What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/ <comment><USER2> As someone with a spouse who has taught for over 10 years in an impoverished, inner-city school, and who has won a very impressive array of grants, awards, certifications and national-level recognition, I could not agree more strongly with this editorial.

Americans are under the misapprehension that all of their school woes stem from poor teachers. But even in poor districts like the one my spouse teaches in, which have accumulated a whole layer of apathetic teachers, the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated. A good principal, particularly one with strong school board backing, can almost single-handedly turn an entire school around (I've seen this happen twice now). An excellent teacher with a poor principal and negligent school board can do very little other than provide a strong role model for the most promising students, and (with great effort) pull a handful more of failing students up to the barely passing level than their less talented peers.

Primarily, good principals act just like good engineer managers in corporations. Just as good managers keep engineers isolated from the bullshit of upper management and adjacent managers, and give good engineers space to do their jobs, so do good principals let their good teachers do their job, and intervene when poor teachers fail to meet expectations.

Regarding the other factors mentioned, I do think poverty is a major hurdle, and the author of this piece rightly underlines its importance in poor school performance, but poverty is primarily an issue in that high-levels of poverty correlate strongly with lack of parental support and engagement (and not always due to a lack of care; often it's because these are single-parent households where that one parent is working all the time). But here an excellent principal can also make a major impact by rallying formerly disengaged parents around their kids and their kids' teachers, and supporting single-parent households where the parent is working multiple jobs.

It makes me sad to see all this rhetoric around teachers in the U.S., not only because it's depressing for my spouse to be so unappreciated by people outside the teaching profession, but also because I know it will do little to fix the main problem: school poor administrations. Nor will it address any of the other major contributing factors, like poverty and the lack of respect in high school academic excellent so prevalent in our culture, rich and poor alike.

<comment><USER3> Really insightful comment.

> the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the > impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and > the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated.

Why do you think this happens?

I'll speculate: most people form their opinion about what's important in a school by reflecting on their experience as a student.

Most students attend only one school of each kind (e.g. elementary, junior, and high school), so they don't have a great frame of reference about the results of different school administrations.

But everyone experiences many different teachers, and as a student, you really perceive the differences between the better ones and the worse ones.

I bet if you reflect on your own experience as a student, leaving aside the context of your spouse's experience as a teacher, you will have much more vivid memories and opinions about teachers than administrators.

I totally agree that it's likely to be much more effective to try to create environments that help all teachers do their jobs more effectively than it is to try to change who we're hiring. I wonder what the best way is to make people "feel" the difference between good administrators and bad ones like they "feel" the difference between their favorite teachers and their least favorite ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've worked as a teacher in both the UK and in Papua New Guinea, and from my perspective, the largest performance indicator of a child's success is the value their parents place on education.

Maybe this is one of the reasons the Finnish education system works so well. If teaching is an occupation that is culturally considered in high esteem, then it probably follows that schools are considered an important aspect of a child's life. Children are therefore encouraged to do well in schools.

In PNG, students had to pay to go to school. Often a single child was supported through their education by their extended family. Some villages could only afford to send a few students to school. Those students worked exceptionally hard, knowing that it was incumbent upon them to achieve, and eventually payback their family from the proceeds of their future careers.

When working in rural schools in the UK I have encountered many students whose parents, and therefore their children, place little value on education. Often the attitude comes down to the single phrase "I've managed and I did badly at school". Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national examinations.

If we want to raise standards in our schools (both in the UK and in the USA) I think the key is in changing cultural attitudes towards education. This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies. We need to make sure that our children value the free education they are receiving.

edit - for clarity of country name

<comment><USER5> > the largest performance indicator of a child's success is the value their > parents place on education.

+100

> This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, > schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies.

Well sometimes authorities are to blame. Look, in my country,being a teacher used to be like being a lawyer or a doctor.

It used to be a prestigious profession.

Then some politicians,influencial thinkers came in and said,"we need to focus on children,they have special needs,they are always right and if they cant learn properly it's the adults fault". 30 years forward and the education here is totally broken,teachers are despised both by students and parents who want instant gratification no matter how dumb their offspring is.

But hey,they cant be wrong,they've been told all their life they are "special" and always right ...

> Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these > parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national > examinations.

The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their offspring even if they perform poorly at school. At worse, they'll have a job at mom and pop's business.

<comment><USER6> > The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their > offspring

Details? Where do I go to buy a career? I'm not being sarcastic, I actually want to know.

<comment><USER7> Mom or Dad to business partner: if you want to make this deal with me, give my kid a management position somewhere on the project.

Or "if you give my kid an internship then I'll give you the keys to my ski lodge for this season"

<comment><USER6> That is not buying a career. That's making a deal. The guy said:

> rich people can literally buy a career

I'm not being sarcastic here. It used to be possible to purchase a commission in the military. That is speaking historically.

I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't careers today you can literally purchase. Franchising comes kind of close, and running a taxi in NYC comes close. In ancient times, you could purchase the position of tax collector.

Anyway, that person should not have said "literally" unless he meant it.

