Author Topic: 2020 Miscellaneous Links: Untitled Moose Game (Read 170359 times)

I am a pre-kindergarten teacher. I was born and raised in Oklahoma and am raising my son here. I love my state, my job, the people I work with and, most importantly, my students. I am deeply concerned for the future of education in Oklahom
On a teacher’s salary, it is very difficult to make ends meet as a single mother. I basically live paycheck to paycheck. Any money I have left at the end of the months is thanks to my second job, tutoring students after school and Saturdays. I am fortunate to have found a flexible second job that is not physically demanding. Other teachers throughout the state are not so lucky. I met a cashier recently who is a teacher in my district. She works weeknights 5-11 and a similar shift on the weekends. That makes for long days and a short weekends. I feel her pain, and I don’t think it should have to be this way for any teacher! Teachers should earn a living wage.
Meeting this teacher/cashier made me reflect on the year and a half I worked as a cashier at a local sporting goods store. I usually worked weeknight evenings from 5 – 10 p.m. and usually five to seven hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays. Eventually, I asked for Sundays off so I could have at least one day of rest, although I typically spent my Sundays preparing for the upcoming week at school. I was physically and emotionally drained. I have a bachelor’s degree, had more than a decade of teaching experience and was having to work a job I hated to make ends meet. I was not the best teacher that year. Being exhausted and over worked affected my mood and performance in the classroom. My students still learned and were, I believe, well prepared for kindergarten, but I know they deserved a teacher operating at 100 percent. Eventually I quit the retail job, which was a relief. But I definitely have felt the loss of income.
A pay raise for teachers is long overdue, but in addition we need funding for our classrooms. In my classroom, we have only outdated technology. Smartboards are older than our computers and don’t function properly. This year our district purchased a literacy program for our students to use at school and at home. Unfortunately, the classroom tablets don’t support the program, so students can only use the program at the school computer lab, which only has 10 computers (never all working) to serve the entire school. Students in my class are able to spend about 10-15 minutes a week working on this program. Students in upper grade levels, such as my seventh-grade son, are going without text books. Students are not able to bring books home to complete unfinished assignments. How do you teach algebra without a book? Language arts? Science? History? I don’t know how teachers in middle and high school do it.
There are many other things teachers are having to go without due to lack of funding and support from our legislature, but our abysmal pay and outdated technology are the two that come to mind.
In addition, support staff raises are necessary. All staff are vital to our students’ success. I recently lost the assistant with whom I had worked for three years because she could no longer support her family on her meager teacher’s assistant paycheck. I have no idea how she lived off a mere $950 per month for so long. She and I were a team and there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish with our students. Her departure negatively impacted the classroom environment. My students love her and miss her. She had a special bond with some of our more challenging students. She was able to help redirect them and reinforce their good behavior. I was extremely sad to see her go, and things just haven’t been the same since she left.
I have seen on Facebook and other media outlets that the average teacher pay in Oklahoma is $45,000. That may be true, but only because we have many teachers nearing retirement age who reached that pay rate before the state stopped offering the step increases. I currently make about $35,000 a year with 13 years of teaching experience.
My chosen profession has not been funded or valued for years. The work teachers do is important, and our children are our state’s most vital resource. It is time our legislators acknowledge and reward this work. I encourage everyone to support the teacher walk out, contact our state representatives and senators, and demand change!

Posted on my Facebook.

Ranmilia · « **Reply #1688 on:** March 29, 2018, 10:57:14 PM »

https://melmagazine.com/the-renegade-game-designer-who-aims-to-challenge-the-industrys-attitudes-toward-sex-2579225659d9

Extremely good interview with Robert Yang.

