Dani Roxberry

Question for parents of students, for students, for faculty and staff of schools … If your school has an app you can use… what do you like about it? What do you not like about it? What features would you like to see in it? What would make it useful? If your school does not have an app… what kind of features would you like to see in an app? I’m going to be building one. I have my own thoughts on what I’d like in an app, but I’d like to hear from you all. What abilities and features could an app have that would make you feel like you were empowered to help your kids better?

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I'm planning on hosting my DS&A sessions at NYC Coders (https://lnkd.in/eGjBae2z) from January. These will be free to attend. If you know of any spaces that can host ~40-50 people, please leave a comment or reach out to me. We usually do a lecture with 1-2 pair programming sessions. These are the sessions I'm planning on hosting: 1. Array Patterns 1 2. Array Patterns 2 3. Recursion 4. Backtracking 5. Linked Lists 6. Hash Map 7. Stacks & Queues 8. Binary Tree Traversals 9. Sorting Algorithms 1 10. Sorting Algorithms 2 11. Graphs 1 - structures and representations 12. Graphs 2 - BFS and DFS traversals 13. Graphs 3 - Connected components, cycles, bipartition 14. Graphs 4 - Cycle detection in DAG, topological sort 15. Dynamic Programming 1 16. Dynamic Programming 2

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I learned about these studies this week. How big an impact does tutoring have on students? About ONE WHOLE letter grade. https://lnkd.in/d8bwNrnu. Tests of AutoTutor have produced effect sizes with a mean of 0.8 (range of 0.4 to 1.5), depending on the learning measure, the comparison condition, the subject matter, and version of AutoTutor. For comparison, an effect size of 1.0 would be roughly equivalent to a full letter grade.  

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If Not React, Then What? Frameworkism isn't delivering. The answer isn't a different tool, it's the courage to do engineering. Code that runs on the server can be fully costed. Code that runs on the client, by contrast, is running on The Devil's Computer. As a result, an unreasonably effective strategy is to send less code. In practice, this means favouring HTML and CSS over JavaScript, as they degrade gracefully and feature higher compression ratios. Declarative forms generate more functional UI per byte sent. These improvements in resilience and reductions in costs are beneficial in compounding ways over a site's lifetime. Stacks based on React, Angular, and other legacy-oriented, desktop-focused JavaScript frameworks generally take the opposite bet. "Our product stack has bet on React and the various mythologies that the cool kids talk about on React-centric podcasts. You're asking us to rethink the whole thing. Which silver bullet should we adopt instead?" JavaScript remains at least 3x more expensive than equivalent HTML and CSS, byte-for-byte. The choice isn't between JavaScript frameworks, it's whether SPA-oriented tools should be entertained at all. For most sites, the answer is clearly "no". Sites built to inform should almost always be built using semantic HTML with optional progressive enhancement as necessary. Sites that have content that changes more frequently should look to "classic" CMSes or tools like WordPress to generate HTML and CSS. Blogs, marketing sites, company home pages, public information sites, and the like should minimise client-side JavaScript payloads to the greatest extent possible. They should never be built using frameworks that are designed to enable SPA architectures. Managers and tech leads that have become wedded to frameworkism often have to work through a series of easily falsified rationales offered by other Over Reactors in service of their chosen ideology. Note, as you read, that none of these protests put the lived user experience front-and-centre. "...it works for Facebook" To a statistical certainty, you aren't making Facebook. Your problems likely look nothing like Facebook's early 2010s problems, and even if they did, following their lead is a terrible idea. "...React is industry-standard" This is, at best, a comforting fiction. At worst, it's a knowing falsity that serves to omit the variability in React-based stacks because, you see, React isn't one thing. It's more of a lifestyle. Across more than 100 consulting engagements, I've never seen two identical React setups. There's nothing standard about any of this. It's all change, all the time, and anyone who tells you differently is not to be trusted. And if you don't mind me asking, how's that "CSS-in-JS" adventure working out? Still writing class components, or did you have a big forced (and partial) migration that's still creating headaches? https://lnkd.in/efB4PR-A

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Recently I was reading about the VW data disclosure, and I was thinking: could an LLM spot this? So I built a small prototype using PDL script, and the results are pretty good to be honest! More detailed information here: https://lnkd.in/dqJSMPkU

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Innovation in education isn’t just a choice—it’s a necessity. 🌟 As an educator and tech support specialist, I’ve experienced firsthand how technology can transform learning environments. From managing technical systems and creating engaging media to assisting departments with digital solutions, my role is all about empowering education with innovation. AI, creative tools, and STEAM-based approaches are reshaping how we teach and learn. It’s exciting to contribute to this transformation by blending my technical skills with a passion for education. What’s one tech skill or tool you think educators should embrace today? #AI #STEAM #AItools #Technology #advancements #TechSupport #teaching

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If you're the kind of person who's excited about all the recent S3 feature announcements (bucket policy unlocks via temporary root sessions, up to millions of buckets per account, pagination and region filtering for ListBuckets, conditional writes, ListCallerAccessGrants API) and you're attending re:Invent, then you should come to our storage track session, STG306 Advanced security patterns on Amazon S3. Learn how to use all the exciting new stuff securely in the most interactive format available at re:Invent!