<comment><USER7> Pedanticism of this nature is literally the key to living a frustrated and lonely life. You asked for a good faith reply and I gave it to you. You then decided to play your "trick" and point out that you're actually making a totally unrelated grammatical dispute with the original poster.

I won't be falling for this again and replying to you further in the future.

I hope it feels good to be "right" all the time.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't playing a trick. There are times when using "literally" in the figurative sense actually makes sense, even though I don't approve. But this is not one. So I thought maybe the person actually meant it in the non- figurative sense.

If you want evidence that I'm an honest person, look at my comment history. I don't go around tricking people and trying to win arguments by deception. In fact, I frequently call people out for being nasty in various ways, much like you are doing here.

I can understand why you think I'm trying to trick people and I was worried that would happen. That's why I talked about historical and quasi-examples of people buying careers. I didn't want you to think or feel that I was playing a trick.

<comment><USER8> Please realize language has ambiguities and is not a program that is compiled. Deliberately nitpicking the meaning of words from someone who is generously offering to clarify a statement for you looks like a sign of bad faith. Use a charitable interpretation and figure out the idea he/she was getting at.

Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making. Wealth is influence, and influence gets you favors, like a foot into a career.

<comment><USER9> I disagree. aikah made a statement, which Javert wanted more detail on. jackvalentine claimed to explain what the other poster had said, but it didn't actually match up. He was probably right about what was meant, but maybe he wasn't and there's no real reason for the rest of us to assume it's an accurate clarification of what aikah meant.

If it had been the original poster making the clarification then moaning about 'literally' would have been pedantic, but it was not, and so therefore it was justified - it was making the point that the interpretation given by jackvalentine did not actually clarify the statement as made, and that Javert had assumed something else, more interesting was being said. At that point the conversation depressingly quickly devolves into name calling, threats and patronisation.

> Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no > currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making.

According to you. Javert was actually using a charitable interpretation when he assumed that the original maker of the statement meant what they had said.

As far as I can tell this entire subthread consists of people uncharitably failing to spot that Javert was _not_ in fact trying to score points, (or believes that language is a program to be compiled, or would benefit from a list of topics to meditate on about the evolution of language) and was merely asking for more detail, and getting upset that he is skeptical their trivial 'explanations' actually explain what was originally meant.

It's mainly a lot of people freaking out about their hot button topics without actually spending any brain power on understanding what the other person is saying and why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the > whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the > education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel > that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers._

As a layperson, I agree with the OP...The focus on the quality of teachers -- and firing "bad" ones and hiring just the "good" ones -- has always seemed to me to be overemphasized, as it makes for a sexy, easily digestible political debate. Not that good teachers (whatever your definition of "good" is) aren't worth having, but it's doubtful that they alone can have a significant impact on student outcomes...in the way we should be doubtful that the well-behaved, well-equipped cops from a rich crime-free suburb would, when moved to the Detroit PD, would have a significant impact.

I lived with a teacher and my best friend is a teacher, both are young and about my age and who work at impoverished schools, and I've been constantly amazed at how much of their talk is not about how bad the kids are, but how bad the administration is...over things such as playing favorites (among teachers) and squabbles over office space and, of course, having to buy their own supplies and books (some of which is reimbursed at the end of the year). You can chalk some of this dysfunction to the educational hot topics of the day: the power of teachers unions, teacher pay, standardized testing...but the bottom line is that passionate, effective teachers can be nullified by a weak system...in the same way that a great programmer may be ineffective in an engineering environment with poor testing/documentation processes and a terrible office environment.

<comment><USER11> Reminds of how NFL coaches are so frequently fired when their teams do poorly. It makes for good press, but the teams usually do the same under the next coach.

<comment><USER12> FiveThirtyEight examined this in the NHL.

> _Teams that fired their coaches performed exactly the same on average in the > following season as teams that kept their coaches. Notably, teams that were > sub-.400 performed 20 percent better on average the following season > regardless of whether they fired their coach or not._ [...] _Playoff > performance is no better under new coaches. Non-playoff teams go an average > of 0.5 playoff rounds the following season, whether they fire their coach or > not._

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an- nhl-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an-nhl-coach- will-be-fired-and-whether-it-matters/)

<comment><USER13> Shouldn't team performance decrease the season after a coach change since the players have to learn a new system? This seems to say that the cost of firing a poor coach is zero because at worst you will do the same as before in the short term, with a great potential upside for longer time spans.

<comment><USER14> These teams have large coaching staffs that don't get fired and change more slowly. I would guess that a coach's impact is often more long term (in training, recruitment of players and staff).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher > education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a > master's degree at one of the country's research universities.

I don't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization is bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers.

> There is another "teacher quality" checkpoint at graduation from School of > Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach > unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals > necessary to be a successful teacher.

So prospective teachers would be tested on teacher quality prior to graduation in an academic sense but not while they're actually teaching? Not sure if you can test on paper or by demonstration whether someone is an effective teacher. It is certainly more easily visible in the field.

