Teaching on Tony Andrew Meyer

Mobile Phones at Mahurangi College - Feedback

Sat, 02 Mar 2024 21:17:51 +1200

(Post theme: The Times They Are-A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan)

This is a copy of the feedback I provided to Mahurangi College in response to this consultation request:

The Government has introduced regulations that require all state schools to have student phone rules in use. Rules must be in use as soon as possible in Term 1 2024 and no later than Term 2.

Many countries around the world have successfully banned mobile phones in classrooms, or are in the process of doing so. A solid body of evidence is emerging that supports the banning of phones in schools.

Open Letter to the Mahurangi College Board

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 11:42:18 +1200

Dear Mahurangi College Board,

Parents of students at Mahurangi College received an email from the principal on the 9th of November stating:

We would like to assure you that your child will not be discriminated against in any way by the school and we do not intend excluding students from any activities or trips that we have control over. However, in these ever changing times we have no control over the requirements that an outside organisation might place on us if we were to visit somewhere, eg. the museum. We also have no control over requirements that the government might place on us in future.

Why "3 tries and you're locked" weakens security

Tue, 03 May 2011 20:04:11 +1200

Some organisations have a security policy that after three failed authentication attempts an account is locked (requiring manual unlocking by an IT support person) - the goal is to strengthen security, but this actually decreases the security of the organisation. The intent of a policy like this is to prevent brute-force attacks - if you’re limited to three attempts per account before intervention by a human is required, then brute-forcing an account is no longer practical. However, there are better ways of preventing a brute-force attack, for example:

Dr? No.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:10:21 +1200

I finally withdrew from my PhD today (probably many people thought that this had happened some time ago).

In the beginning…

The story really starts in 1999. I started working consistently while studying, and also got rather bored with the study that I was doing. I also got involved in the Students’ Association - first lightly, then pretty heavily. As a result, at the end of 2000, I was about 1.5 papers short of finishing my BSc and BBS. I needed to do half a semester of work, and so I decided to go those at the same time as a Postgraduate Diploma in Science (these went along with running for ASA President). The ASA job didn’t work out, but I did finish the last undergrad stuff I needed to do, and rather unexpectedly found that I really enjoyed the postgrad study. I was able to do all the papers for the postgrad diploma along with the undergrad work, except for the double-paper research project, in that year. That meant that the next year started off with finishing off the research project - normally half of a semester’s load, but since I didn’t have anything else to be doing, I poured in a whole semester’s effort into it. That left me at the middle of the year with everything complete.

IronPython Course Notes - The Plan

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 16:58:46 +1200

Since I decided to use IronPython as the programming language for teaching D520 at Northtec, I’ve planned on putting my course material online so that anyone else planning on using IronPython in teaching can make whatever use of it they can. There won’t be a huge amount of material, especially in this first year, and especially since I managed to find an excellent textbook to use, but there will be some exercises, assignments, an exam, and so forth. Each year I teach a course I add new material, and while some material is replaced or removed, usually the old material stays, so the amount of material gradually increases. What I haven’t been able to decide is how to put this material online (the students have access to it via a Moodle installation, but I don’t want to make that publicly available). I toyed with the idea of putting it up in wiki format (but that seemed like a reasonable amount of work and I doubt there will be contributions from other people), with using iWeb to create a small dedicated site (mostly to play around with iWeb, which I have never really used, but that seemed like a lot of unnecessary work), or with putting it on Google Docs and sharing it that way (but I write the material in Pages and publish as PDF, so that doesn’t suit well, since I’d have to convert to Word then to Google Docs). What I’ve finally decided is that I’ll just put it up here. It’s already setup, I’m a bit busy to put much else up at the moment so it won’t be crowded, and it’s very simple for me to do. I’ve further decided that it would be best to publish it bit-by-bit (since no-one else needs it at the moment anyway - if I’m wrong about that, please contact me). Each week, after the class has finished, I’ll post all the material I used that week, and some commentary about how well it went. I think this commentary will provide added value (including for me, when I’m revising the material next year), and it means that it’s easier for me to update the material as I go (although I’ve prepared the whole course, I expect that there will be changes since it’s so different than last year’s course). I expect that as I continue to use IronPython in a teaching context, I might have additional comments that I feel like posting, so those will be nicely interspersed with the teaching material. I’ll put everything in the “Teaching” and “Python” categories, so it’ll be easy to ignore everything else here if anyone is interested in using this material. I’m making it available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License (I include using it in a similar course as non-commercial).