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In working with educators today, one concern regarding AI in the classroom caught my attention. How do we deal with our fear of critical colleagues? All voices are needed at the table, and I believe that concerns need to be heard as well as addressed. The fear of what our colleagues might think of us if we embrace AI in our classroom also highlights the need to attend to AI literacy among educators. What PD do we now need? What books do we now read? Lots of learning ahead of us! #ailearning #fear #education

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DevLearn 2024 starts today and I'll be presenting TWICE! If you are at #develearn2024 then stop by the #iSpring booth 503 on the Expo floor and say hello! #edtech #education #devlearn2024 #ispring

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I've been working on creating a library of math concepts using Javascript, allowing users to practice math skills with variable inputs. While it's still in its early stages, the possibilities for custom implementation are endless! I can envision using these concepts to customize math practice sessions in classrooms with games or escape rooms to suit each student's needs or using it in corporate trainings, helping internal and external learners calculate and conceptualize ideas such as profits or projections. By using random variables in Javascript, no two problems will be the same, increasing the amount of variable practice a learner can get. What math concepts should I add next? How would you use this concept in your teaching/training? https://lnkd.in/ggjVDxHz

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Wow!! I hate to admit this, but Lambda had me confused. I had been trying to understand them on and off for several years, but since it wasn’t a part of the AP curriculum, I didn’t have the time to discover the connection to what I already knew about method calls in Java. If I’m honest many of the resources I came across made it seem like magic. I needed to dig deeper. I've unlocked Lambda! Here's what I learned. Lambda’s allow programmers to implement an interface that contains one abstract method, without having to write the full class. They consist of a parameter list, the arrow token, and a return value based on the body of the code statements. So, here are the key points for me: ·       We are writing the body of a method ·       The method we are writing is the abstract method of an interface ·       The compiler knows which method, since the interface has only ONE abstract method ·       The number and type of parameters is defined by the abstract method in the interface Consider the following Computations interface: public interface Computations {   public double operation(double first, double second); } We could create classes AdditionComputation and MultiplyComputation as well as several others, such as: public class AdditionComputation implements Computations {   @Override   public double operation(double first, double second) {    return first + second;   } } and similarly for MultiplyComputation. To use these classes, we might write the following: public class LambdaTester {   public static void main(String[] args) {     AdditionComputation add = new AdditionComputation();     MultiplyComputation mult = new MultiplyComputation();     System.out.println(add.operation(5.3, 2.3));     System.out.println(mult.operation(5, 3));   } } Every time we wanted to provide unique functionality for the operation method in Computations, we would need to create a class that implements Computations, then create an instance of this class, and call operation. With lambdas, we can create an instance of Computations that can be used to call the operation method and provide the functionality as part of declaring and creating that instance. Computations subt = (f, s) -> f - s; System.out.println(subt.operation(3,2)); Another example is the forEach method of the ArrayList class. This method takes a Consumer object as a parameter. Consumer is an interface that has an accept method that needs to be implemented. The accept method performs an operation on the given argument. The following example passes the implementation of the method accept as an argument to the forEach method. For example, names is an ArrayList of String values: names.forEach((n) -> {  if (n.length() > 4) {      System.out.println(n);  } }); If you shared in my confusion of lambda’s, I hope this has helped make them more understandable. For more information on Lambda, check out the linked resources: Enjoy Java Coding! Crystal https://lnkd.in/eBwbrvPk

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This is a great write up on the idea of clever code. The ability to write clear code (dare I say "Clean Code"?) is one of the main traits I select for when hiring engineers and one of the top priorities I try to drive into my engineering culture. One of the things that separates senior folks from junior folks is the understanding that software development is a team sport. I push my engineers to write code more for themselves and other developers than for computers. The compiler (or interpreter or whatever) doesn't care what your code looks like. It will happily execute whatever you feed it. Your colleagues (and even more likely, future you) on the other hand, care very much. It's almost always more desirable to do something more simply and clearly in multiple lines rather than trying to cram it all into one or two very clever and difficult to follow lines. In the end, the ease in reading, maintaining, and debugging will far outweigh the few CPU cycles you might save. https://lnkd.in/gKBpZyTy

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