
Why Every Educator Should Read Hacker News - ColinWright
http://educationismylife.com/why-every-educator-should-read-hacker-news/
======
tokenadult
Well, you couldn't ask for a more like-baity title for a submission to Hacker
News, but there is some good food for thought in this article (blog post).
I've read the article once. As I ponder it some more, and think about it as I
take care of some home office business here, I may expand this comment during
the edit window of two hours I have. I can say right away that Hacker News
does have good discussions about education and education policy, with lots of
thoughtful participants. Education policy is the issue that drew me to
participate on Hacker News,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123>

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the
newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.

AFTER EDIT:

The author of the submitted article (blog post) writes, "what makes Hacker
News so special is the community within this simple site." What I especially
like about Hacker News is the variety of analytic frameworks represented here.
I'll give two examples. In discussion the added value of school systems,
people on Hacker News don't forget to look at the inputs to the system, the
large amounts of money spent on K-12 education in various countries, as the
outputs of the system, the learning benchmarks reached by students. I have
been fond of writing on Hacker News "A teacher who is doing a good job helping
students learn is worth his or her weight in gold," referring to research on
the economics of education by economist Eric A. Hanushek.

[http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-
teachers-h...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-teachers-how-
much-good-teacher-worth)

A Facebook friend of mine, a Caltech graduate who formerly worked for a YC-
funded start-up before taking on his current position as a data analyst,
pointed out that by Hanushek's model, adding in reasonable assumptions about
the number of students taught over a typical teacher's career, "I think it is
safe to say that a good teacher is worth far more than his or her weight in
gold, even a teacher who enjoys food, if you know what I mean," based on the
current price of gold. Indeed, one of the analytic frameworks that Hacker News
participants bring to the discussion is comparing inputs to outputs, to see
what activities of schools and their staffs bring about the best added value
for the most learners.

The author of the blog post submitted here writes that Hacker News is a group
of people who "care about sharing knowledge, advancing their field, and
holding each other accountable (which is WHY you should read it as an
educator)." I can give an example of that sharing knowledge and holding each
other accountable. Last year, a Washington Post blog column that functions
largely as a site for propaganda pieces on education policy included a guest
post with a story about an anonymous person in an unnamed place who had taken
an unnamed test used for student evaluation in an unnamed state with
unreported item content and concluded from that vaguely mentioned experience
that the state test was not good. Many HN readers replied to that highly
upvoted thread, asking the basic who, what, when, where, why questions that
any professional journalist should ask before publishing a story. My comment
to that thread,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315028>

which won quite a few upvotes from other participants in the thread, laid on
the snark to express my dismay with how few actual facts were reported in the
Washington Post blog piece, especially facts based on comparative policy
analysis. Eventually the Hacker News community identified the person relating
the story, the particular test (which had EASY item content, much easier than
most HN participants initially guessed), and other important details from
their own research and a follow-up post from the newspaper, which had many
readers who were dissatisfied with the vagueness and point-of-view pushing of
the first post. The follow-up of other bloggers to that debacle,

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3327847>

is the kind of thing that working professional educators can learn from as
they seek more respect and societal recognition of their important work, so
indeed it is beneficial for teachers in the classroom to visit Hacker News
regularly to read the discussions here.

~~~
keithpeter
"if you can read this thank a teacher" is a classic car sticker.

However, in England and Wales, we have half a million of them (in a population
of about 55+ million) and the turnover is estimated at about 9% per year (some
of that is family break teachers leaving and returning). All teachers in UK
have to have a national curriculum related degree... The Normal Distribution
being what it is (and wage rates not huge and currently frozen) there might be
quality issues ahead.

What about US?

------
ashray
I think the article opens with a good point.

 _I ENVY the design community. I am JEALOUS of the programmer/developer
community. Want to know why? It’s simple: They thrive on sharing,
collaborating, and improving their field._

I honestly believe that the internet will change the way people collaborate
and improve their respective fields. It's just that hackers being who they
are, figured it out first. I can't wait to see a github or wikipedia like
place for education and anything else out there.

I can truly say that I am overjoyed to be a part of the change that few people
understand and fewer acknowledge (so far..). The next 20-30 years are going to
be awesome!

------
jimhefferon
It is too bad that the links to the advertised site (pre-site?) don't work.

I'm always impressed when reading Mathematics Teacher or Arithmetic Teacher,
or other such journals, how much energy, creativity, and love there is out
there from teachers. A lot of it has no way out of the single classroom and
it'd be good for more to get out.

~~~
DanBC
> A lot of it has no way out of the single classroom

It feels like a lot of it has no way _into_ other classrooms, because of
increased control over curricula and teaching. Some of that's a good thing;
evidenced based teaching is important.

------
edtechdev
Conversely, we need an 'education for hackers' type site.

The closest are these resources from hackeducation:

[http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/17/what-every-techie-
should...](http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/17/what-every-techie-should-know-
about-education/)

<http://guide.hackeducation.com/techies.php>

<http://edtechhandbook.com/>

------
keithpeter
UK _teacher_ comment: can anyone explain what an 'educator' is? I keep reading
this strange word on US Web sites and in forums.

There are plenty of forums that discuss educational issues available to me.
Most of them use 'noisy' forum software. Would be nice to have 'quiet'
software like I find HN available that could run on ordinary hosted Web space.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Generally the term 'educator' is used to describe an individual who has
completed at least a masters level degree in Education, one or more state
certifications, and is employed full time as a teacher. The original motive
for this lingual shift was, as far as I can tell, to distinguish between 'lay'
teachers (which is to say people who simply teach what that know) and
'professional' teachers who have studied the art and practice of teaching.

However, in colloquial use, the term can be applied to anyone who is teaching
students, regardless of their credentials much like folks will use the term
'engineer' to describe someone writing software even if they have yet to
graduate from high school.

~~~
corin_
To me (and I'm not saying this means it is the correct definition, but I think
the one automatically thought of by most people I know) the difference is that
teacher implies someone who works with school children (up to 18), whereas
educator would cover universities etc. as well.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Not disagreeing with you, but I find that to be an interesting take on it,
Universities actually have a pretty well defined set of 'titles' associated
with folks who teach there, things like 'lecturer', 'assistant professor' ,
'full professor', Etc. I've known a couple of professors who would be hugely
offended if you called them an 'educator' for the reason that one of the
'perks' of getting their PhD was that they could be called 'professor.'

I will keep my eye out for that usage to see if I can spot it.

~~~
corin_
I'd never specifically refer to someone as "an educator", unless I had no idea
what they actually do, to me it's sort of a vague genre of job - definitely
not as a synonym for actual titles.

------
yarianluis
I think a Stack Exchange website for educators would be a very good first step
in the direction of collaboration. Stack Exchange is by far the most effective
platform I have ever seen for questions and answers. Wouldn't take much to set
up a teaching beta.

