A new beginning ... of sorts

I can't say how many times I've sat down and thought about writing a blog entry this past Summer.

I guess it was a gut check of sorts: what do you really care about? Many times I wondered. I mean, there's just so many things I feel like blogging about from time to time. You know, things like open source software alternatives, computer science education, an occasional book or movie review--all of that.

And yet, none of it seemed to matter this past Summer. I felt like I was barely hanging on, or sort of floating through life. Being a strict skeptic, I had long denied many of the things that were suddenly seeming to be necessary in my life. Things like faith and hope. I started to wonder: is this how it happens? Is this when a person officially becomes old and senile?

Well, I went and got help. Admitting that I just didn't care much about 90% of the things in this world (make that 98%), I reached out and asked the tough questions, like what my purpose in life was--you know, that kind of stuff. Well, nothing changed quickly, but over time and with a lot of work, I started to care again. I decided that, yeah, I suppose I had a pretty good career and life and it was worth pushing on.

This sounds melodramatic, and it was. As logical as I try to be, I've always been pretty emotional, and I had to admit that last school year was the most difficult year of my life. Throughout my teaching career I had seldom used sick days. Suddenly I was drinking a little more and having trouble getting up in the morning. Having emergency surgery was bad enough, but admitting that the painkillers sent me into an even deeper depression--well, that part sucked. All of that was small stuff, though, compared to losing my dog in February. She was so happy and so obviously wanted to live on, that it just killed me inside to admit that she was suffering balance and nervous system degradation to the point where she was crashing into things and sliding along the walls whenever she wanted to move on her own. Holding her still and seeing that she still was coherent and loved her life--I can't get past that somehow. I had no religious revelation. In fact, I felt the opposite: life is cold and hard and impersonal and things happen at chance. It simply wasn't fair. I felt like an angry child who was robbed of the things he loved the most.

Suddenly fighting to promote Linux and open source alternatives seemed, well, unimportant. Convincing the College Board that Python would be much better than Java for AP Computer Science--who cares? My former adversaries seemed no so different from me. We're all just people and we all have to accept the undeniable truth: life is cruel.

But...then it happened. Things started to improve. Therapy told me to simplify my life. When writing down projects that I was committed to, I came up with almost 20 that were just things that I was volunteering for. Somewhere in all of that I had a family and career, and yet I was spending a LOT of time working on side projects.

So I got another dog. Adopted her from a local shelter. She's absolutely wonderful and her effect on me was sudden and strong and very positive. I learned to spend time taking her to play fetch and leave the other stuff behind. I no longer had to be a programmer, educator, advocate, lobbyist--I just had to be her owner and make sure that her life now would be much better than the year she spent as a stray. She had hit the jackpot with me, and that felt good.

So this update may be a goodbye to blogging. The good news is that I'm having a great school year, loving my classes, and I've cut off all alcohol, caffeine and crap food. I've lost 30 pounds and feel pretty good. I get up early and take my dog out to play before I go to school to teach calculus. Somehow, it all fits.

And changes are happening at my district. Suddenly our district tech department seems to be on our side and are opening up a lot of policies that were very restrictive in the past. Also, free and open source software seems to be doing quite well with our without me as an advocate. Now I just use the software in my classes and others want to do likewise. Oh, and my students last year absolutely kicked butt on the AP exam. Having all students pass is a rare diamond in a year that was a large pile of coal.

I still read a lot of blogs and cheer on the young blogging teachers out there. We have a tough job and don't get much pay for what we do. Although I'm not much of a believer, if there is a heaven, I figure teachers have a good shot at being let in. I am working hard with my students and we're making a difference. We're partnering up with two local human societies and a local hospice care center to start a program that takes old electronics stuff and we repair what we can, recycle what we can, and use the rest to create new and cool gadgets and junkbots that teach students about robotics in a way I really like.

I may give a link to that project, for those interested. Otherwise, I'll probably just ignore this blog for a while longer and maybe let it die off. Maybe. I'm not sure, and right now it's time to take my dog out to play frisbee. :-)

PyWhip and Javabat ?!

If you are a member of Edu-Sig (the Python in Education group), you may have heard talk recently about creating a Python alternative to JavaBat, a tool used by almost every AP Computer Science teacher on the planet.

JavaBat is almost universally loved and used by high school APCS teachers. Students can sign up easily and then start solving the 250+ challenges they are presented with, ranging from simple String manipulations to hard core recursion methods.

