Second Invitation - A Discussion Group

Since the weather is supposed to be horrible for the next few days, starting this evening, I'm guessing that most of you will be staying indoors and that with some small probability you might revisit the class site and see this message.  So I'm using that to get you to reconsider joining an entirely voluntary discussion group with me and some of your classmates next semester.   The broad theme is how you might take the long view with regard to your own learning.  I expect that students in the group will drive the discussion topics most of the time.

The first invitation described what I have in mind.  Please let me know if your are interested in participating.

And now for something completely different (not Monty Python).

This is amazing.

The Marx Brothers on Contract Negotiation

A partial list of non-economics works that informed the design of our course

• Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education (Chickering and Gamson)
• Learning by Teaching Donald Murray (Murray is the father of the idea known as writing to learn.) 
• What the Best College Teachers Do  Ken Bain  (There is another book by Bain that I haven't read yet called What the Best College Students Do).  
• The Reflective Practitioner Donald Schon
• Actual Minds, Possible Worlds Jerome Bruner
• How Undergraduate Education Became College Lite - and a Personal Apology by Murray Sperber in Declining by Degrees

Don't read this until you finish the homework on bargaining.

It gives the background under which that assignment was written.

Lanny on Learning Technology: The Diffeq From Hell via kwout

This was after the rotator cuff repair, but before the infection had manifest.  I was on pretty good pain killers.  I don't think it impaired my thinking.  The most notable effect for me on my mental state was when dreaming.  But perhaps the drugs impacted my judgment in ways that were harder for me to detect.  I am more lyrical in this post that I typically am and there was a lot of narrative in that Excel workbook, more so than the prior homework.  

I'm pleased to say that I'm off the drugs now and just use over the counter stuff, even if that means the writing is a bit less colorful. 

Successful Student Strategies for Getting Unstuck

We'll talk about this in class.

The paper itself.

A particular quote from the paper I really like.

I would say, deviate from the assignments on your own time and write programs that you think are completely useless and stupid. You think of these programs, no one’s going to use them. ... Just do it anyway because you’ll understand. You’ll run into problems and you’ll find the solutions to that problem. [...] And then, when the school project does come, you’ll have had the experience from what you’ve done on your own. But I think it’s important that you don’t just do the schools. You’ve got to do it on your own.

Interesting piece on how we are asymmetric in processing good and bad news.

Why We Make Bad Decisions - NYTimes.com via kwout

Amazon's Principles of Leadership

These are interesting to read.  We might discuss later in the course, especially when we do B&D chapter 8.

Now that class is over...

....and because this is tangentially related to our topic today, I thought I'd mention that I was quite distressed yesterday about news that my health care provider will no longer have the state retiree contract after Jan 1.  They have been my provider for 33 years and now my kids are on my policy (in addition to McKinley).  So this is quite stressful.  I lost a lot of sleep over it last night.  If class was okay today it's a tribute to the power of adrenalin.

Is there such a thing as a timely death?

Coase has passed away.  This obituary should resonate with the class, given our discussion today.

Murphy's Laws of Instruction

"Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course."

Very true.  From here.

I hope our class can do a bit of this.

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
       -- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi