{"id":190,"date":"2007-10-24T21:54:24","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T04:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2007\/10\/24\/work-what-else-is-there\/"},"modified":"2007-10-24T21:54:25","modified_gmt":"2007-10-25T04:54:25","slug":"work-what-else-is-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2007\/10\/24\/work-what-else-is-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Work… what else is there?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, it’s been a while. I’m in the middle of a crazy-busy semester, as I mentioned before<\/a>. Certain things have become luxuries: hobbies, a personal life, leisure time. Other than that, things are going well.<\/p>\n

One of my big stress things happened last Friday. We (and by “we”, I mean “I”) hosted a day of professional development activities for IT teachers. This is like the third one of these we have done. My plan is always the same: get them in a room and talking about the good ideas they have had for their classes. Bounce ideas around with just enough structure to keep things moving.<\/p>\n

This time, Richard<\/a> came and we talked about robotics projects and ideas. Richard really knows his shit (which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise, since it is his research area), and I think the teachers came away with some ideas that never would have occurred to them otherwise. The feedback I’ve had has been really good.<\/p>\n

Anybody else that wants to take my quiz is welcome to: consider the phrase “High School Robotics Competition”. Form a mental image of what that looks like. Tell me about it.<\/p>\n

I just finished putting together my CMPT 120 midterm for Friday. I hate making up exams like a five year old hates eating asparagus. I whine, bitch, moan, procrastinate, and complain about how horrible my life is until it’s finally done. It’s done, so I’ll be much happier until the final exam comes around.<\/p>\n

One of the other things I need to do for 120 is create the last assignments. I have always had the last assignment as an open-ended problem that the students don’t have a hope of “finishing”. The goal is for them to work on it, think about algorithms, and get some good stuff done. This lets the just-okay students accomplish something, and really pisses off the good students who work their asses off, learn a lot, but still don’t “finish”.<\/p>\n

I was on the bus tonight and finally had the idea I’ve been waiting for. Their assignment is going to be programming the behaviour of a NPC (non-player character) in some kind of game. I haven’t worked out the game, but I’ll create a library to play the game, and their code will have to control the NPC(s) to be good opponents. The game will have to be fairly simple.<\/p>\n

Any of the CS types want to help me work that out in exchange for lunch?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, it’s been a while. I’m in the middle of a crazy-busy semester, as I mentioned before. Certain things have become luxuries: hobbies, a personal life, leisure time. Other than that, things are going well. One of my big stress things happened last Friday. We (and by “we”, I mean “I”) hosted a day of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}