Author: AMH

Spring 2020 Goals, Revisited

By AMH

Back in January I posted some goals for the Spring semester here, with the intention of revisiting them at the end of the term to see how I did. I was tempted to let myself off the hook, but I did have half a term during which things were relatively normal, and reflection is good, so let’s see how I did. Goal 1: Provide feedback as guidance more than correction in my object-oriented programming course. I think I did pretty well here. I definitely kept this in mind all semester; as I graded I tried to focus on whether there … Continue reading Spring 2020 Goals, Revisited

Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Six

By AMH

I’m not thrilled with out pattern six turned out. Perhaps blocking with help, but my sinuous lines of eyelets seem uneven to me and overall the piece looks a bit messy. I’d suspect my tension needed to be tighter, but that would make the eyelets even less visible. But there is supposed to be a subtle shading difference in the way the stitches lay in the lower and upper portion of each curve, and that just isn’t coming through in my work. I am curious how this might look with a ribbon yarn. It might emphasize the lay of each … Continue reading Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Six

Adding Check-in Meetings to Projects

By AMH

One of the things I tried this semester for the first time was adding a mandatory one on one meeting with me for every student where I would review their progress on the final project. Having completed those meetings, I am very glad I chose to do them and think they were a huge contribution to the remote learning versions of my courses. I have mixed thoughts about whether I will continue them for in-person instruction. For my OO programming course, this was a major addition to the course and a big win. I’ve always counted on students dropping by … Continue reading Adding Check-in Meetings to Projects

Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Five

By AMH

Pattern five involves only a single repeat to highlight the single row of diamonds across the sampler with flat knit stitching all around. Of the patterns so far, this one turned out the most like the image in the book. If you look closely you can see the more prominent diagonals running left to right downwards across the diamonds, which matches what I see in the source sampler. The pattern was a bit involved to keep track of because the start and end of many rows were different, and with only three repeats across that resulted in a lot of … Continue reading Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Five

An Upside to Text Chatting about Code

By AMH

I’ve slowed down on posting about the remote education situation because now most of the challenges have to do with supporting specific students. While these are still interesting challenges, being at a small school with small classes, any amount of detail about these situations can easily end up revealing personal information. So, take it as given – students are struggling in unique ways and individualized solutions need to be found. I think that’s universal to all of our courses right now. In terms of updates I can make, I noticed a nice benefit to having students use chat for problem … Continue reading An Upside to Text Chatting about Code

Further adventures in adapting to remote learning

By AMH

I spent a lot of the past two days dithering on whether to keep a day of content in my AI course or to replace it with a “personal working day” to give the students space and time to work on their research projects before we have our one-on-one conferences. I’m sure any of you reading this are yelling at me “personal working day, not more content!”. Which is obviously the right answer. But the lost week of class and the much slower pace once we returned as I let students get accustomed to the new format definitely has me … Continue reading Further adventures in adapting to remote learning

Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Four

By AMH

Pattern four is finished! It is a subtle pattern, and I can tell I need to start taking these photos against a better backdrop. My knits aren’t as tight as those in the sample photo so I can tell the contrast in this piece isn’t as strong between the open work triangles and the solid bands surrounding them. It might be a result of the yarn I’m using. It has a fair bit of stretch to it which works against wanting to have a very tight knit. But I also like that because it is the most likely type and … Continue reading Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Four

Observations on Day to Day Life

By AMH

Teaching is continuing apace, so I thought I’d make some observations about how day to day life is going… I’m getting a lot less physical mail than usual – largely due to the lack of junk mail and advertisements. It’s really refreshing. Some days I don’t get mail at all. I would be entirely happy to see this continue. Procedures around grocery shopping continue to evolve – shifts in the open hours, limiting the number of people in the store at once, asking people not to use re-usable bags. It’s all fine and my local store’s website is doing a … Continue reading Observations on Day to Day Life

Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Three

By AMH

Pattern Three in my knit lace sampler is a very pretty open work diamond grid. Looking at the portion from the original sampler, that knitter finished off the tops with solid filled-in triangles next to the top edges of the last diamonds – I followed the pattern through up to the end and like the way it looks. Stitch-wise this is the simplest pattern so far – just knits, yo and ssk. I have never been happy with my yarn over technique in knit lacework in the past so I’ve been really focusing on it here (including reading the documentation … Continue reading Knit Lace Sampler: Pattern Three

Reintroducing Collaborative Problem Solving

By AMH

I think it is a good sign that I’m not making new discoveries in online teaching on a daily basis anymore. But, this past week, I finally felt like the students had got used to the general rhythm of watching video lectures, taking short quizzes or posting in the forum, and doing coding activities while I was available for one on one questions. I was hearing the students were starting to miss interacting with each other. So, this past Friday, I got students back working together on coding tasks during class time. I’m not worrying about audio or video – … Continue reading Reintroducing Collaborative Problem Solving