Steve Kinney

Speaking at a press event with Chancellor Dennis Walcott...

Tue, 28 May 2013 12:37:17 PDT

Speaking at a press event with Chancellor Dennis Walcott announcing the winners of the Innovate NYC Schools Gap App Challenge.

Gap App Winners Think They Can Solve Low Middle School Scores

Tue, 28 May 2013 12:33:00 PDT

Gap App Winners Think They Can Solve Low Middle School Scores:

Yours truly was asked to speak at the press conference with New York City Department of Education’s Chancellor, Dennis Walcott.

Anika Anand writing for Gotham Schools:

“There’s a lot of tools that have come and gone over the last decade that it felt like they didn’t talk to a teacher,” said Steve Kinney, a middle and high school programming teacher from Scholars Academy in Rockaway Park who served as one of the judges in the competition.

“This is the first time where it’s very explicit that we’re involving teachers in the process and we’re looking for apps that get back to the core of why anyone became a teacher, things that allow them to leverage technology, to work faster and more efficiently so they can focus their time on creating great lessons,” Kinney said.

Are Jobs Obsolete?

Sun, 26 May 2013 11:20:04 PDT

Are Jobs Obsolete?:

Douglas Ruskoff:

And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs — as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there’s something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned.

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

Sun, 26 May 2013 08:40:03 PDT

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance:

Bruce E. Levine:

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it.

Inside Pixar’s Leadership

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:55:08 PDT

Inside Pixar’s Leadership:

Ed Catmull:

The notion that you’re trying to control the process and prevent error screws things up. We all know the saying it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And everyone knows that, but I Think there is a corollary: if everyone is trying to prevent error, it screws things up. It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and over plan things.

Just for fun: think about this as if you were the principal of a school.

I need two iPads. One to distract my son while I try to get work...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:19:44 PDT

I need two iPads. One to distract my son while I try to get work done on the other one.

The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 08:40:03 PST

The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time:

Tony Schwartz for the Harvard Business Review:

What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.

I always chuckle when people tell me they’re excellent multitaskers.

Any guesses?

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 16:20:57 PST

Any guesses?

How A Geek Dad And His 3D Printer Aim To Liberate Legos

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:20:10 PST

How A Geek Dad And His 3D Printer Aim To Liberate Legos:

This is the kind of father I want to be.

JavaScript for Cats

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 08:40:11 PST

JavaScript for Cats:

An awesome introduction to JavaScript by Max Ogden.

Teach U.S. Kids to Write Computer Code

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 11:20:19 PST

Teach U.S. Kids to Write Computer Code:

Douglas Ruskoff:

When we got language, we didn’t just learn how to listen, but how to speak. When we got text, we didn’t just learn how to read, but how to write. Now that we have computers, we’re learning how to use them — but not how to program them.

Technology isn’t going anywhere and it’s a little ridiculous that basic programming skills aren’t a mandatory part of the curriculum—even if we only covered the finer points of working with spreadsheets.

Hack Design

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:40:13 PST

Hack Design:

“Design lessons for programmers, curated by top designers.”

Measuring the Success of Online Education

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 11:20:01 PST

Measuring the Success of Online Education:

John Markoff for The New York Times:

If as few as 20 percent of students finishing an online course is considered a wild success and 10 percent and lower is standard, then it would appear that MOOCs are still more of a hobby than a viable alternative to traditional classroom education.

I wonder, however, if the high drop-out rate for most MOOCs is due to the fact that most of them are free. It doesn’t cost anything to enroll so why not? Then, when life intervenes, there is no cost to drop out.

School Reform: Stay Focused

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 08:40:02 PST

School Reform: Stay Focused:

The Economist:¹

The problem, [Paul Tough, a journalist and former editor at the New York Times Magazine,] writes, is that academic success is believed to be a product of cognitive skills—the kind of intelligence that gets measured in IQ tests. This view has spawned a vibrant market for brain-building baby toys, and an education-reform movement that sweats over test scores. But new research from a spate of economists, psychologists, neuroscientists and educators has found that the skills that see a student through college and beyond have less to do with smarts than with more ordinary personality traits, like an ability to stay focused and control impulses.

Oddly, there was no author attribution on the page as of this writing. ↩

Help Rebuild Our Software Engineering Program

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 05:58:13 PST

Help Rebuild Our Software Engineering Program:

Last week, we moved back in to our school in Rockaway Beach. This is awesome for a number of reasons (my new commute not being one of them), but I am excited to get back to teaching mobile and web development. Over the next week, I will be putting together a number of Donors Choose campaigns to help us purchase a set of test devices so that students can touch and feel their apps.

The link above will help us get a latest generation iPad. We had about 80 or so iPads stolen during the cleanup process and 30 more destroyed by the flood. I am also putting together a campaign for a pair of Nexus 7 tablets, but the website ate my write-up.

Here is the important part:

Even better: our Board of Directors wants to kick start your project! For the next 7 days, when someone donates to your project and enters the code INSPIRE, we’ll match their donation dollar for dollar.

Thanks in advance.

He is eight weeks old today as well as the reason I...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:46:17 PST

He is eight weeks old today as well as the reason I haven’t been writing much lately.

