Why Every Educator Should Read Hacker News

http://educationismylife.com/why-every-educator-should-read-hacker-news/

by ColinWright • 14 years ago

34 16 14 years ago

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Well, you couldn't ask for a more like-baity title for a submission to Hacker News, but there is some good food for thought in this article (blog post). I've read the article once. As I ponder it some more, and think about it as I take care of some home office business here, I may expand this comment during the edit window of two hours I have. I can say right away that Hacker News does have good discussions about education and education policy, with lots of thoughtful participants. Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.

AFTER EDIT:

The author of the submitted article (blog post) writes, "what makes Hacker News so special is the community within this simple site." What I especially like about Hacker News is the variety of analytic frameworks represented here. I'll give two examples. In discussion the added value of school systems, people on Hacker News don't forget to look at the inputs to the system, the large amounts of money spent on K-12 education in various countries, as the outputs of the system, the learning benchmarks reached by students. I have been fond of writing on Hacker News "A teacher who is doing a good job helping students learn is worth his or her weight in gold," referring to research on the economics of education by economist Eric A. Hanushek.

http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-teachers-h...

A Facebook friend of mine, a Caltech graduate who formerly worked for a YC-funded start-up before taking on his current position as a data analyst, pointed out that by Hanushek's model, adding in reasonable assumptions about the number of students taught over a typical teacher's career, "I think it is safe to say that a good teacher is worth far more than his or her weight in gold, even a teacher who enjoys food, if you know what I mean," based on the current price of gold. Indeed, one of the analytic frameworks that Hacker News participants bring to the discussion is comparing inputs to outputs, to see what activities of schools and their staffs bring about the best added value for the most learners.

The author of the blog post submitted here writes that Hacker News is a group of people who "care about sharing knowledge, advancing their field, and holding each other accountable (which is WHY you should read it as an educator)." I can give an example of that sharing knowledge and holding each other accountable. Last year, a Washington Post blog column that functions largely as a site for propaganda pieces on education policy included a guest post with a story about an anonymous person in an unnamed place who had taken an unnamed test used for student evaluation in an unnamed state with unreported item content and concluded from that vaguely mentioned experience that the state test was not good. Many HN readers replied to that highly upvoted thread, asking the basic who, what, when, where, why questions that any professional journalist should ask before publishing a story. My comment to that thread,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315028

which won quite a few upvotes from other participants in the thread, laid on the snark to express my dismay with how few actual facts were reported in the Washington Post blog piece, especially facts based on comparative policy analysis. Eventually the Hacker News community identified the person relating the story, the particular test (which had EASY item content, much easier than most HN participants initially guessed), and other important details from their own research and a follow-up post from the newspaper, which had many readers who were dissatisfied with the vagueness and point-of-view pushing of the first post. The follow-up of other bloggers to that debacle,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3327847

is the kind of thing that working professional educators can learn from as they seek more respect and societal recognition of their important work, so indeed it is beneficial for teachers in the classroom to visit Hacker News regularly to read the discussions here.

batgaijin• 14 years ago

Eh, I think the reason ycnews is good at all is because of the old-guard commenters and the 'fear' of becoming popular.

keithpeter3• 14 years ago

"if you can read this thank a teacher" is a classic car sticker.

However, in England and Wales, we have half a million of them (in a population of about 55+ million) and the turnover is estimated at about 9% per year (some of that is family break teachers leaving and returning). All teachers in UK have to have a national curriculum related degree... The Normal Distribution being what it is (and wage rates not huge and currently frozen) there might be quality issues ahead.

What about US?

jimhefferon• 14 years ago

It is too bad that the links to the advertised site (pre-site?) don't work.

I'm always impressed when reading Mathematics Teacher or Arithmetic Teacher, or other such journals, how much energy, creativity, and love there is out there from teachers. A lot of it has no way out of the single classroom and it'd be good for more to get out.

ajjuliani• 14 years ago

http://signup.academicrecess.com/ works now

DanBC• 14 years ago

> A lot of it has no way out of the single classroom

It feels like a lot of it has no way into other classrooms, because of increased control over curricula and teaching. Some of that's a good thing; evidenced based teaching is important.

ashray• 14 years ago

I think the article opens with a good point.

I ENVY the design community. I am JEALOUS of the programmer/developer community. Want to know why? It’s simple: They thrive on sharing, collaborating, and improving their field.

I honestly believe that the internet will change the way people collaborate and improve their respective fields. It's just that hackers being who they are, figured it out first. I can't wait to see a github or wikipedia like place for education and anything else out there.

I can truly say that I am overjoyed to be a part of the change that few people understand and fewer acknowledge (so far..). The next 20-30 years are going to be awesome!

keithpeter3• 14 years ago

UK teacher comment: can anyone explain what an 'educator' is? I keep reading this strange word on US Web sites and in forums.

There are plenty of forums that discuss educational issues available to me. Most of them use 'noisy' forum software. Would be nice to have 'quiet' software like I find HN available that could run on ordinary hosted Web space.

ChuckMcM2• 14 years ago

Generally the term 'educator' is used to describe an individual who has completed at least a masters level degree in Education, one or more state certifications, and is employed full time as a teacher. The original motive for this lingual shift was, as far as I can tell, to distinguish between 'lay' teachers (which is to say people who simply teach what that know) and 'professional' teachers who have studied the art and practice of teaching.

However, in colloquial use, the term can be applied to anyone who is teaching students, regardless of their credentials much like folks will use the term 'engineer' to describe someone writing software even if they have yet to graduate from high school.

corin_2• 14 years ago

To me (and I'm not saying this means it is the correct definition, but I think the one automatically thought of by most people I know) the difference is that teacher implies someone who works with school children (up to 18), whereas educator would cover universities etc. as well.

Evbn• 14 years ago

"Educator" is inclusive of administrators and other such overhead people who throw money around and can cause trouble for teachers if they aren't included in the conversation.

It is like saying "IT pro" so you include managers alongside techies.

keithpeter3• 14 years ago

We call those managers.

Summary: An educator is a teacher with a qualification in education and/or a manager in an educational institution below University level.

In the UK we try to keep it simple, all teachers have a degree and have had training. Unless they work in 'academies' but that is another can of worms.

edtechdev• 14 years ago

Conversely, we need an 'education for hackers' type site.

The closest are these resources from hackeducation:

http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/17/what-every-techie-should...

http://guide.hackeducation.com/techies.php

http://edtechhandbook.com/

yarianluis• 14 years ago

I think a Stack Exchange website for educators would be a very good first step in the direction of collaboration. Stack Exchange is by far the most effective platform I have ever seen for questions and answers. Wouldn't take much to set up a teaching beta.

Why Every Educator Should Read Hacker News

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