The author's interest in middle-grade books is fascinating. I'd love to read a post of recommendations with accompanying rationale, if only to get ideas for books my daughter might like!
How I Live Now, by Meg Rossof, is a stellar novel. There are some really, really good books marketed as YA (Young Adult) (that's the term I know for what he's calling "middle-grade" - maybe that's new branding?), only because their protagonists are teenagers.
"Middle-grade" is the age category before "young adult" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_grade_fiction pragmatically because younger children aren't as interested in the topics that captivate hormone-filled teenagers.
I am ten books into the Wings of Fire series by Tui T Sutherland because my grand daughter likes it. My main reason for liking it is that it gives me a glimpse of the type of anxiety that young kids routinely go through. I think the main reason my granddaughter likes it is because of the dragons.
I really enjoyed Terry Pratchett’s YA books with Dodger and Nation being favourites. Maybe see if you can get access to the librarian at your kid’s school? They’ll be experts
The Crew (2019). Approachable but interesting co-op trick taking with communication restrictions and 50 missions for replayability. If you liked Hanabi, you might end up spending more time on this.
Any tips for avoiding the, "you should have known to play X so that I could play Y" frustration that some players bring to the table with this game? I'm ok with the group tension the game manifests, but sheesh. This one seems to get people critiquing others' plays more than any other game.
After the hand finishes, reset the game to the state where somebody misplayed, and then talk it through. What information did each of the players actually have? How did the player who needed something to happen try to signal that's what they needed to happen? How did the other players understand that action (or lack of action)? Was there a way the signaling could have been clearer? If there were multiple possibilities for what the signal meant, could the other players have disambiguated it somehow?
This should not be an acrimonious process. Think of it as a blameless postmortem. The goal is not to decide who made a mistake, it is to understand how to get better as a group and avoid losing the game the same way again. It will also help everyone empathize with the other players, since they'll actually understand what information the other players had and what their thought process was.
As you get better as a group, you should quickly get to a state where either it's clear to the player who misplayed that they did in fact make a mistake (and they'll apologize before the hand is even over) or everyone agrees it was unavoidable.
Came here to say this. At like ten bucks it's not much of a commitment. I keep a copy in my bag just in case. You can teach it super quickly. I just got the newer version (the ocean one) but haven't played it extensively yet. It does seem like it'll spice things up though and I'm excited to try it.
> My first response when the plan to add generics was announced was “meh”. In my 5+ years working in Go, I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I felt like I really needed generics. Most of the code I write in my day job is very specific to the domain and doesn’t fit the use case that generics aim to fill.
to
> I love that I was able to delete 95% of my code because of generics.
It's interesting because I remember all the early discussions against generics in Go centred around "what Real World scenario do you need it for?"
An argument against generics was that people found it hard to find examples that were 'real' where generics would be beneficial, and so because it was rarely needed the question of whether the language should be drastically bodged/ruined/adjusted for this feature was called into question.
In retrospect you had a self-selecting population of people who loved Go and presumably didn't have much use for generics, whereas people who did presumably used something else.
I guess all we can learn from this is that human imagination is poor, and many of us need the thing in our hand to work out what we can do with it.
That's why you need some breadth of experience with many different languages, folks. That's exactly why you don't limit yourself to a single (extremely simplified to the point of stupidity) language.
That's also why one should take a look at back and think if it is smart to uncritically said generics were just dumb.
Same with people who unconditionally recommended WhatsApp not that long ago.
Or people like me who told everyone Google was still nice and a driving force for good until a few years ago ( yes, I still have some hope that they will change their ways and don't think others are much better but I am somewhat bitter and I don't give them the benefit of doubt anymore :-| )
This is actually the investor relations tool they're using (Q4). If you follow the "powered by" link you can see that Q4's corporate website has the same thing
I'm a parent that just taught my 4yo preschooler to read. So I'm not really your target user, but I watched the walkthrough and read the website, and here are my reactions. Hopefully something here is useful for you:
- I'm honestly baffled by spending so much time on one book (program?) in a classroom context. I imagine some kids won't be interested in the particular story, but it will go on for an entire month. I could see this damaging interest.
- The pace seems incredibly slow. To learn to read, you need to read a lot. But this is one book per month?
- The more stories a child is exposed to, the more chances there are to encounter something especially captivating for that child, and to spark an interest.
- It's hard to believe how much participation there will be without seeing an example class and interactions between the students & actor. The videos on the site make it seem like a completely passive experience.
- Craft activities seem like a distraction from reading unless the activities are grounded in literacy (e.g. letter/word games or creations). Even then I'm kind of skeptical.
- I predict you'll end up changing the name "litnerd". Being a nerd is cool on HN, but elsewhere?
All that said, I'm a fan of your mission and understand that learning to read in a classroom is going to look a lot different than learning 1:1. But I wonder if you could leave the group instruction to teachers and go direct to kids with a more Duolingo ABC-like experience, but include live instructors/actors. It'd be sort of like reading with a remote parent. Instructors could act out the story as you're doing with litnerd, but also unstick kids with reading help and mini-lessons. Basically, build a literacy-specific Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from A Diamond Age with gig economy ractors.