One of the difficult aspects of Java is that it never was designed as a nice language to quickly write up some code and let it run. Old farts will talk about the golden days of BASIC, but Python is really a great language for Computer Science education. Javabat helps by letting students write simple methods (functions) without the need to enclose everything in a Java class with public static void main (String[] args) . In short, it let's students and teachers focus on the login involved in a particular method--which is a good thing. Teachers can track student progress, browse their code, etc.

So the reality is that Javabat is one of the most used tools for teachers of AP Computer Science. I have yet to meet a teacher of APCS in my state that does not use Javabat.
If Python is to ever gain a foothold in secondary school CS education, having a Python alternative to Javabat is a very good idea.

Right now it's just beginning, but if you want to contribut to PyWhip, head on over to edu-sig or contact me on how to get involved. Since I haven't really asked the two main contributers for permission to put there contact info here, I'll leave their names out of this, but they're doing a great job on this so far.

The Day it Rained Forever

The Public Library just had a book sale and I was lucky enough to find a nice hard-cover copy of The Stories of Ray Bradbury. The 100 stories in here will nicely complement my copy of a more recent Bradbury anthology of 100 stories--none of them are duplicated.

I've been in a lull. Although I have been quite productive teaching-wise, my life has been dominated lately by the difficulties my boxer dog is having. She's 10 years old and shows the symptoms of geriatric vestibular syndrome. Although her mind is still there, she lacks to coordination now to feed herself. I've been feeding her by hand, though, as it's the least I can do. She really has been a great dog--albeit a somewhat high-maintenance one. :-) She went through a difficult spell last Spring and fully recovered. We're hoping she can do so again, although this time the symptoms are much more severe. When I was a kid I used to absolutely dread the extreme emptiness you experience when you lose a pet. Not much has changed, really. Many things just don't matter as much all of a sudden, and you feel as if you're floating through life.

Alice 2.2 Video Export Test

Just seeing if this works. Recently we upgraded to Alice 2.2 in my Intro to Programming classes and we are now testing out the cool features 2.2 has that 2.0 did not. Exporting videos is one of them.

Scratch on Ubuntu

Today I had a personal visit from Bud the Teacher. We had a few things to discuss about our upcoming district tech fair, but as usual we soon were talking about big ideas and all sorts of stuff that we would like to see reach fruition.

Bud mentioned the possibility of using Scratch with some of our district Gifted and Talented student. Bud didn't even start by saying, "have you heard of Scratch?" No, by now he knows that if it deals with teaching programming and/or is open source, I probably have looked into it. I told Bud I would be happy to help teach Scratch to any interested teachers, possibly this upcoming June.

When I got home, I fired up my Ubuntu laptop, opened the command line and typed "scratch". I got the cold and impersonal Linux response of "command not found" and realized that I had NOT installed Scratch on my current Ubuntu version (8.10). I did recall, however, installing it on Ubuntu 8.04 and having it work great. A quick visit to this page had me up and running, scratching my way along in a neat little world of click and drag logic. I remember the days when Linux versions were a ton of work. That's changing, though, and more and more great apps for teachers are fully supported on Linux, with Ubuntu being the most common choice.

Gotta go. My Scratch is rusty....

Oh, and if you're like me, you'll want the source code. Happy {code} reading.

Leaving on a jet plane

Tomorrow is the first day of the Spring semester. While my students are filing into my classroom, I'll be on a jet flying to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for a one-day workshop on Alice 3.0, which I'll be using in my Intro to Programming class this semester.

My students will be official bug reporters for Alice 3.0, a scary and yet exciting job for us. I'm also hoping to put a word in for Linux support while I'm there. Wish I was better at tweaking Java in Linux, so I could help out more. :-(

Spent most of today packing up and storing away my NES and SNES game collection. Had to make more room for some recent book acquisitions....

When worlds collide....

My online identity is pretty diverse. Each different facet seems to interact with a large web or sphere of somewhat similar individuals. What surprises me, though, is how little the various spheres tend to interact with the other spheres.

For instance, I see very little overlap between these three spheres: math teachers, programmers, and technology in education experts. All three of those spheres accept me and allow me to contribute and ask questions--and yet I know very few individuals that exist in even two of those three spheres.