It's a shame many in America don't respect teachers. Perhaps the resentment is due to the fact that most in America don't have a choice as to the primary school they attend. Like most Americans, I've had terrible teachers in the past and did feel some resentment. It was less infuriating in college since at least I had some choice as to the classes and school I attended. Coincidentally, I notice professors get a lot more respect.

<comment><USER16> _I don 't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization is bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers._

I felt the author's case was clearly presented, so I'll try to summarize...

Standardized tests for students are bad because they encourage bogus metrics like "teacher effectiveness".

Requiring high qualifications for teachers is good because it improves public perception of the profession and reduces churn. (Initiatives like "fast track" teacher training increase churn, and this is bad because it can lead administrators to believe that churn is part of the solution: all they need to do is somehow weed out the bad teachers and replace them with good ones.)

<comment><USER17> You have to understand that the publisher of this piece (the blog curator, Valerie Strauss) is a paid supporter of the teacher unions. That is her primary agenda, and the agenda of many opposed to teacher evaluation via job effectiveness.

If teacher effectiveness can't be measured, teachers can't be fired for performance. Union win.

<comment><USER18> If you don't standardise testing for students, you can't benchmark them. If you look at the relative performance of different countries, the US is WAY down the list of performers - and the relative scores of the US are _significantly_ behind. Start with this link for reference, [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pisa- rankings-2013-12](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pisa-rankings-2013-12)

On reading and my own indepth observations, I've come across the same themes, \- teachers must be respected as professionals \- teachers must challenge themselves, constantly looking for better approaches to education \- principals must actively support the development and training of teachers to help them grow \- parents must support the teachers by re-enforcing the importance of education \- parents and teachers MUST treat the students as young adults rather than treating them as children ... I can't emphasise this enough.

Based on my own experiences, one school we were at had terrible teachers and an average principal ... and terrible results. The other school was progressive and built confidence into everything the students did (eg. a school fair fund-raiser was completely organised and run by ALL of the primary school students). I now live in an area with one of the highest academic performance relative to the wealth of the families, Index of Community Socio- Educational Advantage (ICSEA). The attitude of parents, teachers and students is staggeringly different to the previous school we were at. It's no surprise that it's one of the best performing schools in Australia. You'll also notice that Australia is one of the better performing countries in the world. If you assume the problem is the teachers, or the parents, you're off the mark. You need ALL of them to work together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > _Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the > whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the > education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel > that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers._

This is the exact opposite of my (previous) experience teaching high school, where the main purpose was clearly to provide daycare.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what really would happen if the experiment were tried. It would be difficult indeed to find any credentialed United States schoolteachers who speak Finnish well enough to teach in Finland (but not insuperably difficult to find Finnish teachers who speak English well enough to teach in the United States, which tells us something right there). I would like to include a few more countries in the mix. Indeed, that is what I like about the new book _The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way_ ,[1] because the book follows some American exchange students over to other countries (Finland, yes, but also Korea and Poland) and examines a lot of different trade-offs that different school systems around the world have to deal with. The boy who traveled over to Korea to be an exchange student and was profiled in the book traveled over from the same school district in Minnesota I have lived in since I had children. Finland is not the only model of a different system, and we should be studying a lot of different models to make sure we aren't missing out on lessons we can learn from practice elsewhere.

P.S. I am a teacher by occupation, and I know that the research shows that teacher characteristics matter for learners. The parental involvement or value placed on education by parents mentioned in several comments that preceded mine here are important, but I deal often (just today, in fact) with trying to help parents who are involved in their children's educations but are frustrated by what's happening to their children in United States public school classrooms.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World- They/dp/145165...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World- They/dp/145165443X)

</comment><comment><USER21> The author's case is sensible and clearly presented but lacks context for the intended audience of the USA. It's pointless to say that Finland has a unified teacher preparation program, implying that other countries do not. There are in fact uniform teacher training regimes in the USA that are comparable in scale to the one in Finland. The New York City Department of Education has as many students as Finland has. LAUSD isn't much smaller. So instead of asking what lessons we could learn from Finland, would it make as much sense to cherry-pick some successful school districts from within our own country and learn lessons from them? Because that's essentially what you're doing when you use Finland as your exemplar instead of a similar-population area of Europe. How are the schools doing in Slovenia these days?

</comment><comment><USER22> _...education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually._

Or, as Hillary Clinton put it, "It takes a village." I suspect that it's a part of the plight of many immigrant parents who live in isolation from an ethnic/cultural community, to feel like asking, "What's wrong with you?" of their kids, because they keep noticing that things their kids don't know things that they "should know." My parents expected me to know many things I would've picked up in my environment, had I grown up in the same one my parents did. This kind of knowledge is illustrated in Frank McCourt's _Angela 's Ashes_ when the city born lads see a cow for the first time, and onlooking adults wonder if they are mentally deficient. "What are Cows!? Cows are cows!"

Another example of this kind of knowledge: When my family engages in activities, like going somewhere, we generally imagine what all of the others are doing and optimize our activities to minimize crossing paths and causing each other wait times. This isn't something we were ever explicitly asked to do. My sister and I just picked it up from our parents. In stark contrast, an ex-girlfriend of mine would instead only perform narrowly delegated tasks and discharge whatever task I delegated as quickly and directly as possible, without regard for how that would impact my activities, even if that would mean covering a cutting board I was using with another ingredient. Apparently, her father would punish initiative as a matter of the principle of obedience, and order around his family like robots.

