LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

geek

Baby Name Data Visualization

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The good people (I’m really just guessing here) at Zatonovo have a cool little tool where you can specify a name and it will show you how popular that name was from 1912 to 2012 on a state by state basis. I played with it for a while and there were a lot of interesting things that I noticed. But rather than just point them all out, I’ll pick two and ask you to see what you find. Here are my two:

  1. Lloyd has gone from about 70 per state down to about 1.
  2. Brad isn’t nearly as popular a name as I thought it was.

 

Gamification and Programming

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So, while Lauren has been heating up and cooling down multiple times a day, I’ve been working on trying something new with my programming class.

For the last couple of years people have been experimenting with using common elements in games in classrooms. It’s called Gamification, and it’s not playing games in class. People have been doing that for a long time. It’s turning the whole class into a game. People are also doing it outside of education too. You’ve maybe been gamified yourself without knowing it. If you want to know more about it in general, watch this video:

Okay, everything make sense now?

I’ve been working on how this will look in my class, and in a nutshell, students will still do (mostly) all of the same stuff I’ve had them do in this class for years. But this time around, they will get points for doing them and when they get enough points they will go up a level and when they go up a level they can pick certain perks. Additionally, they can see on Leaderboards how the rest of the class is doing and earn Achievements for doing certain things well.

Gamification Design Documents

See, Mom, I knew all those hours playing video games were going to pay off for me.

Gamification Design Documents

If you’re really interested, you can take a look at the Programming website. I’ve already rolled out a few of the leaderboards, I’m also keeping a list of useful resources and making some posts about how I’m doing things, why I’m doing them that way and how they are turning out. I’ve done 4 posts so far.

More From Stat Boy

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I’ve done a few other posts on the number of comments that people have made, but it’s been over a year since the last one. Lets see where things stand now. This is not a complete total; just the posts since the last summation (which happened on January 2, 2011)…

Name Comments Position (Change)
Peggy 962 1 (same)
Brad 937 2 (same)
Lauren 787 3 (same)
Kristi 495 4 (+1)
Lloyd 443 5 (-1)
Gretchen 268 6 (+13)
Beth 207 7 (-1)
Deborah 205 8 (+3)
Lauren’s mom 130 9 (+8)
Lauren’s Dad 117 10 (+4)
Karla 93 11 (-4)
Curt 81 13 (-5)
Jane Sommerer 81 13 (+7)
Mark 77 14 (+2)
Mary Ellen 72 15 (+66)
Kris 67 16 (new)
Jill 65 18 (+4)
Michelle 65 18 (+8)
Christina 63 19 (-7)
Amy 49 20 (-5)
Tammy 33 21 (new)
CousinSam 25 22 (+2)
Kitt 24 23 (+2)
Annette 21 24 (-6)
Quiana 20 25 (+4)
Keren 18 27 (-14)
Ribs 18 27 (+11)
Matt Haden 17 28 (new)
bekahcubed 16 32 (-5)
Deanne 16 32 (-23)
John and Kate Brady 16 32 (new)
thetruthisoutthere 16 32 (new)
Fran 14 35 (new)
Nigel 14 35 (-5)
Rachel Sommerer 14 35 (-25)
Richard 13 36 (new)
RON ROYUK 12 37 (new)
Jill J 11 38 (+21)
I suggest these 10 40 (new)
Kim Marxhausen 10 40 (+41)
Allison 8 43 (+16)
flash from the past 8 43 (new)
Marisa 8 43 (-10)
morningside 7 46 (new)
Stephanie 7 46 (new)
Tamara 7 46 (-10)
Gman 6 48 (new)
Samuel 6 56 (new)
Acealot 5 56 (new)
Adriane 5 56 (new)
Amused Lurker 5 56 (new)
Brady G. 5 56 (-27)
Jaro 5 56 (new)
Karen M 5 56 (new)
Rachel S 5 56 (new)
Steve Lokie 5 56 (-22)
kathryn 4 58 (new)
Mrs. B 4 58 (new)
Aunt Lolly 3 73 (new)
bert 3 73 (new)
Christine 3 73 (new)
Elizabeth 3 73 (-36)
Heather 3 73 (new)
Jake Jones 3 73 (new)
JuneBug747 3 73 (new)
Kelley 3 73 (new)
Kristin T. 3 73 (new)
Maggie 3 73 (new)
MEB 3 73 (new)
Nicola 3 73 (new)
Roberta 3 73 (new)
Stephannie 3 73 (new)
Tom Triumph 3 73 (new)
Anita B 2 100 (new)
another sue 2 100 (-54)
Becky 2 100 (new)
Britney 2 100 (new)
Caroline Fowler 2 100 (-41)
Charles 2 100 (-77)
Heather 2 100 (new)
Heather 2 100 (new)
John R. 2 100 (new)
Katie 2 100 (new)
KDF 2 100 (new)
Kim 2 100 (new)
Kurt Knecht 2 100 (new)
Laura Burns 2 100 (new)
Laurie 2 100 (new)
leoglenn 2 100 (new)
Maggie 2 100 (new)
MJ 2 100 (-54)
Nick Nightngale 2 100 (new)
Paul Marxhausen 2 100 (new)
Peggy 2 100 (new)
Rachel 2 100 (new)
Renske 2 100 (-79)
Shelley 2 100 (new)
Sherri 2 100 (new)
Todd Peperkorn 2 100 (-54)
UT IT Dept 2 100 (new)
176 people 1 276 (hard to say)
Gretchen demanded a graph
Gretchen demanded a graph