For instance, take a look at this recent post about a probability question on a programming blog. The immense number of comments arguing one solution over another reminded me of the Monty Hall problem, which is taught in IMP 3 Math. In fact, there's almost nothing in those comments (other than the occasional coded "solution" to the problem) that would tell you that these are primarily programmers--not math teachers--arguing their view of the problem.

I found the comments amusing. I haven't necessarily found that being a natural at math makes a student a natural at programming--although I must say that almost all of my best programmers are very good at math. I've done research on a correlation between language acquisition aptitude and programming ability, but the results, of course, were unclear. What I do know, though, is that very few programmers (aside from a few Linquistics experts) ever think much about language acquisition.

Let the fun begin:

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, you met someone who told you they had two children, and one of them is a girl. What are the odds that person has a boy and a girl?

Object-Oriented Programming Example

My Java programming project is going a bit slow, but I have many excuses. The one I like to use in OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) is "well, I'm still working on some design issues before I start writing all the code."

So I'm converting Football Strategy, the old Avalon Hill game into a modern Java version, complete with opposing coach AI. OOP will allow me to extend the coach class through time, making better and better opponents for humans to face.

But that all comes later. Since I give my AP Computer Science students the whole year for their project, I too have a lot of time to develop this application. Recently I've been hitting my head against the wall trying to come up with a system for encoding play results that include all the relavent information in one result. For instance, a result of 723 may have used the 7 as a play-type indicator (say, "complete pass play that went out of bounds"), and the 23 might have been the net yardage. On the suggestion of one of my students, however, I have decided to encode all the play results as String objects. Perhaps something like "15cpno023" for complete pass no fumble out of bounds and 23 yards, with the play taking 15 seconds. I don't know, I'm not there yet.

The point of using an OOP approach, however, is to allow you to think of things as actual objects. What better way to do that then open up the Football Strategy game box and see what objects in the game may lend themselves to objects in Java. One that clearly lends itself to being a Java class is the scoreboard. Before OOP, making a football simulation would have been a long and tedious process, as the data would just be flying around the program, jumping from function to function. With OOP, though, you get to break things up and decide where the data lives. In the case of a footballScoreboard class, you can easily think of the data fields (homeScore, awayScore, down, yardsToGo, fieldPosition, etc) and the various behaviors (incrementDown, incrementHomeScore, etc). What was so nice about this, though, was that there is an actual object in the real world that is so familiar to anyone who has ever been a football fan. Ask some football fans at random to draw a football scoreboard and a lot of them would draw something like this post's image.

Coming from a procedural programming background, OOP was a bit strange at first. Now I can't imagine programming relatively large projects without it.

Ubuntu Gets Even Better

Joey Stanford's recent post about Ubuntu Ethos came at a perfect time for me.

Last night I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.10: Intrepid Ibex. I had avoided switching to the new Ubuntu version simply because I had a lot of things set up on my laptop that I use for teaching math and teaching programming classes.

After copying most of my home folder files to an external hard drive (I love the Western Digital Passport series), I did the install from the live cd.

After install, I did the usual updates and installed all the Linux applications I use for programming: things like Eclipse, Geany, IDLE for Python, Comix for reading comic books, and so on. I also installed the Sun Java 6 JDK using the package manager. After a nice little test of HelloWorld.java, I got the latest versions of BlueJ and Greenfoot and installed them.

Now this is where things were different than in the past. Back in the days of Feisty Fawn, I had to mess around a lot with the xorg.conf file and set some class paths for Java. I always considered these steps to be necessary evils and a small price to pay for a great, free alternatives to MS Windows.

This time, however, I didn't have to do any of those steps. None. Everything worked correctly right away. I even was able to turn off tapping on the touchpad without having to do anything on the command line.

I like the command line. In fact, I use it quite a bit. The point here, though, is that you really don't have to use it anymore. That's a good thing for helping spread Ubuntu. If you have ever considered Linux, but were intimidated for one reason or another, now is the time. The Ubuntu community can help you with the switch.

If you're a math or computer science teacher, you'll be amazed at how Ubuntu can help you with your job.

Java for the Holidays

I've blogged about Cay Horstmann before. In the world of Java books there is no shortage of "so-so" tomes that "kind of" teach you the language. Then there are a few truly great books that are several levels above the rest. One is Head First Java, but that book is in need of a rewrite soon. The other great Java book is Core Java Vol 1: Fundamentals by Cay Horstmann and Gary Cornell.

