I came across an interesting blog post on John Maeda “Thoughts On Simplicity” blog that speaks to teaching. The question is this: do you give a student all the answers they need verbatim, or do you send them to figure out the answers on their own?
I’ve learned in many different ways myself and recently I’ve found that the less I am taught, the better I learn. This is John’s perspective as well. He gives the example of a class he took where the instructor basically spoon-fed the answers to him. Then another course he took was the opposite: the teacher would answer questions with something like “go look it up, the answer is in the book!”.
In my own experience, I find that my first instinct is to ask someone to help me solve a problem (while I am hoping they will pretty much just show me the way step by step). In a few cases, like with my pal Aaron, I’ve learned more when he didn’t actually show me right away but waited for me to find the answer myself. So, like John Maeda’s view, I realized that the less I was taught, the more I learned.
It still seems like the opposite should be true, though…
Posted December 3rd, 2005 to ideas ·
In case you didn’t see or hear about the story, MIT has developed an inexpensive, crank-driven, laptop for distribution to children in developing nations. Read more at the MIT site.
One detail I was curious about, what OS will it use? Turns out that it is a variant of Redhat Linux. I found this out through an African tech news story.
Very cool!
Posted November 26th, 2005 to ideas ·
Mark Russinovich broke the story after he found a rootkit on his computer. Security Guru Steve Gibson has discussed it in detail on his Security Now podcast. Now the news has hit the mainstream with a Wired News article.
In case you haven’t heard about it yet, go read and listen! It’s estimated at having infected 500,000 computers already.
It’s a sad day for Sony.
Posted November 18th, 2005 to security ·
Paul Boag has a great podcast about web design over at boagworld that you should definitely check out.
Topics include accessibility, DOM scripting (with none other than Jeremy Keith as guest), usability, and other tasty morsels.
I found it in iTunes and am now subscribed! If you know of any other good webdev or webdesign podcasts, drop me a line.
A few weeks ago I came across a post on Lessig’s blog about a music group called Tryad that had released their album Public Domain online under the CC license. What’s weird is that the post is no longer on his blog…
That’s not the point, though! The band and their music are awesome. Check it out for yourself. I am not sure what category they go under, but that is a good thing sometimes. I have them under Electronica in iTunes.
Tryad is extra worth checking out since they live in different places around the world and collaborate and make music online.
Great band and cool method of releasing their music to the masses.
Posted October 27th, 2005 to music ·
Jipi and the Paranoid Chip is a great story: this site lists the excerpt as it appeared in Forbes, July 7, 1997. If you haven’t read it, go now!
Posted October 18th, 2005 to sci-fi ·
Today I am kicking off a new look for LanceWillett.com! Two reasons: [1] simplify, and [2] use my own design.
The first design this site had wasn’t mine…although I thought it was cool nonetheless. It was a Kubrick takeoff, in case you were curious. I got it as a “theme” from the Textpattern Resources site. Since I am a web designer I thought it would be fairly important to design my own site!
This new design is intended to tide me over until I can come up with something cool. For now I am aiming at “simple”, “lightweight”, and “readable”.
Let me know what you think…
Via the newly published Treehouse magazine.
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
-Jeff Bezos
That is awesome.
Posted October 5th, 2005 to ideas ·
What podcasts are you listening to?
The one and only IT Conversations has most of my time and attention. I especially like Tech Nation with Moira Gunn; plus all the conferences that are going on usually get ported to ITC sooner or later.
I also listen to Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte bring the weekly: Security Now podcast. My friend Aaron first recommended it to me…The episodes are short in length, but full of good reporting on the latest in computer security. Get it through iTunes, or your favorite podcast retrieval program.
Of note: The Word Nerds, a weekly podcast about words and how we use them. I just found about it today through Peter Merholz’s blog.
AJ shouldn’t worry so much.
If I don’t write something this weekend for either this weblog or aj-adventures – I’m a lazy bum.
Visit site »
Posted September 24th, 2005 to friends ·