Yet another example of this: in Japanese homes, people are expected to remove their shoes and arrange them in a neat and orderly array, optimized for exiting with a minimum of fuss and socks contact with the foyer floor.

Also very significant, in Finland: _" teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering."_ In the US, teachers are regarded as occupying a class between the working and professionals, esteemed lower than professions like medicine, law, and engineering. It says much about our society's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't do, teach."

 _becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of 'effectiveness' of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible._

This is somewhat the inherent dilemma of hiring for any skilled profession. Mentoring is probably key here.

<comment><USER23> _It says much about our society 's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't do, teach."_

Is that the root cause of our society's teaching-related woes, or is the aphorism itself a consequence of glut of bad teachers?

<comment><USER22> I'm saying neither. I'm saying that it's an indication of our society's true attitudes towards education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If Finland's great teachers were to teach in U.S. schools, they would encounter significant pressure to conform from students, parents and administrators. The ones who tow the line and preserve the status quo would get to keep their jobs while the others would be mobbed, manipulated and discarded. Administrators would fabricate a false narrative using negative performance review. Parents would blame the teacher for failing to "teach" which means graciously ignore their child's poor behavior and hand out high grades. This is what would happen to the great majority of great Finnish teachers were they to work here in America. The few who by good fortune places themselves in American school communities which closely resemble Finland would fit right in.

</comment><comment><USER25> One of the ways racism expresses itself in the US is in child poverty. We can't offer public assistance to poor children because it creates "welfare queens", which is a stereotype that whites have about blacks that they are lazy and will cheat.

<comment><USER6> Child poverty is not a result of racism. Child poverty is a result of people choosing to have children that they cannot support. They choose to do this with the foreknowledge that society will not provide for those children. At least, not enough to life them out of poverty.

People need to stop blaming everything on racism, and calling lots of things racist that simply are not. Conflating the issues hurts on all fronts.

In other words, it makes it harder to identify and solve the real problem, and it makes "racism" meaningless in the public dialog.

<comment><USER26> Let's imagine you care about educational outcomes and child poverty, what kinds of things would help?

Certainly free and easy access to sex education, contraception and abortion is something that is a good policy.

People, even poor people, have always, and will always want children.

Once children are born to poor parents, you need to address that poverty, or you will get poor educational outcomes for those children.

Certainly stigmatizing poor people, rather than focusing on bad luck they have had, will provoke different policy outcomes.

<comment><USER6> I didn't stigmatize poor people. If you consider stating facts of reality to be stigmatization, you are fighting reality, and that is no way to deal with it.

> rather than focusing on bad luck they have had

One of the main point of the article is precisely that being poor is not bad luck: overall, it happens because a person didn't take education seriously because they were not taught to do so by their parents.

I mean, you can say it's bad luck to be born to such parents, and I would agree there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I believe that the background of students is the most important factor when it comes to education success.

When you put a "world-class teacher" in front of 30 students who have totally different things on their mind that are NOT school-related - like e.g. having to support their drug-addicted parents, their own addictions, having to care for siblings, for food or sometimes even for a place to sleep - then even a squad of the best teachers will not help any of these kids achieve "good grades".

Putting the blame for fucked up environments on teachers (like it seems to be done very often in the US) is unfair and stupid, because the teachers are in no position to change their situation.

</comment><comment><USER28> It always amazes me when these articles about the finnish education system pop up. I'm finnish and I've dropped out of high school twice, I don't consider myself dumb and have done very well in my life (Thank you, internet). A lot better than my peers, most of them are dropouts as well. The only people who have even got to an university level are people who already were from wealthy/academic families.

It's the same thing everywhere, but I admit that education being free is a big deal, but it doesn't fix social problems.

</comment><comment><USER29> There was an interesting study of IQs by college major, showing disciplines such as social work, education and gender studies being at the lowest end of the IQ spectrum. Seems like it would be counter intuitive to ask quite so much from members of those demographics when it comes to educating our children. [http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of- students...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by- college-major-and-gender-ratio/)

<comment><USER30> The post you link to points out that the IQ values are estimated from SAT or GRE scores, and that most of the difference is explained by the quantitative section of the SAT. What that ends up showing is that social work and education are low-paid, low-prestige fields, which tend to employ more women.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is it that poor students fail so much more at education?

<comment><USER31> My wife was briefly a teacher on an Indian reservation. There were few jobs on the reservation and many of the kids' parents were unemployed, and even the ones that were rarely were in a position that required any education. That's a huge demotivator for kids--why sacrifice for education when you can't see in front of your face that education might yield any benefits? Then there was, of course, the social ills associated with poverty, which distracted kids from school: alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.