What makes a great programming book? For me, the author must get to the heart of the language. Mark Lutz and Wesley Chun have written truly "Pythonic" books about the Python language. Their books are miles ahead of many of the other books on Python programming, which seem sloppy and inefficient.

Horstmann's Core Java is a great book. So I finally went to Borders and bought my own copy. I worked through the first 138 pages today (as review) and can't wait to revisit the chapters on Swing GUI development. If you really want to understand Java, try this book.

Teachers who read this books will have a big advantage in teaching Java, no matter what textbook they have officially adopted for their class.

Creating a school website

Being in charge of a school's computer science department has several perks. I get to help shape our curriculum. I get to hang out with some of the brightest students at our school. I get to occasionally play video games and call it "research."

All of those perks are great, but being the department chair also brings great responsibility. Were I just a mere computer science "teacher", I would not feel so inclined to take on the task of implementing our new website for our STEM Initiative. But now that I'm chair, hell, it's the least I can do!

Actually, I'm joking a bit here. The fact is, I was always interested in helping to bring our new STEM website to fruition. I just knew how messy large websites can become.

Thankfully, there's Joomla.

Joomla is a content management system that allows one to create and maintain an active website. It's open source, and free. You can see the current version of my Joomla STEM and VPA site here, but it's still under construction. Still, Joomla has made it easy to do what used to be a chore when I'd write HTML and CSS from scratch...

Those were the days.

Surprise Birthday Party

Yesterday I took part in a real surprise birthday party (You can see my profile in the photo, not sure what I was looking at offstage to the left...).

This was one of those parties where you get a bunch of friends and family together and you all hide in the dark and wait for the unsuspecting party (this time it was Cjturt) to arrive. Then you all yell and turn on the lights: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!"

Turned out to be a lot of fun.

I've published a set of photos for the party. If you're family, email me for the access info. If you're not family, feel free anyway to see my public albums at my photo page which runs on the open source Zen Photo program.

Traffic Jams for no reason at all

If you've driven through a major traffic area like I25 south of Denver, you know what it's like to get in a jam. You come upon red taillights and suddenly you're stopping and going in little spurts that can take over an hour if you're unlucky.

Sometimes you find out why. You see a crash scene and a bunch of emergency workers. Or a lane that's closed for construction.

At other times, though, you have no idea what caused the backup. I had long had a theory that there really was no major cause: all it takes is for one person to get to close to the vehicle in front of her and she taps her brakes. Then my wife says, "hey, they're stopping up there." So I slow down a little, as does the guy behind me. Apparently that's all it takes.

When I saw this article and video I found it fascinating. Watch the video clip. All they do is have a bunch of cars driving around a big racetrack circle. Doesn't take long before someone hits their brakes and send a wave back behind them. When it's on a circle it's even cooler, as the wave comes back to get you again.

Can you tell I did some commuting this Thanksgiving break?

Designing a high school computer science curriculum

For years I have run a computer programming club at different schools. From the days of QBasic on IBM 486s to Java and Python on duo core laptops--well, I've been there.

I would teach math during the day and then the fun would start after school, when the programming students would stop by to program and/or just hang out.

This year, however, is different: 75% of my time is spent teaching programming classes. Sure I still have the programming club, but now I don't have to wait until the school day is over before I get to work with students creating cool programs--it's part of the curriculum now.

Our school is working on becoming a Science Technology Engineering and Math magnet school. The funding is finally starting to appear, so now the real planning is starting to take place. We'll be adding a lot of classes for our STEM program, including more computer science classes. Because I'm pretty much the entire CS department, I get to work on designing a high school computer science curriculum for our STEM program.

I plan on getting help with this. I have some contacts at the CU Boulder CS department that I hope to work with. I'll also be in touch with the Alice team from Carnegie Mellon, as we're about to pilot Alice 3.0 at our school. Also, there are recommendations from the CSTA that I'll be using.

At the same time, though, I'm trying hard to see what I can come up with on my own. May as well enjoy this freedom of choice while it lasts. Maybe there are possibilities here that have never been attempted, or thought of. So when I was asked to come up with a list of possible computer science classes to offer, I spent a lot of time brainstorming.

Here are some of my rambling thoughts:

1. A class in video game creation would be cool (using Pygame or Greenfoot?).
2. AP Computer Science will remain in our curriculum.
3. A class in programming that could directly support our math department would be cool. Maybe something on Algorithms and discrete math problems.
4. A class on Web design would be nice (XHTML, CSS + PHP + JavaScript?).
5. The Intro class with Alice should remain the first class in our curriculum.
6. A class that focuses heavily on digital media could complement our Visual and Performing Arts academy.
7. A class that combines linguistics and programming would be interesting....

