Category: Education

130: Home Schooling Pods

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We want our kids to have social lives but also for them safe, and we can’t imagine an in-person school experience really being that. That means we’re probably keeping our kids at our house for the next year. Ideally, we have them at a house with a few other kids so they can socialize. A few kids is a lot different than the hundreds they’d interact with at the elementary school.

How we’re doing it:

  • We found a former teacher who doesn‘t want to go back to work at an in-person school. We’ll pay her monthly.
  • We have a family we’re close with who has similar social-distancing values as we do who wants to join. They’ll bring their kids over to our house every day.
  • We set up a dedicated space as a schoolhouse – our garage – and we will have the kids and teacher use it to teach the Zoom classes or whatever the curriculum is.

This “pod” system seems to be catching on. If you go to NextDoor you can see teachers looking for pods and parents looking for teachers. Others:

  • Myra Margolin, who created a Facebook page to help connect families in the D.C. region interested in “microschooling,” found more than 1,000 people join the group.
  • Andrea MacRae is trying to organize “bubbles” for children and families in the East Bay area. She has interested families fill out detailed surveys about their values and risk comfort, and then matches those families with other like-minded families — including those who won’t be able to pay and those that include essential workers.

If we get this working it seems like a great way to get everyone through this pandemic safely. While this is working for us, I could see how it could be tough for kids of essential workers, those who can’t find teachers, or families who afford it. I feel very fortunate we can do it. Continue reading “130: Home Schooling Pods” →

Newsweek Cover

Day 33: Reverse Quarantine

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What I’m Thinking About: Reverse Quarantine

This is the first time i’ve heard about letting the 45 year olds and younger out and back into society as a way to restart society and get to the general population to herd immunity. If you do it, it’s basically as dangerous as the flu. Interesting to think about.

Continue reading “Day 33: Reverse Quarantine” →

Elle cover

Coronavirus Log – Day 22: Cats too?

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What I’m thinking about

Government Loans. Today is the day that the government is accepting applications for small business loans. My business and millions of others are swarming to this. The current amount Uncle Sam is looking to loan out is 2.5 months of payroll. We’ll see how that goes.

Schools Staying Closed. As I mentioned last week, I’m not impressed with the current home schooling system that Mill Valley has. But, I can’t see us going back to school in the fall. Even if the curve flattens, there will be no vaccine, so I can’t imagine big groups being allowed. Nobody wants to the school that starts the next outbreak. That means we might be doing this home-schooling thing for a LOT longer than I had thought. Good thing Sasha and Diane put together two new desks for Hunter and S this weekend.

What else

Our Pets Too?! It was reported yesterday that cats can get COVID. Apparently a tiger in the NY Zoo tested positive. I never considered that my two cats could be my weakest link in my attempt to separate myself from the outside world. One of them is super skittish so she’s no issue, but the other, Lucious, is too damn friendly. As if we needed another thing to worry about.

Also, come on people, are you still not staying inside?

Other Stuff

This next one is a really great video. This is the kind of content I’m looking for people. Get creative:

Some next-level cat moves:

Cases

I’m switching up my case tracking. I’ve got a spreadsheet with the daily amounts and am going to just post the graph new cases/deaths. That seems to be the most interesting to me as I want to see when the World and US start plateauing and then going down. Let me know if you’d like to see something different:

That’s all. Have a great Monday everyone 🙂

*Only 64 more days to go

Code.org and the Hour of Code

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This past Dreamforce conference I saw that there was a session being led by Hadi Patrovi.  I was intrigued as my former company, Qloud, competed directly with the company iLike were Patrovi was CEO.  We talked once briefly about merging the two companies, but ultimately nothing became of it.  We sold to BuzzMedia for $8million and they sold to MySpace for $16m.  Both products were then quickly shut down.  Oh well, it’s all water under the bridge.

So, i wanted to see what Hadi was up to.  Man was I in for a treat.  Hadi is the founder of Code.org which is doing some remarkable stuff. Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it available in more schools.  Their vision is that every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer science and it should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra.  I totally agree. 

At Kapost we are constantly on the lookout for great engineers.  Always. We don’t close those job recs.  We are always looking. This is important because in the USA the number of people qualified for the jobs (demand) far outweighs the supply.

Programming jobs are growing at 2X the national average.   But, we also have an unemployment problem and we’re not doing anything to address these two things.

Even worse, in college only 2.4% of college students are graduating with a Computer Science degree – and that number is SHRINKING.  In high school it’s also lame as 9 out of 10 high schools don’t even offer a programming class and in 25 of the 50 states computer science can’t count towards a high school graduation math or science requirements. 

 

So, i’m happy they exist and apparently so is the rest of the country.  In their launch late last year they made quite a splash. Most companies and websites launch with a little fanfare and get an initial bump of users.  On their launch day they had:

  1. The President of the US, Obama, give a press announcement about it and Code.org’s “hour of code” happening that day
  2. All the major morning shows in the USA talk about the “hour of code”
  3. The pushed it hard enough so that 1 in 5 US  students had tried the “hour of code”
  4. Became the fastest website in the world to get to 15 million users.  

I’m really happy for the start that it’s received and I think it’s a great cause for us to tackle in America as we prepare for the future.  Personally, I had zero exposure to programming in high school.  I took an intro class in college and loved it.  That led to another class and before I knew it i was majoring in CS.  That led to a career in technology and I couldn’t be happier.  It’d be a shame if others couldn’t get that chance. 

 

 

 

 

Student Debt in America

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I listened to this podcast (This Week in Venture Capital) about a company focusing on organizing a students debt and loans. More than the company, the stats really stuck out for me.  Here they some and what they mean:

Student debt is HUGE. Student debt over last 10 years has doubled to a trillion dollars.  Here’ the breakdown:

Debt in America
People can’t get jobs still. 50% of people graduating from University are unemployed or underemployed

It’s not just poor, it’s a lot of people. 2/3 of all students graduating in 2008 took on debt

It’s a problem that isn’t being solved. Of the 2008 grads that took on debt only 22% of these are current (aka up to speed on their payments)
It’s not just young people anymore. 34% of all outstanding debt in US is held by people 40 years or older

This is fundamental problem in America and it’s impacting everyone at all ages and areas.  I feel like it should get great attention and be a bigger part of the “what’s wrong with America” conversation.

Luckily, the changes in the education system will cause more schools with more affordable opportunities to emerge.  Kahn Academy U can’t come fast enough apparently.