I specialise in iteratively creating user-focused web applications. If you have users that know what they want when they see it, I'm excellent at having ongoing conversations with these users, synthesising those opinions and continuously creating satisfying software, documentation and training materials (by myself, or leading a team).
I have over ten years experience prototyping, developing and maintaining web applications and 5 years working as a tech lead or manager. With 15 years of teaching experience outside of my day job, I'm also very good at mentoring and growing other software developers.
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Remote: Yes
Willing to Relocate: No
Technologies: Python, Django, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, D3, HTML, CSS, Postgres, Haskell, various Data visualisation tools, CI/CD pipelines
I don’t believe debate is an effective means of changing people’s minds. So I debated the AI on this.
Directly arguing (I.e., debating) was ineffective but thanking it for acknowledging my points and asking it to elaborate on “what alternatives to debating are better?” lead to it arguing on my side. This probably says more about ChatGPT and its training than anything about the nature of debate. Though it’s a good illustration of how working with someone’s values (pleasing users in their case) is more effective than trying to engage directly with the logic of their arguments.
Interestingly, the AI judge said the AI won the debate, despite it swapping to my side!
I work in a similar field. I’d suggest reading “Change: How to make big things happen” by Damon Centola. It’s not exactly tech, but it does provide a more analytical/algorithmic perspective of things known qualitatively in the political campaigning space.
If you’re looking for a cheap platform for learning to code I’d recommend looking into the BBC micro:bit.
As a person whose job it is to help teachers teach kids computer science, it’s a really versatile tool. We’ve taught kids from year 3 with MakeCode all the way to the end of high school with micro python using the micro:bit.
The teachers themselves (who often have less experience than the kids) even really get into it!
I work in a similar organisation to SPJ in Australia, the Australian Computing Academy (https://aca.edu.au). Everything he said mirrors quite closely what has been happening in Australia for the past decade. We also have a national curriculum (https://docs.acara.edu.au/resources/Digital_Technologies_-_S...) which we're rolling out across the country.
The main take away I've received from doing this job for the past two years is the same one that SPJ reiterates in his talk. Teaching is a very distributed discipline. There's no top down solution to implementing a new curriculum. If you work in the industry and volunteer to help a school you can make a huge difference!
I've been volunteering to teach high school kids how to program for the past decade and it's been my job for the past two. As many of the other comments recognise, finding the joy in programming should be your number one goal. Having peers to bounce off of and push each other forward is a great way to do this!
One of the programs we run at work is an online 5 week competition where you learn to code (either with Blocky or Python) at the same time.
It's called the NCSS Challenge http://ncss.edu.au/challenge .
It's aimed at Australian students, but you can give it a go from anywhere in the world.
Teachers often run the Challenge in their classes and we have had a few code clubs run it too. It works really well having a group of kids be able to compete and encourage each other to solve problems.
There are multiple levels, but it increases in difficulty each week at a challenging but achievable rate.
At the hardest levels it gets quite competitive with students making programs to compete at playing games (last year was Big2) against each other.
I'd recommend clicking the "Try demo" button at the bottom of http://ncss.edu.au/challenge .
Even if you don't sign up, you can get an idea of what kind of problems we see kids getting hooked by.
I think there's a lot you could "steal" in terms of how to pose interesting yet simple and informative problems for teenagers to solve.
I specialise in iteratively creating user-focused web applications. If you have users that know what they want when they see it, I'm excellent at having ongoing conversations with these users, synthesising those opinions and continuously creating satisfying software, documentation and training materials (by myself, or leading a team).
I have over ten years experience prototyping, developing and maintaining web applications and 5 years working as a tech lead or manager. With 15 years of teaching experience outside of my day job, I'm also very good at mentoring and growing other software developers.
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Remote: Yes
Willing to Relocate: No
Technologies: Python, Django, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, D3, HTML, CSS, Postgres, Haskell, various Data visualisation tools, CI/CD pipelines
Résumé/CV: https://au.linkedin.com/in/kenni-bawden-565a99106 or send me an email for a PDF with more detailed descriptions
Email: [email protected]