I will also need to train more teachers for teaching these classes. Most of the teachers that are possibilities have no experience with Object Oriented Programming, so I think some professional development there may be necessary....

Converting a Classic

In my AP Computer Science class, one student has been working overtime on a pet project of his that deals with cryptography. Watching his project evolve over time made me assign a project (of their choosing) to all my students. Not wanting to be left out, I decided to join in with my own Java case study project: converting the 1972 Avalon Hill game Football Strategy to a computer version.

Football Strategy was a great game. Luck played a very small role in the game and both teams were equal and ... generic. The game was not like most football simulations like the Statis Pro games or even Paydirt, which attempted to reproduce the results of a real NFL season, statistically basing it on the real NFL results. No, Paydirt ignored that and instead based the game entirely on your playcalling and your opponnent's playcalling, resolving each play by cross referencing your choices on an ingenius 10 by 22 matrix. If you thought your opponent would call a long pass, you could call the appropriate defense to stop him cold. However, if he suspeced you would call that defence, he may instead call something like an End Run and bite off a big chunk of yards. So...do you stick to the long pass defence or switch to a spread defense--or choose something else entirely? That's what made the game so fun.

Without an opponent, though, Football Strategy was a real bore. For solitaire play I prefered Paydirt. In fact, I'm still finding on the net some old text files I wrote describing the AI solo play system I developed for Paydirt. Yes, I was a lonely boy.... :-)

Anyway, the goal is to write up a good version of Football Strategy in Java. The focus on OOP will allow me to develop the game through time, having the AI Coaches evolve to get better and better. That would have been nearly impossible in the past, when Football Strategy was just a paper and dice game.

Zombie reclining in the school gym!

That has got to be one of my strangest blog post titles ever, but look at the picture. That was created by a student of mine today in my Intro to Programming Class. We've completed the 9 week Python curriculum and are now enjoying programming with Alice, a great tool for teaching the concepts of programming.

Having already learned loops, functions, and decision structures in Python, it has been a breeze to watch them dive into Alice. Although I do like the suggested curriculum for the Alice software, I have modified it somewhat. Here's how:

A while back--actually several years ago--I started writing math quizzes that had four problems on them. Those four problems corresponded to the four levels of proficiency that we used on the Colorado CSAP exam: 1=Unsatisfactory, 2=Partially Proficient, 3=Proficient, and 4=Advanced. There's really no point to link those to a traditional grading scale, but if you did, it could roughly translate to 1=D, 2=C, 3=B, and 4=A.

So my four math problems on the quiz were chosen with those proficiency levels in mind. The level three problem was one that if they could solve it I would consider them to be proficient in the task at hand. Level 1 problems were so easy that if a student missed them I'd know we had real problems. If a student could get to level 2 but not 3, I'd know we were getting close to our goal and I'd have to work more with those students. Of course the level 4 questions were usually pretty tough--challenging enough for those few students that can quickly complete the first three levels. [I hate to have my brightest students bored--they need to be pushed, too!]

Anyway, I've using a similar approach in my programming classes. Whether it be Python, Java, or Alice, you can go far by creating a set of four programming challenges--one for each level of the proficiency scale. For instance, our first group of challenges in Alice were simply designed to get students familiar with the positioning of objects in the 3D world of Alice. Here's what I came up with:

Level 1: Character Pyramid: make a pyramid of characters in Alice so that the characters are properly placed, with their feet on the shoulders of the people below them. [I showed them an example of this.]

Level 2: Salute! Make a character look as if he or she is giving a proper military salute. The more real it looks, the better. [Again, I showed an example for this one.]

Level 3: Shoot out at the So So Saloon. Using the Sheriff and Cowboy characters from the Old West folder, set up a scene that looks as cool as you can. Your goal is to make the scene look like a real action scene, not stiff characters in a primitive video game. If you don't like the western theme here, go ahead and choose your own scenario--a pillow fight on the moon, for instance!

Level 4: Sitting at the Table. Position at least three characters sitting as naturally as possible at a table, seated in chairs. The more you can make them look like real people, the better.