I'm personally enormously skeptical of the idea that education is a solution to poverty,[1] at a large scale. There is a game theory problem in play. The fact is that it's unlikely that education will lift an individual inner city kid "out of the hood." A relatively excellent outcome for diligence and hard work would be going into debt to attend a third rate college, for the privilege of fighting for a low-paying service job. So it's totally rational for kids to be more preoccupied with whether joining the right gang will keep them from getting harassed on the way home from school.

But if everyone worked hard and got educated, what might happen is that economic opportunities could be created "in the hood." That's the prisoners dilemma--the individually rational decision to devalue diligence and education leads to a globally worse outcome. This is where culture comes in. You see this with poor immigrant communities. They have little capital, but have cultural mores that create an incentive for education and hard work. A kid might not leave the neighborhood through education, but he'll get social standing in the community, among authority figures and peers. When everyone has that incentive, that creates economic opportunities within the neighborhood. After all, there are neighborhoods in Bangladesh far poorer on an objective scale than the worst ghettos of Chicago, that nonetheless have bustling local economies.

[1] Poverty is, of course, relative. But I'm not talking about utopia, but just about raising the plight of the poor here in the U.S. up to that of some places in Western Europe.

<comment><USER32> I am not sure what you are saying. Those who are able to learn will do so, given the right environment. Those who cannot, will not, whatever help you give them. Poverty has nothing to do with it, though those who lack the ability to learn may well also be poor.

<comment><USER33> It's unfortunate you are incorrect, statistically speaking.

In general giving people a stable, appropriate calorie diet is the best way to increase IQ over a population. Poverty has a whole lot to do with that.

Next, after you lift people out of poverty you still have the education problem. Uneducated parents don't have educated kids, statistically speaking. The first few years of life, before kids are ever sent to school define a person's learning capacity hugely. Babies that have working parents and have less personal care, less emotional closeness, and less exposure to a wide range of language are going to be disadvantaged to those kids that do.

<comment><USER32> I am from London, in the UK.

Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases).

As for schools-of course the rich people send their children to much better schools.

Those who can't send their children to local schools. What happens there depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their parents are to education.

In the case of some ethnic groups there is a strong aversion to educating their girls properly.

None of this has much to do with poverty, emotional closeness or whatever else you claim.

<comment><USER34> _Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases)._ Sure; foods high in sugar and fat have no effects on concentration levels versus healthier food, right?

 _Those who can 't send their children to local schools. What happens there depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their parents are to education._ This is deeply ignorant. What happens when a smart kid is in the middle of a class filled with kids who have no interest in learning? Do you think the teacher will craft a whole special course specific to that kid? Or do you think the teacher will try to get something basic to stick at the lowest level, so almost all the kids get at least something from their education?

What happens when a kid's peers mock the kid for being a swot? How socially integrated is the kid going to be, when all his friends do things in the evenings, and the kid's stuck doing homework and study? Ever heard of peer pressure? Gangs? Do you have any memories of growing up in a state school in a poor area, of the risk of being beaten up if you venture into the wrong area, wearing the wrong uniform?

<comment><USER32> It's always a pleasure to interact with people who respond emotionally, based on some other issue, than the one that is being discussed, so I congratulate you for your response.

I presume that you're upset with life being unfair, which it most certainly is.

It does not change the fact that lack of calories is not a significant factor in poor educational attainment in the UK.

There are also many reasons for a pupil not getting top grades-but being dragged into gang life by anti-intellectual peers is not one that ranks highly.

More common, in my experience, are boys wasting hours on playing computer games and smoking dope.

As for getting beaten up by entering into the wrong area-I don't see how that stops them from doing their homework in their bedroom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> there's a lot of talk here about teacher/school standardization but I dont see any talk of what that standardization is, only whos at fault. students dont do poorly in school because the information to learn isnt there or even because its not encouraged by the students parents (speaking of the us education system). students fail at school because of how much its geared to teach square pegs when many students arent a square peg.

sure some teachers may teach for square pegs while others teach for round pegs but the students dont get the option of attending the class for round pegs instead of the square peg class. instead the student is thrown into a teachers class and has to conform to however that teacher wants to structure and grade the class. class A may be graded mostly on tests while class B may be mostly on homework and even still class C may be a mix of both homework and tests. then other teachers like to throw artifacts such as attendance to skew the grade even more.

finally theres the problem of subjects that people just arent good at or dont care for because they provide little real world use. subjects such as history or soke more advanced english or math. these turn into something that a student is not only forced to attend and contribute to but also be judged on.

for a personal anecdote and one of ky sources of critisms, when I was a freshman in high school I was in an algebra class and aced both finals with the highest grade in the class while getting A's and B's on all of my tests. one thing I never did though was the homework (I turned in maybe two homework assignments the entire year). end of the year comes and I fail the class because I didnt turn in the homework and I had a habit of sleeping in the class.

to top off all of that there are teachers who just suck and/or dont get along with certain students. teachers who are condescending to soke students or try to keep students in class during lunch. its not a teachers job to punish kids in any way. if the student is disruptive to the class then they should dismiss the student from the class and have the school take care of problem students.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough" Let me guess. They give their teachers a decent pay?

</comment><comment><USER37> I would presume they would teach as well as great teachers from the US.

