I'm a programmer, teacher, and student. Welcome! Read my thoughts. www.stuartspence.ca
Hello! I have no idea who (if anyone) is still subscribed to this old blog. However you may be interested to know that I've just taken my blog posts from many platforms (blogger, blogspot, facebook, mailchimp, old docs) and consolidated them here: https://blog.stuartspence.ca This is a simple, permanent, long term solution that I control. We've had some good times blogger/blogspot... I'll never…
When I post tutorial videos people often make suggestions on how to improve my computer code. Thank you for your code suggestions! However, we may have a problem. I often find that code suggestions are not teaching suggestions. Almost all computer programmers are not experienced educators, so this is understandable. However consider that the best designed software might be terrible for teaching.…
Hidden Figures is a 2016 movie about the 1960s space race, the early days of computation, and segregation. It's an uplifting movie - described by some as "cheesy". However the cheese serves to distinguish it from other films in its genre which are typically very dark and gritty. It's an underdog trio movie about science and achievement. I highly recommend it! Who should see this movie? People…
Name one thing you liked about Trump's campaign. If you can't, consider the possibility that your political views are unbalanced and biased. If you look hard enough, you should never agree or disagree 100% with a political platform. Name one thing you disliked about Clinton's campaign. If you can't, similar problem. There's no point listing the obvious reasons Trump is a terrible candidate. I also…
This is an incredible century to witness the births of technologies. The past couple weeks I've been observing the world's first augmented reality global hit. Enjoy the innocence while it lasts! In this post I'm going to talk about aspects of Pokemon Go that aren't being talked about much: Businesses buying Pokemon Go locations. Commercial PokeStops. Copycat apps and how they will affect the…
Get Excited Are you excited about automation yet? You should be. Here's a great video to get us started: But I'm tired of all these misconceptions about automation replacing jobs! Consider these statements: Jobs are safe when no robot can do 100% of the job. Jobs are safe when they pay very little. Jobs are safe when they pay a lot. "Human touch" jobs are safe. Unemployment is bad. Jobs are safe…
What matters here is having a Prime Minister who wants us to stop laughing when the media asks a politician about science. What happened? Justin Trudeau was jokingly asked to explain quantum computing at a university of Waterloo press event. The room full of reporters laughed. He then excitedly answered the science question. Do you think it was staged? Do you think his explanation was bad, or that…
When I post tutorial videos, I get a lot of requests for personalized help. I want to help! Your project might even sound really cool to me. But here I'm going to explain why I probably cannot help you today. Unfortunately, It's Inefficient One of the exciting things about the internet is that I can make a video and help tens of thousands of people. Even when I'm sleeping or busy, I feel like my…
The Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst describes the open source software company Red Hat. It does a great job introducing Red Hat's unusual culture, but it was also written by the CEO so the stories and ideas are mind-numbingly positive. If you can get past its repetitious optimism then it's an interesting and worthwhile read about technology companies. Who should read this book? Anyone…
What's the longest journey you've ever taken through university bureaucracy? Mine is probably longer. After five months of appeals, I'm finally able to register at Concordia as a McGill student for an equivalent course. Just like the comic above - I was arbitrarily denied for no good reason after getting approval from six McGill and Concordia administrators. So like before , I employed a tactic to…
That's right, this guy: A year ago I wrote a post called Nomination for Worst Professor . I highly recommend it if you're interested in how bad professors can possibly be. Here's a reminder if you need it though. First, the usual "merely bad professor" stuff: His lectures were usually not specifically about the course. He kept telling the class that the course is "boring" and "dry". He liked to…
There's a lot of serious and legitimate concern lately about the development of autonomous weapons. The Basic Idea Humanity nearly has the technology to mass produce machines which can target and choose to kill humans, all without human intervention. So a factory worker turns on a machine, and then it goes out into the world and finds terrorists or protesters and kills them. The machine does this…
Prepare to be amused and blown away. If you're a university student you may think your department is bad, but McGill's education department is worse. For several years now McGill education students report having the most boring, most random, most tuition-wasting, and most impossible-to-fail courses. This makes me really sad because I care about education a lot. I hope this post helps make things…
This post gives more details on the surveys and methodology, if you're interested. I decided it was too boring for a general audience so I cut it out of my original post. But you are an eager beaver! So here you go. And feel free to send me a message if you want your own copies of the pdfs. You can find my contact info at my website . Methodology Sample Mike tells me they got "between 700 and 1300…
I recently got an email from the dean of education. Essentially he says that I'm annoying: Dear Mr. Spencer It has come to my attention that you have written repeatedly to our Associate Dean, among others across the university, about technology issues in the Faculty of Education, and also about your own blog. Please note that, while we recognize the importance of technology in contemporary…
Have you ever noticed that for-profit companies often advertise free or cheap software licenses to students, teachers, and schools? Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, and countless others all offer deals on their software and services to schools. Why do they do that? This post is written for educators, not tech experts or computer programmers. If you think I oversimplified something, try to read…
In my previous post I talked about the McGill education students that cannot calculate an average , but I glossed over talking about the lecturer for that course. We've all heard about bad professors, but I have proof this professor was beyond merely bad. This story also includes what happened when I complained to the head of the department and what should happen instead. But first, who am I to…
This is a story about McGill education students that cannot calculate an average, and the professor who admitted he didn't care. Finally, I explain why this is important. I hope that by telling this embarrassing story I will contribute to raising the standards at McGill and for Quebec teacher certification. I don't mean to unfairly target education students and I'm not calling anyone dumb. Some…
There were some concerns about my aggressive approach in my post where I complain about how poor the education technology courses are at McGill university . Before making noise, did I talk to my professors? What about the department, or the dean? Well that's exactly what I did for two years before finally resorting to public rants. So get ready for a story that ends in a big email to senior…
Response from the Professor Before I put this post online I sent a draft to the professor, Sam Bruzzese, so he'd have a chance to respond. He did! Seeing as I brought these issues to his attention while I took the course, I originally made a list of possible reasons the textbook is still being used. We can now cross off a few items: Someone is pressuring McGill to use this textbook. Courses…
Get ready to go on a magical journey where we discover just how old a "modern" textbook on education technology is. It says it's published in 2012 but don't let that fool you! Here it is: This is the textbook currently used by McGill's "EDPT 200 - Integrating Educational Technology in the Classroom" course in 2015. Along our magical journey we will question the existence of the iPhone 1, consider…
Frustration Is this a real exam, or a fiction fabricated by someone frustrated with the bachelor of education program? You decide. More seriously, here are some details if you're interested. The parody exam spawned from my frustration that McGill university in Montreal (which is supposedly one of Canada's top schools) is doing a horrible job of teaching future teachers about technology. Before I…
Briefly: The Quebec Education Plan (QEP) is a bloated 517 page document filled with ambiguous crap and buzzwords. Education professors in Quebec seem to be coerced by some mystical force to include the QEP in their university courses. But each new time I'm forced to analyze, my criticisms of it get harsher and harsher. I believe we're supposed to show great respect for this document as it defines…