn't yet found something I felt like writing about.
So much for leaving the classroom: my inaugural sabbatical post is about class sizes.
The NYTimes has an op-ed on whether class size counts. The article is Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-88264800537295917802008-03-02T06:36:00.002-05:002008-03-02T07:20:12.400-05:00The music of teachingBetween the end of classes last week and a paper deadline next week, I haven't done much outside of work lately. Last weekend though, I treated myself to a favorite spectator event: a master class in music. In a master class, music students perform for a master (usually renown) musician, who works with the student to improve the performance. The audience gets to watch the whole exchange, whichKathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-23329435007734631902008-02-02T07:50:00.000-05:002008-02-03T08:45:43.968-05:00In the Interest of TimeEarlier this week, I was passing my hour-long car commute in the usual ways: flipping radio stations (all were enamored of Journey this week, challenging the usual Fleetwood Mac dominance), rehearsing my morning lecture, running down the to-do list, and mentally composing emails to send as soon as I got into my office. It was a day full of one-liner emails, the sort that I sometimes imagine Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-78218045186302817532008-01-27T06:14:00.000-05:002008-01-27T06:56:11.522-05:00Work/life balanceA number of separate incidents left me thinking a lot about work/life balance these last couple of weeks: research deadlines near the start of term had me working a lot on weekends, bouts of sleeplessness had me up at my desk before 5am for several days running, multiple students came by to talk about academic career issues, and I heard yet another discussion on the oft-heard wisdom that older Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-33160665812852609742008-01-07T20:25:00.000-05:002008-01-08T06:56:33.046-05:00Punching lines: what prevents change?Quote: "The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity." -- Bill Gates, Harvard University Commencement 2007I came across Gates' address a couple of days ago and highly recommend it. It's forceful, and this line pulled the main punch. Gates argues that many people are concerned about global issues such as economic inequity, but the problems are so complex that we Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-37976263063271537782007-12-31T16:23:00.000-05:002008-01-05T21:50:59.809-05:00India 2007December 2007 took us to India again. We hadn't expected to return quite so soon, but one of our closest friends was getting married in Bangalore. The wedding ended up postponed, but we grabbed the opportunity for some new adventures anyway. We spent much of the time in the south-western state of Kerala, prompted in part by an invitation to visit a grad school friend of mine (Venkatesh) who Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-58401113704184937072007-11-04T06:03:00.000-05:002007-11-04T07:00:42.106-05:00All in my headBlustery weather yesterday after a hectic week propelled me to do something I haven't done in years: read a book start to finish in a single day. I picked up Louann Brizendine's "The Female Brain" some weeks ago, intending to save it for travel reading. My fried brain was drawn to the subject yesterday, however, rewarding me with an eye-opening, unsettling, and thought-provoking Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-12761235736763393492007-10-22T22:33:00.000-05:002007-10-23T05:54:16.883-05:00Montravels in MontrealWe're in Montreal for a long weekend. Montreal is a lovely mix ofEuropean and North American city life, full of cafes, ethnicrestaurants, mixed languages, and wanderlust-inspiring parks. Okay,more European than North American (though we could get the American League Baseball Championships on tv to see how the Red Sox/Indians series wound up). We get up here every few years andalways have a Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-24322145527265439542007-10-17T06:24:00.000-05:002007-10-17T06:41:51.102-05:00Mental accountingWhile paying a stack of bills this morning, I noticed a new online payment option for one of our annual bills. With all the sabbatical travel we did last year, online bill pay and tracking was a lifesaver: I put monthly reminders into my calendar to login and pay our credit cards, billed the utilities directly, and didn't worry at all about missing payments while on the road. I had the Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-32210644911013184972007-09-30T20:32:00.000-05:002007-09-30T20:57:37.553-05:00Where Rhode signs used to beAsk a Rhode Islander for directions, and the response will likely include the phrase "where X used to be". In my 7 years living here, I've been told to make turns at landmarks like "where Joe's barber shop used to be" and "where the little place with the really good fried clams used to be". One day, Shriram and I came across a sign on a major street reading "former bus stop" and figured it was Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-14328504638274803842007-09-29T08:27:00.000-05:002007-09-29T07:25:09.588-05:00What I've Meant by MentoringOne day in grad school (early 1990s), several of us were talking about the lack of women on the dept faculty. When a male student asked why this was important, one woman remarked that she "wanted someone who looks like me" as a mentor. I pondered that remark for years, not concurring with it but lacking a compelling alternative. Mid-postdoc, I wanted a mentor who talked like me: someone forKathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-13681335265687019622007-09-23T06:04:00.000-05:002007-09-23T06:29:52.531-05:00Disorganization Lesson 1: know your to-do listLast weekend, I had an incredibly productive burst of disorganization (so much so that it took a week to get organized enough to post about it). Quite simply, I ignored my two courses and played with a new research idea all weekend. It was simultaneously invigorating and frustrating. Frustrating in that even after two days, I couldn't point to any "solved" piece of the puzzle (the "cross it Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-49266460689594181092007-09-14T04:05:00.000-05:002007-09-14T04:42:00.851-05:00Getting unorganizedEvery new academic year brings a "new year's resolution" from many faculty: the intent to get "more organized". Even highly prolific colleagues have been quoted as wishing they were more organized, and one of the career mentoring programs I've been to had a nice session centered around the topic. Blogs and books abound to the extent that you could guarantee you got nothing done just by trying Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-48325498611895781182007-08-12T06:35:00.000-05:002007-08-12T05:36:07.894-05:00Scientific ValueI recently finished reading Peter Kramer's Against Depression. Kramer is the psychiatrist who wrote Listening to Prozac some years ago. In talks on the Prozac book, he frequently got questions about the tension between treating depression and the suppression of artistic temperament ("what if we gave van Gogh Prozac", for example). Against Depression is his discussion of society's view of Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-22401941755090510622007-08-11T10:11:00.000-05:002007-08-11T09:11:54.164-05:00Blogging, on BalanceI had intended this post for the last Scientiae Carnival (topic: balance), but got tied up in work for a computer science curriculum workshop I ran at the end of July and never finished the post. That delay is, however, related to what I had planned to write about balance.I began blogging this spring in response to perceived lack of balance in my professional career. Lack-of-balance is easier Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-74570287464831581752007-07-22T08:24:00.000-05:002007-07-22T08:27:40.757-05:00Peeking and PotteringThis morning, I gave into temptation and searched for a summary of howthe Harry Potter series ends (no spoilers here). I haven't followedthe books, though I have seen the movies. I didn't feel temptation toread the last book, but I still wanted to know what happened to thecharacters. Funnily enough, having read a paragraph-length summary ofthe ending, I now feel tempted to get the book and Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-406600361065612632007-07-17T08:09:00.000-05:002007-07-17T07:05:30.298-05:00Outsourcing begins at homeCRA, the main advocacy group for Computer Science research, recently cited a report on how companies decide where to locate R&D efforts. This is a hot topic in CS circles as perceptions of international outsourcing are at least partly responsible for the dramatic drop in student enrollments in recent years. [Note to students and parents: the perception is overhyped: more IT-related jobs are Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-44107764446626431272007-07-04T05:54:00.000-05:002007-07-05T12:21:04.575-05:00Fragments of Health PolicyTuesday's New York Times ran an article (subscription req'd) on people who are denied access to health-related info (for themselves or family members) due to medical personnel not knowing how to interpret HIPAA regulations. HIPAA is one of the key pieces of US legislation governing privacy of medical information. Medical personnel apparently deny access in many cases that HIPAA would allow Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1569502183019370620.post-78990400626481208922007-07-03T04:29:00.000-05:002007-07-03T04:59:16.602-05:00The Physical Abstraction LayerYesterday morning I was stuck on a research problem, so I went out for a run. Athletes often remark about how participating in sport taught them important lessons about time management and perseverance in other aspects of their lives. After pushing myself through a temptation to reduce the run to a walk, I ditched thinking about the research problem and turned to the question of athletic Kathi Fislerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11193961458230670045noreply@blogger.com0