</comment><comment><USER38> Something worth noting whenever Finland and education come up: Finnish- Americans in America do better than Finns in Finland.

<comment><USER39> Isn't that generally the case income-wise? Immigrants are a self-selecting bunch. Picking up and moving to a different country is hard and you need to be fairly dedicated to cross that gulf and put up with all the differences in order to make it work. South Asian Indian-Americans are one of the highest earning ethnic groups in the US, earning about twice the median national household income. But the median income in India is awful.

<comment><USER38> That's a very interesting question, and the answer isn't straight-forward. On the one hand, obviously we should expect some selection effects. On the other hand, there is a relative status effect counter-acting it. Long story short, people prefer to be relatively rich in a poor country than relatively poor in a rich country, even if their absolute level of wealth would increase. Stark & Taylor (1991)[0] for example found that, at least when it comes to Mexico, the relative preference trumps the absolute preference: poorer households were more likely to migrate.

[0] [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=2110552233...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=21105522338573&uid=2&uid=3738128&uid=4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> You'd need a lot of Finnish teachers

</comment><comment><USER32> Haven't read the piece, but will say this (which is blindingly obvious to everyone except those in control of the system):

All you need to do to get a good secondary education system is to hire good graduates,train them and support their professional development.

What does not work is hiring idiots, de-skilling the job, filling the day with busy work and other pointless nonsense.

<comment><USER41> I am suspicious of any comment about American education that contains the words "blindingly obvious" and "all you need to do".

The problems that exist in American education are incredibly complex. We've tried a lot of big new things based on a simple, reductive approach (examples: testing and accountability for schools and for teachers, small schools, charter schools, Teach for America). I don't think any of these big new ideas have transformed a low-performing urban public school system into a system where educated white professionals would send their kids.

<comment><USER32> Well,each to their own. The US has proved spectacularly inept in a number of areas (healthcare, obesity, guns and education) and the causes are indeed blindingly obvious to anyone who is not an American.

<comment><USER42> It's worth noting that 3/4 of the problems you list didn't exist 30 years ago.

The US had a highly functional, cost effective healthcare system until the early 1990s, when costs began to soar. In fact it still has the best hospitals and doctors in the world to this day, along with the best technology and best drugs. The US also has by far the most innovative healthcare tech and pharma industries.

The US did not have an obesity _problem_ until the last 20 or 30 years.

The US still has by far the best universities on earth. There isn't even a close second. Make a list of the top 20 universities and the US will take 17 of those slots. It had a tremendous public education system, again, until about 20 years ago. And even now, half the country still does have an excellent public education system.

If the US is so inept at education, how come US universities stand so far above the rest of the world, and have for decades? Quick, name five universities of equal quality to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton - anywhere on earth, eg: Sweden, Switzerland, Norway.

<comment><USER32> Proving the point that Americans are totally blind to what everyone else can see.

1 Obesity-apparently not a problem because it didn't exist 30- years ago.

That, I find hard to believe if I remember my first trip to the US in the late 1980s and the free food restaurants in Las Vegas.

2 Healthcare -an obvious disaster, due to lack of access and the lifestyle of a large part of the population. Oh, it will also bankrupt the country without major reforms.

3 The universities-rankings are based on research, which in turn are based on buying in talent.Don't kid yourself that they reflect the quality of undergraduates that are turned out or the population as a whole.

4 As for guns-no need to bother with that one.

<comment><USER42> I never said obesity isn't a problem, so right off the bat you're misleading on what I said.

In fact the US did not have an obesity problem in the 1980s. Between 1980 and 2000, the obesity rate doubled among adults in the US, per the CDC. What I originally said is accurate and easy to prove.

The obvious point, is that America has only become "inept" in the last 20 to 25 years on obesity. It's a very recent problem. It can be reversed and solved as quickly as it become a problem. I'd argue that peak obesity has already occurred, the causes have almost all been clearly identified, and over the next 20 years Americans will get less obese measured by every five years that go by.

2) Total healthcare costs stopped increasing several years ago. In fact it's more likely that healthcare costs as a % of GDP and income will decline for the next 20 years. It's not going to bankrupt the country without major reforms. Not even remotely close. The US has among the highest disposable income levels in the world, healthcare expenses are a very manageable problem even at these elevated cost levels.

Americans do not have a healthcare access problem. In fact Americans are the most over-doctored, over-tested, over-treated people on earth, and it's a huge contributing factor for why Americans spend so much on healthcare. Americans consume more healthcare services than any other people. Nearly 90% of Americans have health coverage now, and the majority of those in the 10% that do not, choose not to. The poor in America have had complete coverage for a very long time, via state medicaid, among a dozen other programs.

Saying something is so, does not prove it. If you're going to make outlandish claims (the US will be bankrupted by healthcare costs), you should back them up.

3) The universities in the US outrank their peers in other countries across the board on a direct comparison basis (top vs top, middle vs middle). It's embarrassing how far ahead the US has been for the last 40 years. It's universally accepted that the US has by far the best universities. There's no debate to be had here, at all.