Now, that was their assignment. Nearly every group of students reached level 4, and had a lot of fun getting there. There were questions--plenty of questions. Some I answered by showing a mini lesson to the whole class (for the setVehicle, orientTo, and drop dummy object methods, for instance). These mini lessons were short, though, and often demonstrated with the help of students. As much as possible I try to let students learn from doing, and then have them help each other with their challenges.

What has worked so well with this approach, is that I actually have time to walk around and visit with pairs of students as they program--which allows me a little extra time to work with my English Language Learners. So far my ELL students have soared with this approach, and my energy level has never been higher.

Website Updated!

I must be getting better, as my productivity has just increased. This morning I got some grading done and revamped my teaching website. I had a lot of help from fonrus, one of my students. Fonrus has good taste in HTML and design, so things I do usually look a lot better with the fonrus touch--like they're actually from this millenium, not 1996.

I think what really helped me get going this morning was that one of my AP Java students shared the source code for a basic cryptography application he has created. You can see the application here, which is pretty nice. Nothing makes a teacher prouder than to see his students making contributions to the world of programming. Now hopefully other students will view the code and maybe get ideas for their own Java GUI applications--or ways to improve the code as it is. The code used is very basic cryptography, but last year another student wrote a nifty RSA encryption approach in Python that could easily be used with this application. At any rate, I now have more material for discussion during our next AP Computer Science class. :-)

One of the things I did this morning when working on my website was to install Zen Photo for managing my digital photos online. Zen Photo is a nice and streamlined open source application that will allow me and my students to easily share our digital creations. You can go straight to my gallery here.

Thanks to all the kind emails, messages and cards that people have given me the last week. You've helped me recover and I'll be back in the classroom in a day or two--I'm almost ready.

Final Fantasy as Therapy

I seem to have found the perfect game for passing time while recovering from surgery: Final Fantasy. The turn-based combat means I can doze off and the game will still be waiting for me when I wake up :-). There's no intense button mashing--which I'd be really bad at right about now.

You can see me on the screenshot there. I'm the thief who tends to get slain a lot in battle. On the other hand, I'm great at running away from battles, and if I escape, the whole party of four escapes, for some strange reason only known to video game designers.

Alice 3.0

Well as I sit here at home recovering, I just got a great email that will work wonders for getting me back on my feet again: our school has a chance to pilot the 3.0 version of Alice next semester!

This is a great opportunity for our students and for the small but growing Computer Science department I am working on building. The nice part is that my classes will have a fairly high level of ELL/Latino students.

Maybe I'll recreate my ER experience in Alice. Now that would be pretty funny.

A Visit from America's Choice

Today I had a visit from some of the people working for America's Choice. They came in to my 7th period IMP2A class and observed for a little while. Immediately after they moved on my students were full of questions:

"Who were those people?"
"Are they watching you or are they watching us?"
"What were they doing?"
"Do you know them?"

I explained as well as I could: our school is NOT doing as well as it could. America's Choice is going to help us become a better, more successful school, and that they (my students) deserved a better school.

Now in the past I've criticized those that leave the classroom and become consultants. Still, when it comes down to it, today we had our entire math department together talking about student achievement. That doesn't happen every day--and I believe it should.

Although our meeting with AC was relatively short, one thing they pointed out was that with our student demographics (high ELL, high number of free and reduced lunch, high minority), we'd do best to focus on the 90 minutes during class when we have the students in our room, rather than fighting the homework battle and dwelling on things we CAN'T control. That was refreshing for me to hear.

I've spent my entire career at schools like my current school. At one point in the past I had reached the conclusion that I could raise test scores by focusing my energy entirely on my classes. At one point I even gave up on the headache of homework--partly due to the fact that I myself hated homework when I was a student. I stopped wasting energy trying to police the homework situation--and I had a lot of research evidence that said it was okay to do so [and I'm well aware that someone can find a lot of evidence FOR homework]. Still, my students did well during that period, and they seemed ... well, happier.

Currently I do assign homework--and it's a struggle. I go along with my department, though, being the good soldier that I am :-) Still, I can't help but welcome the beginning of this discussion at our school.

What would be cool would be to put it all on the line and base teachers' pay on their students' achievement, measured by a fair and accurate test. How different would our methods of instruction be if that was the rule? Teachers are darn influential on the lives of their students, and perhaps it's a bit too easy to just coast along, rather than pushing ourselves to constantly improve.

Doesn't help that we don't earn much, though....

I recently found these articles here to be really helpful. They're a little dated, but still very relevant.