Def agree about the name. Kids are assholes, and extremely self conscious. Anyone who thinks they're not aware of social concepts like being cool vs being a nerd are in for a bad time. But hey, Skool is kool, right?
Thank you for taking the time to craft such a thoughtful response. Love your feedback. My comments in order below:
- I'm honestly baffled by spending so much time on one book (program?) in a classroom context. I imagine some kids won't be interested in the particular story, but it will go on for an entire month. I could see this damaging interest.
So the program time is actually 4 active periods on one book. For longer books (higher grades and more difficult Lexile scale will have some extra designated time to ensure students can finish the book but on average it is 4 periods. This includes the watching of episodes, reading out loud, lesson plans that have to be covered as part of ELA (English Language Arts) instruction anyway. High engagement level has been core to our early success but interestingly, one of the main points for improvement from teachers is that our program can feel rushed (ie desire for more designated time). We're still working through the kinks :)
- The pace seems incredibly slow. To learn to read, you need to read a lot. But this is one book per month?
Yup. We only target 9 books ie 1 book per month. Of course, we hope that students would read far more but going from no reading to some reading and carving out "reading time" to develop the habit of reading is where we come into play. Of course schools can and should continue to foster take-home reading and after school or within school time reading outside of this.
- The more stories a child is exposed to, the more chances there are to encounter something especially captivating for that child, and to spark an interest.
I agree with this.
- It's hard to believe how much participation there will be without seeing an example class and interactions between the students & actor. The videos on the site make it seem like a completely passive experience.
Legally, we cannot share that footage at all. So I'll just have to accept your disbelief here even though I wish badly I could show you otherwise :)
- Craft activities seem like a distraction from reading unless the activities are grounded in literacy (e.g. letter/word games or creations). Even then I'm kind of skeptical.
Respectfully, I don't exactly agree with that. Esp for younger ages, craft activity is a form of sensory learning. We use craft activities built to help showcase comprehension of the unit as opposed to just phonetics (though there is that aspect too). I think just evaluating our students comprehension in one medium form is limited (again, esp for younger ages).
- I predict you'll end up changing the name "litnerd". Being a nerd is cool on HN, but elsewhere?
Come on! The cat and everything? (Lit)nerds rule! ;)
As for the final feedback on leaving the group instruction and taking a more B2C Duolingo approach (coupled with live actors), I think that's an interesting thought (and I LOVE Duolingo). I just do not philosophically want to start in the B2C go-to-market space. Majority of the kids we serve come from Title 1 schools (low income families). Presuming access to internet or even access to quiet reading space is something that doesn't always reflect the students we serve. 65% of NYC public schools are Title 1 schools. The equity aspect of being part of structured classroom time is really important to me at this time. Doesn't mean we cannot add B2C down the road though! By the way, The 'Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer' looks dope! Just purchased on amazon to check it out!
Given your interest in hiring art and theatre professionals to support education I think you'll love The Diamond Age. It's so relevant to what you're doing I'd assumed you must have already read it!
With regard to sharing a video of example class couldn't you set one up with paid signed off kids - they do this on Colbert all the time so there must be somewhere you can get these kids who don't mind being on TV?
I'm definitely coming at this from my own parent perspective and my some of feedback is probably more a reaction to the realities of classroom instruction than about Litnerd specifically.
I'm going to push on your deflection to legal obstacles to sharing footage though. Get parent permission and make a better example video! :)
Tern GSD cargo ebike. This thing is the bike version of a minivan. Biking the kids to preschool every day is so much more healthy and fun than taking the car. We also visit a much bigger variety of parks on the weekend now.
I've played a lot Beat Saber, and ended up getting wrist weights. Very recently I've been spending time in Thrill of the Fight. I would never have expected myself to like it, but it's a fun workout.
Limmy's humour is wilfully niche even among Scots and the Scots-adjacent. He has no intention of appealing to a wide audience. He's a great example of Twitch being good at finding an audience for the long tail of creators.
I've read both of them (actually, I've read the former before this was posted).
The problem with the second article is the belief that conservative patriarchy was and is still the only way to sustain/grow population levels. This can problematic in an anthropological angle (there are still debates among anthropologists over how some prominent ancient societies were more matriarchial than we've realized), but more importantly I find this belief limiting our imagination as to the various ways in how humanity can manage to have and nurture kids. Familial values aren't only compatible with patriarchy, it can also mesh well with matriarchy (The fertility of women becoming important can also lead to women having more power over men, vice-versa). And is family the only way we can have childcare? Maybe we might have a society where everyone collectively cares each other's kids? What would happen if we have artificial wombs, wouldn't it significantly lower the barrier to having offspring? Obviously the hyper-individualism induced in our current configuration of capitalism is a huge cause for the fertility crisis, but I don't think old rehashed conservative values are the only solution for this individualism.
Now the first article (written by Nick Land), is much more nuanced, and doesn't strictly limit itself to patriarchy being an 'ultimate' evolutionary destiny. It's trying to dissecting the historical dynamics of population inside cities and between other cities (as a global phenomenon), and plotting the future trajectory of political theory from there. It states a fundamental problem of modernity which I can maybe agree with (although I have other problems with the author in general, mainly him also frequently spouting out right-wing reactionary politics)