<comment><USER32> As I said, this is pretty much complete nonsense and a classic example of the phenomenon of American blindness to their problems.

Take your ludicrous assertion that healthcare costs will decline as a % of GDP over the next 20 years.

You are on another planet to the rest of us.

<comment><USER42> And yet I'm the one backing up my position, meanwhile you stick to hurling insults.

We're already at a point where healthcare costs as a % of GDP will begin declining. With the expansion of the ACA, the US Government has begun doing what every country in Europe does: squeezing unnecessary costs out of healthcare any way they can.

You claimed healthcare costs would bankrupt the US without reforms. Now let's see you prove what you said, instead of relying on ad hominem attacks in place of actual data points.

Per capita healthcare expenditure growth has been falling for about 12 years now, and is down to low single digits: [http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg)

"Medical Costs Register First Decline Since 1970s" [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs- regi...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs-register- first-decline-since-1970s/)

"CBO: Declining Health Care Costs Will Lower US Budget Deficit" [http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly- low...](http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly-lower- deficits-as-health-subsidies-fall/1893114.html)

"Republicans Hurt By Slowing Costs in Health Care In the 2014 election, Democrats seize on opportunity to talk about Medicare." [http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans-h...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans- hurt-by-slowing-costs-in-health-care)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Supreme Court loses its cryptographer - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/the-supreme-court-loses-its-cryptographer/ <comment><USER2> The title makes it sound as if he was a current seat holder.</comment>


Teacher's low-tech laptop hack to display handwritten notes for online class - <AUTHOR> https://mothership.sg/2020/09/cd-zoom-hack-camera-teacher/ <comment><USER3> My wife is a kindergarten teacher, and has been back at (virtual) teaching now for 2 weeks. Whatever your political persuasion, it's pretty mind blowing how little the districts prepared for and invested in a virtual year. It's not exactly like this snuck up on them, we've been locked down for 6 months now. You'd think they'd have decided on common software platforms, provided some training for the teachers, something.

Luckily, my wife is fairly tech savvy so is hanging in there, but even just general things like how to have an effective virtual planning meeting is just not something she's really ever had to do. So I've been trying to help her and her coworkers, like recording a half hour video where I just explained all the different capabilities of Zoom, and another where I explained Trello and Google slides.

Just sad how the school administration's plan boiled down to burying their head in the sand and hoping it would all go away. Really bolsters the narrative that they just don't care about the teachers.

<comment><USER4> > it's pretty mind blowing how little the districts prepared for and invested > in a virtual year.

I think you're underestimating the effect of poor direction from their districts, and in turn poor direction to the districts from the state and federal government on this.

Up until a month or so before the start of the school semester, we were still receiving communications about "if we start with in-classroom learning". These schools have set budgets, and large expenditures are planned and paid for over years, and to be faced with a hard fork in the road choice over a summer about whether to put all your eggs into distance learning (when many politicians were vowing students would be in classrooms) or to try for a hybrid approach, or to assume the politicians know what they're talking about and kids will all be in class come late August/early September, it's not hard to see how this situation could turn out as bad as it had.

Extreme circumstances require solid leadership. All it would have taken would have been the President (or even someone high in the Department of Education with the President's blessing, so it wasn't contradicted a day later) to say "we're hoping students will be able to return to class come the start of school, but we're allocating funds and directing districts to prepare for the eventuality that it may not happen, either overall or in their locality." and that clear signal that schools needed to prepare for this and would be supported in doing so would have made all the difference.

This whole year has been a comedy of errors. Like so many of those, what you're really seeing is just a tragedy.

<comment><USER5> I can't agree here. Boards could have prepared (not spent) by splitting into preparation teams for all three eventualities, producing a plan for each scenario. In each case they could have gathered freely available resources (Youtube videos, websites!) for the associated and chosen technology set. They could have gathered and organized these items into something as free, and as simple as a Microsoft Word document - something they already have. This information could be passed upstream until such time that a decision was made. For those boards that had summer education hours, the time could have been allocated to familiarization with the learning materials and technologies.

I can heartily attest that even boards that were 100% planning on remote learning in April (I'm looking at you TDSB, YRDSB, TCSB in Toronto area) did literally none of this. How do I know - teachers all over the family, and my own efforts to literally help a private school board do this. I'd also note the private board spent zero dollars until the day before the first day of school.

It costs money to purchase things. It costs time to train people. But when you literally have the board "working" during the summer, and not on a curriculum, this is really just an indictment of an inability to organize.

<comment><USER6> Humans could have come together and agreed we would move entirely to clean sources of power and be 80% of the way there.

That clearly hasn't happened either.

Surely you've been in a meeting room with more than about 5 people? All of those people have conflicting viewpoints, theories about the situation, risk analysis and so on.

Can you imagine being a board member who spent 30% of a school budget on remote learning only to have in-class instruction all year?

Hindsight is 20/20\. School budgets are generally tight, their IT teams have less-than-desired-bandwidth, and they've already had to handle costs and challenges with the current situation such as getting mobile hotspots and video conferencing solutions up. Remember that not all kids have laptops or internet at home - and school IT gets to handle that situation too.

