White House says the 'big beautiful bill' will lower the US deficit. Analysts say that's off by trillions. The White House made the case Monday that passing President Trump’s "big beautiful bill" would be the fiscally responsible move. Outside analyses instead foresee a new flood of government debt if lawm...

Why doesn’t anyone in congress just say “I’ll bet you a million dollars it won’t”?

finance.yahoo.com/news/white-h...

A simple activity for CS students is a card-sorting race:
1. Create teams of 3-4
2. Give each team a deck of cards to shuffle
3. While shuffling, have them come up with a way to sort
4. Rotate decks
5. Race to sort fastest

After doing this 3x times, talk about algorithms, parallelism, and sorting

Round 1 of Guess Who? where students are creating/using the same decision tree across multiple games.

Round 2 of Guess Who? where students are creating/using the same decision tree across multiple games. Students started with the same question as round 1 ("green eyes") which led to the same second question as round 1 ("showing teeth"). Then, students could come up with a new question because they got a "no", leading to a new path through the decision tree.

Round 3 of Guess Who? where students are creating/using the same decision tree across multiple games. Students started with the same question as round 1 ("green eyes"). Then, students could come up with a new question because they got a "no", leading to a new path through the decision tree.

Guess What! You can teach decision trees via Guess Who?

1. Split class into teams of two
- One asks q's
- One records q's on paper
2. In first game, record q's with no -> left, yes -> right
3. Future games
- Start with same q as first round
- Only create new q if going down new path in tree

The original, encoded, and decoded versions of a students "BitPic" drawing of scissors.

The original, encoded, and decoded versions of a students "BitPic" drawing of the letter "B".

Today in my MS class, we talked about how computers handle images. In the lesson, students:
1. Created a "BitPic" on an 8x8 grid
2. Encoded the pic in binary
3. Sent the encoded pic to another student via the "internet" (me)
4. Decoded a pic from someone else
5. Compared results

Below are examples

python_pip_01_turbozzle_one_worksheet Python Turbozzle One Worksheet Instructions: Log into your account on a desktop computer. Download the Turbozzle.zip file on Schoology onto your desktop and unzip it. Open the resulting Tubozzle fold...

And if you're wondering if there's an accompanying PRIMM worksheet... of course there is!

- docs.google.com/document/d/1...
- docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Much thanks to @ralexanderson.com for his help

Robozzle puzzle as captured from https://alexanderson1993.github.io/robozzle-react/?level=17297

Turbozzle image as seen in https://github.com/eric-rizzi/ucls-turbozzle/blob/mainline/levels/puzzle_06.png

Turbozzle source code as seen in https://github.com/eric-rizzi/ucls-turbozzle/blob/for_students/src/turbozzle/puzzles/puzzle_06.py

My HS class is learning VSCode. Earlier in the year, they played Robozzle to learn about functions. To make the intro to VSCode more intuitive, I made a Python/Robozzle hybrid. In it, students write Python to solve various puzzles.

Pictures:
1. Robozzle puzzle
2. Turbozzle puzzle
3. Turbozzle code

Conventional Comments Comments that are easy to grok and grep

When I was in industry, I followed the "conventional comments" guidelines for leaving comments in code reviews. I brought this habit with me into teaching and it has proved very useful for helping students understand the feedback I leave on their work.

conventionalcomments.org

The craziest part about getting old is that you used to be young.

I made a prototype for what I think learning Python online should look like. My goal was online PRIMM + Reflection.

Units contain lessons contain sections. Section primitives include:
- Explanation
- Input -> output prediction
- Quizzes
- Turtles
- Reflection

eric-rizzi.github.io/thoughtful-p...

Thanks to:
1. Colin Sullivan, Steven Chen, and Ana Paula Centeno for their original ideas
2. nifty.stanford.edu for creating a venue to share amazing assignments like this
3. @jbranchaud.bsky.social for his advice/PRs

GitHub - eric-rizzi/murder-mystery: A debugger-based Mystery Solving game based on work from Rutgers A debugger-based Mystery Solving game based on work from Rutgers - eric-rizzi/murder-mystery

I made a Python port of the amazing "Murder Mystery" mystery debugging activity. Students run a simulation of a murder mystery and then use the debugger to find the killer. In addition, I added a worksheet to help students go from beginners to advanced vscode debuggers.

github.com/eric-rizzi/m...

If you want to learn something, read about it.

If you want to understand something, write about it.

If you want to master something, spend all weekend preparing to teach it to a bunch of Middle Schoolers, who will inevitably forget it by the end of the day.

Source: github.com/eric-rizzi/u...

(links to pre-built docker image in README)

The best lesson I've created is a Harry Potter themed Terminal Scavenger Hunt. Students learn/use shell to find clues on the computer and the real world. It's the capstone of the MS course: reviewing programming and data storage. 70% of MSer's say learning terminal is their favorite!?! Also, puns!

At SIGSCE, I heard about a great activity for teaching students to iteratively interact with a ChatBot:
1. Provide a "target" picture
2. Have students try to create a replica of the "target" using generative AI
3. Discuss the process and ethical implications

Below is my best result after ~5 prompts

One of the themes of my MS class is abstraction. One of the ways we talk about it that gets the students excited is via "Abstraction Pictionary". Basically, students draw three versions of the same object at different levels of abstraction and then other students try to guess what it is.

After Tron, students create TrackingBot. This game has users draw a line through a "maze" to try and guide a line-following robot to the finish. It's nice because it's more complex than Tron, but has clear checkpoints for the students to know if they're on track.

scratch.mit.edu/projects/932...

Classic burying the lead.

In this PRIMM worksheet, students combine their knowledge from previous lessons on RGB colors, functions, and the accumulator pattern to create pictures like:

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

One of the simplest, most engaging activities I've found for students just learning to programming is "Tron". With ~25 blocks, you can create a very engaging two-player game. I use this as the second game in my five game progression in my "Intro to CS" class for MS.

I've been using ChatBot art recently to help ground boring/abstract topics:

1. I'll show the prompt I gave to the ChatBot to generate a picture to summarize a topic
2. I'll show the picture and have the students critique it

The "big reveal" breaks up the monotony and leads to good discussions.

python_fractals_worksheet_02_return_types Return Types Worksheet Instructions: Log into Grok. Go to https://groklearning.com/learn/python-turtle-playground/2/1/ Read the directions for each task very carefully before you begin working on it....

I saw my students struggling with understanding functions that didn't have a return type in Python (and all the different ways to `return None`). I created this PRIMM worksheet to help guide them through it.

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

What is the most long term, socially impactful way to tell someone to get their car out of the f’n bike lane?

I knew I liked to work fast. Now I have retrospective rationalization:

still.visualmode.dev/blogmarks/5

It’s zero degrees right now in Chicago. Make sure to bundle up!

It’s weird that as a country that drinking seems to be going down but gambling seems to be going up. I would have assumed those two were linked.

The “Happy Bass” waiting music in Slack is by far the best.

AI alt text of your own?

⚠️ You have changed you language to: Australian English.
Do you want to keep these changes?

[Nah, Yeah] [Yeah, Nah]