Rockaway Beach (via insidecaracas)

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:40:05 PST

Rockaway Beach (via insidecaracas)

The Hurricane and the Little Boy Who Saved My Life

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:31:34 PST

I grew up in and around New York City. We’ve had hurricanes in the past. As a child, a tropical weather system meant an amusing evening of watching my father set up pumps in our basement while I spent the evening gawking at the inch or so of water that managed to make it past him despite his best efforts. Our floors were tile and clean-up involved a mop and some towels, at the most.

A little over a year ago, Hurricane Irene made her way toward the City of New York. At the time, we lived in a basement apartment. Despite that, we didn’t think much of the approaching storm. Not wanting to risk dehydration, we purchased a gallon of Poland Spring, a bottle of wine, and some beer. We lit some candles and enjoyed each other’s company. The water survived; the beer and wine did not.

On a Friday afternoon, my principal made an announcement asking us to please make sure that all of our windows were closed securely as there supposed to be a hurricane over the weekend. I obliged and headed home. This was the first I had heard it. Wasn’t a bit late in the season for a hurricane? Sandy? That’s a bit late in the alphabet, don’t you think?

If this was a year ago, we would have stayed put. I would have pulled out the ceremonial mop and towels and headed out to the beach to admire the waves before it started to rain. But, something was different this time around. Six weeks ago, we had a son. Since my son was born, I had been working three jobs and—even when I had a little bit of time off—was burnt out and distant. My wife was discovering the fact that motherhood is truly a full-time job and that her boss was incredibly demanding. At the very least, we would have a little of time to reconnect as a couple if the power went out.

We moved out to Rockaway to start a family. It was both affordable and safe—a rare combination for New York City. My wife had grown up by the ocean and wanted to give our son the same access. We spent our days and nights planning out our future lives together on this beautiful peninsula.

But, as first-time parents, paranoia and anxiety is part of daily life. We decided to heed the warnings. Logan and Wes went off to her mother’s place in Central Jersey and I stayed behind. Climbing into her aunt’s car with an obese cat, a dog with separation anxiety, and a newborn wasn’t her idea of the quiet weekend we had planned. She dropped and smashed her new iPhone in the process and was beginning to resent me for potentially overreacting and shipping her off to New Jersey. Given the information at the time, she was right. No one we knew was leaving and everyone else was treating this like business as usual.

At the last minute before public transportation shut down, I decided that I missed the two of them. Leaving Rockaway was not an easy decision. I battled with the choice for the duration of the trip and almost turned back on several occasions. If a little bit of water creeped in under my poorly-installed door and I was there to mop it up, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But, if I let it sit there for a few days, it might wreck my floor. What about looters? An evacuated neighborhood is a gold mine for someone with questionable ethics and a crowbar. At the time, leaving Rockaway could have been a potentially bad decision for my family.

That night, the storm arrived. 128 blocks of boardwalk were ripped up and thrown through the streets of Rockaway. Entire city blocks burned to the ground. Cars floated down the street and were piled on top of each other as the Atlantic Ocean swept over the peninsula to meet Jamaica Bay. The water was chest high in most places. Everything in our home was lifted four feet off the ground and floated for hours in a toxic soup of seawater and raw sewage before being dropped onto the ground. The water left, but the sewage stuck around. Our refrigerator was ripped out of its wall unit and knocked onto the ground.

If I had stayed, there is a chance I wouldn’t have survived the storm. The only reason we left was because of our son. That little boy saved our lives.

(Photograph Credit: Roman Iakoubtchik)

A Group of Finnish Math Teachers Write an Open Textbook in a Weekend Hackathon

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 06:18:01 PDT

A Group of Finnish Math Teachers Write an Open Textbook in a Weekend Hackathon:

Gauntlet: dropped. I work for the largest school district in the United States of America. I would love to see a sea change in organizational culture where things like this happen. Imagine the potential of 80,000 teachers hacking away at education.

Why Kids Should Grade Teachers

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 11:24:00 PDT

Why Kids Should Grade Teachers:

Amanda Ripley for The Atlantic:

A decade ago, an economist at Harvard, Ronald Ferguson, wondered what would happen if teachers were evaluated by the people who see them every day—their students. The idea—as simple as it sounds, and as familiar as it is on college campuses—was revolutionary. And the results seemed to be, too: remarkable consistency from grade to grade, and across racial divides. Even among kindergarten students. A growing number of school systems are administering the surveys—and might be able to overcome teacher resistance in order to link results to salaries and promotions.

I actually like this idea—although, I can definitely see the counterarguments. Opponents can—correctly—argue that teachers will spend more time trying to be popular than effective. I’m sure it would be a bureaucratic mess to implement and the unions would never buy in.

In my experience, however, students tend to be fair in their judgement of their teachers. Charismatic, but ineffective, teachers fall from grace quickly. A hard, over-demanding teacher can end up being one of the most widely respected teachers in the building.

While I do wish education was more of a meritocracy—I have a family to feed these days—it’s not a potential link to salaries and promotions that interests me. At the end of the day, your students are your customers and it’s worth getting an honest opinion of their assessment of your teaching—even if that assessment is a sobering one.

I think I might integrate some kind of evaluation system for myself in the near future. I’ll report back on how that works out.