I made these for people who finished the tutorial (in particular, I had my students in mind). It's very much the way I do things and the hope was it would smooth the way for people to get to customizing Emacs in their own way.
I originally wasn't sure if I was going to do the mini org-mode stuff early on but thought that it would be better for organizational reasons rather than pedagogical.
I haven't actively followed DBC's trajectory but as a long time CS educator I've long said that education doesn't scale in the way that other tech sector initiatives scale, particularly if you want to maintain quality.
I'd really be curious to hear more about the obstacles to maintaining your quality that helped lead to this.
I'm the guy that wrote the article and yep - I'm a teacher. Really good points here. I already know the answers with respect to my school and schools of friends and colleagues but that is a small sample and not necessarily representative. It's part of what colors my opinion and yes - I agree, one should take everything with a grain of salt.
I know for teachers of APCS (my subject), they used to have a large case study to cover. Teacher's for which the case study fit naturally into their teaching approach, it worked pretty well. For people like myself and many friends and colleagues, it was a large 100 page document with all sorts of ins and outs that took time from teaching, you know, CS.
To your point, a weaker or less knowledgeable CS teacher would probably end up using the case study as a support which could be a good thing.
I guess this also brings a question of depth to mind - in AP Calc, should kids be proving and deriving or memorizing. I'm in the prove and derive camp but a lot of people think otherwise.
Anyway - thanks for your comment here - would you mind cut and pasting it over on the blog - I think it's a really good point and would love to save it for posterity and future readers.
Colleges don't see AP scores until after a student is admitted so admissions only sees the fact that the kid is in the class. Also, from what I can tell, admissions offices do have a pretty good feel for the schools they read for.
Once a kid is accepted, schools already give placement tests so that takes care of that issue.
On the credit front, I think partnering with a college would yield better results (like what you did).
I also wonder how much the credits mean - if a kid can knock off a full semester, it's obviously a big saving but given the way colleges charge undergrads - a fixed amount for a varying number of credits, at the end of the day, I wonder if it makes much of a difference for a kid that gets a small handful of credits.
1) AP exams can be taken independent of whether you've taken the class. A high school freshman can take any AP exam.
2) It's common in competitive high schools for students to start taking AP classes in junior year (or even sophomore year), so top colleges definitely do see AP scores for most of the top 30% of students applying.
For me, AP credit was huge. It let me skip calculus in college and a bunch of other very time-consuming classes (foreign language, etc.). Instead, it cleared up my schedule so by the end of college I was able to take multiple graduate CS classes.
I still owe you commentary on your site -- as soon as I get a chance.
There are a number of interesting things I picked out of your piece.
Overall, it was a great read and there's some really good stuff in it. Love the tools and I agree with a number of your key points.
Some food for thought though:
I think that the 20 hours vs 8 months is not a really good comparison. We do the AP course in less than one semester, so let's say 4.5 months.
20 hours maps to around 30 class periods. 4.5 months maps to over twice that but then our students are taking between 6 and 8 additional classes all with homework and other assorted assignments.
On the other hand, our kids have the benefit of time. I've seen plenty of kids go through cram programs, summer programs and the like and at the end they show of some pretty nifty stuff. Then it's all gone. It takes time for people to really "learn" something. If too much is compressed into to short a time, the learning is an illusion. I've seen it time and time again.
Now, working with a high-aptitude population mitigates some of this, but I've had to "save" enough kids coming through enough summer immersion programs to know that too much to quickly can do long term harm.
Another thing to consider is APCS itself -- not a great course. The College Board has done it's best to dumb it down and make it more and more vocational. It's much more of a programming course than a computer science one at this point.
I was never a Dinkins fan but I seem to recall he started the program that got the cop out of the car on back on the beat which, certainly helped with crime.
Hey, it's Mr. Z! You know, all of the tools that I use every day (i.e., Python and Emacs) I first learned from one of your classes. If it weren't for you, I would never be where I am today.
Thanks for being an awesome teacher, and congrats on this new project!
I have to echo this. I learned emacs, python, scheme (and then elisp, and then lisp), linux system administration, and assembly all as direct results of either Z's classes or being on the ZTeam and being pushed to learn more. Most of what I do now on a daily basis stretches directly back to those days.
I originally wasn't sure if I was going to do the mini org-mode stuff early on but thought that it would be better for organizational reasons rather than pedagogical.