Our first event

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Warning: Boring post ahead…

So, Lauren didn’t want to post anything today. My first thought was to try to describe what the stomach flu was like, but I’m going to give that a pass for the time being.

Instead, let me tell you about the latest geeky thing in my life. Over the last few months, a group of computer science teachers around here have been putting together our very own Nebraska Chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association*. A little less than a month ago we were approved as a chapter and  on Tuesday we held our first Event.

I bet you didn’t know that this was Computer Science Education Week (yes, there’s a website). One of the things they tell us when they can get us to look up from our computers is that people think that all we do is stare at computers. So we rounded up the only 3 guys who work with computers who actually do anything and had them show [and tell] as many high school students [as we could convince to give up an hour of their evening] the cool stuff they were working on.

It was actually some pretty cool stuff. Attaching computers to cranes to track migration, behavior, habitat and so forth. The computers actually sent data back via text messages. One crane sent 25,000+ texts. I hope they got an unlimited plan. Burying computers in a corn field to track moisture content and tell the center pivot how much water to spray in each portion of the field (okay, that last bit is only exciting in Nebraska).

One guy was working on flying robots that could collect water samples or maintain devices that monitor the structural integrity of bridges. He brought one of the flying robots and you can just barely see it in this picture it you know where to look (this photo was taken after the event while he was just showing off).

I spy, with my little eye, something that begins with R.

The third guy was working with simulation of complex real world objects to try to solve problems that are traditionally hard for computers to solve. Things like how traffic light timing should change in response to traffic accidents in order to let traffic flow as smoothly as possible. Or figuring out the optimal number of firefighters for any given part of a forest fire.

We had a pretty good turnout, and the people who came asked some good questions afterwards. I am pronouncing our first event a success. And, as no description of puking was involved, I think we can call this post a success as well. In fact, that might be a good enough description of success in general.

Geekier than normal

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A few months ago some website let me know that the arduino was on sale along with a book: Getting Started with Arduino. I read the first few chapters of the book and looked very intently at the arduino, but that’s as far as I got for several months.

Then, for some reason earlier this week I wanted to start messing with it. I knew I would need some more junk.
It looked better with 3 of them

Some searching on the internet led me to believe that what I wanted were the things that fell out of boxes at the factory, were found under big machines and returned by other people. I figured that if I bought in bulk, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about buying the right thing. It turns out that someone sells just what I needed (actually, a lot of people like messing with this stuff, so it’s pretty easy to buy).

cheaper by the dozen

Anyway, a little explanation: the Arduino is that blue thing in the top picture with the USB cable coming out of it. It’s a microcontroler, a little computer that is good at interacting with the rest of the world. You hook it up to stuff and it either does things, or sends data to something else. I know that’s not a great explanation. Here are some examples: a touchpad, a display board, a laser controlled wireless automatic cat food dispenser.

Getting my geek on

I’ve got an idea that I want to try with this, but I’m not ready to share it yet.

Painting this fence is fun!

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So, I’m working on a new design for the Lincoln Lutheran website. I’m not very far along yet, but I have a wireframe that I’m pretty happy with. I’m not very good with actual design, but I think I’ve covered the things we need on the home page. Now I just have to get someone to make it look nice.

Click on the image to see what the yellow dots do.

The last thing for me to do on the homepage is the main menu, and I’d like to get your opinion on it. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take these 15 common tasks that someone might do on a school website, and choose the menu option that you think would give you the right information to do them. It will probably take 2-5 minutes depending on how much thought you want to put into it.

I’m using free services to do this, and they only support a limited number of surveys. So you might find that the first link won’t let you take the survey. If that happens, please try the second link instead. But if the first one works, please don’t do the second one. If you accidentally click on the second link first, go ahead and do the second survey, but don’t go back and also complete the first one. If neither of them work, then please complain loudly to the management that you would like to receive your money back.

survey site 1 (done fulled up)
survey site 2