Dhyerwolf · « **Reply #1689 on:** April 02, 2018, 09:46:04 PM »

Not exactly miscellaneous, but here's a DL relevant project I made for an Intro to Visualizations class I took last year:

http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~adam.reilly/Reilly_Adam_HW4.html

SnowFire · « **Reply #1690 on:** April 03, 2018, 06:47:17 AM »

Neat. One suggestion, though: you can use either Math.round(x * 100 ) / 100 or .toFixed(2) to chop off some of those non-significant decimals in the mean & std. deviation and the like.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #1691 on:** April 10, 2018, 01:11:42 AM »

https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21736102-low-teacher-pay-and-severe-budget-cuts-are-driving-schools-brink-whats-matter

SnowFire · « **Reply #1692 on:** May 10, 2018, 04:18:34 AM »

https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/8/17330574/nintendo-switch-virtual-console

The PS4 has had worse backwards compatibility than the PS3 & PS Vita had (both of which liberally allowed PSX/PSP games to be played on 'em). I wonder if the companies have decided that virtualization just steals sales from modern games and deters remakes. It'd be too bad for retro-ish gamers if this ends up true...

NotMiki · « **Reply #1693 on:** May 10, 2018, 03:44:48 PM »

It'd be quite ironic if Nintendo pushed old gamers to PC because it's the easiest way to emulate Super Metroid and the like. Hard to know what Nintendo's thinking here.

What do we make of Nintendo's past practice of making you buy old NES/SNES games on a per-console basis anyway? That seems like a concern that if they sell it once and allow multi-platform playing, then they can never sell it again. I think the desire to not devalue their old games is probably the most likely culprit here, so I'd say their protecting their ability to do remakes. But if that's the case, Nintendo could be, like, actually doing way more in terms of remakes than they are. Iunno.

Grefter · « **Reply #1694 on:** May 10, 2018, 10:52:46 PM »

It is probably also telling us that VC stuff just wasn’t that profitable as a whole marketting push. The main reason MS pushes backwards compatibility this gen is because it is a unique thing on the Xboxen this gen. It is way more about maintaining player good will than profitability and good will is something Nintendo have in spades with the Switch.

Also key points to note

Quote

“no plans to bring classic games together under the Virtual Console banner as has been done on other Nintendo systems.”

Under the same Banner doesn’t mean that they won’t publish old stuff using the quality emulators they already have for the Switch, it just means they aren’t doing a targeted campaign. Presumably if someone wanted to publish a bunch of NES games they can still do so, they just will be in the global list of Switch games instead of in there own little classics section. One would also hope that you can license those emulators or something to run them? Depends how Nintendo want to productiise the technology.

Cmdr_King · « **Reply #1695 on:** May 10, 2018, 11:20:54 PM »

Netflix for video games. Stop supporting the industry? Have fun having all your stuff vanish into the ether nerds.

REVENGEANCE

Ranmilia · « **Reply #1696 on:** May 11, 2018, 04:32:03 AM »

Quote from: NotMiki on May 10, 2018, 03:44:48 PM

That seems like a concern that if they sell it once and allow multi-platform playing, then they can never sell it again.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #1697 on:** May 11, 2018, 06:10:06 AM »

Quote from: NotMiki on May 10, 2018, 03:44:48 PM

What do we make of Nintendo's past practice of making you buy old NES/SNES games on a per-console basis anyway? That seems like a concern that if they sell it once and allow multi-platform playing, then they can never sell it again.

I think the Wii U had a pretty good solution to this issue: if you already bought the game for a previous Virtual Console, you can buy it again at a significant discount for a new one. Seems like a pretty fair compromise of not making people repeatedly pay full price for something but also reflecting the costs of developing a new virtual console and continuing to give Nintendo/whoever some money. I think most people could agree that this is fair.

VC was an outstanding feature and it's sad to see it being phased out. I feel like it could still make a modest amount of money while maintaining customer good will but what do I know.

NotMiki · « **Reply #1698 on:** May 11, 2018, 09:04:53 PM »

Whatever the motivations, if you own a Switch and a 3DS and want to play Super Metriod, you're SOL. Not a great state of affairs.

superaielman · « **Reply #1699 on:** June 07, 2018, 11:46:58 PM »

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w Would be nice if something came of this.

News:

Author Topic: 2020 Miscellaneous Links: Untitled Moose Game (Read 170359 times)