I made these for people who finished the tutorial (in particular, I had my students in mind). It's very much the way I do things and the hope was it would smooth the way for people to get to customizing Emacs in their own way.
I originally wasn't sure if I was going to do the mini org-mode stuff early on but thought that it would be better for organizational reasons rather than pedagogical.
I haven't actively followed DBC's trajectory but as a long time CS educator I've long said that education doesn't scale in the way that other tech sector initiatives scale, particularly if you want to maintain quality.
I'd really be curious to hear more about the obstacles to maintaining your quality that helped lead to this.
I'm the guy that wrote the article and yep - I'm a teacher. Really good points here. I already know the answers with respect to my school and schools of friends and colleagues but that is a small sample and not necessarily representative. It's part of what colors my opinion and yes - I agree, one should take everything with a grain of salt.
I know for teachers of APCS (my subject), they used to have a large case study to cover. Teacher's for which the case study fit naturally into their teaching approach, it worked pretty well. For people like myself and many friends and colleagues, it was a large 100 page document with all sorts of ins and outs that took time from teaching, you know, CS.
To your point, a weaker or less knowledgeable CS teacher would probably end up using the case study as a support which could be a good thing.
I guess this also brings a question of depth to mind - in AP Calc, should kids be proving and deriving or memorizing. I'm in the prove and derive camp but a lot of people think otherwise.
Anyway - thanks for your comment here - would you mind cut and pasting it over on the blog - I think it's a really good point and would love to save it for posterity and future readers.
Colleges don't see AP scores until after a student is admitted so admissions only sees the fact that the kid is in the class. Also, from what I can tell, admissions offices do have a pretty good feel for the schools they read for.
Once a kid is accepted, schools already give placement tests so that takes care of that issue.
On the credit front, I think partnering with a college would yield better results (like what you did).
I also wonder how much the credits mean - if a kid can knock off a full semester, it's obviously a big saving but given the way colleges charge undergrads - a fixed amount for a varying number of credits, at the end of the day, I wonder if it makes much of a difference for a kid that gets a small handful of credits.
I originally wasn't sure if I was going to do the mini org-mode stuff early on but thought that it would be better for organizational reasons rather than pedagogical.