<comment><USER7> > Hindsight is 20/20.

Especially when predicting failure was inevitable after somebody has clearly failed.

Citing a list of challenges (and renewable energy and imagination) is not a proof that failure couldn't have been avoided, it's a version of the "it's all so complicated, we can't say anything because we weren't there" trick. But the fact is that plenty of people understood the challenges, which were not at all new (what was new was the scale), and plenty of people were there (including the person you replied to) and are telling you about the failures that they saw.

<comment><USER6> I have a family member who is in a school IT department. They spent all summer preparing for remote learning.

Then they spent the last two weeks bulk flashing student laptops and ripping apart streaming servers to restore normal in-person learning because the governor put in a new order.

Anyone can predict that a failure will occur, predicting the specific mode of failure is almost impossible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My kids use an educational app series called Osmo, which comes with a reflector like this for iPad (1). Field of view and distortion may be an issue, but I bet a vendor could easily make something similar designed for this use case.

It also looks like there are $6 clip-on mirrors (2) that would also do an admirable job, perhaps with more stability and control than the pencil- balancing trick.

(1) Osmo - Base for iPad [https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07JNZ4J67/](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07JNZ4J67/)

(2) Flexible 4" Clip On Mirror for Computer Monitor - Convex Desk Mirror to See People Behind You - Perfect in Any Office Cubicle Environment [https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B078NB3JV2/](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B078NB3JV2/)

<comment><USER9> Official app support for teachers:

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1502489790](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1502489790)

[https://www.playosmo.com/blog/introducing-osmo- projector/](https://www.playosmo.com/blog/introducing-osmo-projector/)

[https://twitter.com/PlayOsmo/status/1241152565083090947](https://twitter.com/PlayOsmo/status/1241152565083090947)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Clever. But also tragic. The poor teachers who have been caught in the middle of all this really make me feel sad.

Teaching is already a rough gig, and being forced to improvise with limited to no support from communities, schools, or governments.

<comment><USER11> Being forced to improvise with limited support is a fairly normal situation for teachers tbh.

<comment><USER12> I had to buy pens for white boards even though I was volunteering to help students prepare to university exams as a math/physics teacher, I wasn't getting a single penny and I had to pay for minimal resources because they were only available for free for the hired teachers.

I have nothing but a giant respect for teachers that are usually underpaid for the giant importance that they carry on their shoulders, a good teacher can help completely change the life of their students.

<comment><USER13> I know of teachers buying all sorts of stuff for school, or for specific children.

Cheap sports shoes so the poor kid isn't left out after he lost his shoes but can't afford new ones, pens etc for children who lose them and don't have friends who will lend them one, tampons or sanitary towels for girls whose parents refuse to accept she's growing up.

Example article on this: [https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nearly-1-in-10-school...](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nearly-1-in-10-school- staff-are-bringing-in-food-tampons-and-pens-for-children-in- need_uk_5bb499cce4b028e1fe393bd4?guccounter=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> She's getting a surprisingly high-quality reflection from that CD. I would have thought a CD wouldn't have had enough specularity, or created too much distortion to achieve that kind of quality.

The only downside appears to be that you have to angle the CD, in order to reflect the keyboard plane into the webcam, which means the captured image can only be viewed at an angle.

It'd be nice to have some live, post-processing to fix some issues like this. You could apply a perspective transformation to rotate the image to a head-on view, and maybe increase the contrast between black and white.

<comment><USER15> It does make you wonder why not just use a small mirror. It might be a little bit harder to suspend in place correctly depending on weight but it'll do the job perfectly.

<comment><USER16> The trick is that the CD/DVD acts as a _first surface_ mirror.

I just tried it with a bit of regular mirror (second surface) taped to bits of an old lamp. It does not work well, as there are internal reflections and glare from the glass fronting. You get slight double images too.

First surface mirrors can be made by taking apart kaleidoscopes and using the mirrors in them. That or dissolving the protective backing to regular mirrors with acetone. You can buy them outright as well, but they tend to be more expensive (~$20 each).

A CD/DVD is much easier than the other options and I'd say that the hack is even easier than a regular mirror.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_surface_mirror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_surface_mirror)

<comment><USER15> I just tried it with a freebie compact from a makeup store and a single piece of tape (definitely simpler than these tape/pencil/coin shenanigans), and it worked better than I've been able to get any CD to work while taking literally less than a minute to set up properly. Proof: [https://i.imgur.com/OF29Ci3.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/OF29Ci3.jpg)

I'm really struggling to see how the pencil/CD/coin solution is better. I wouldn't be surprised if more teachers have compacts readily available than CDs. I think the whole CD thing is going viral because it falls into the "clever lifehack" bucket, i.e. it is optimized for hackiness virality while not actually being the best/simplest solution to the problem. But a simple compact taped to a laptop screen isn't as interesting of a "hack", and thus doesn't go viral.

(Also -- conveniently -- the layer of glass/plastic on compacts is super thin, basically just barely enough to prevent the aluminum or whatever from oxidizing and from you getting the mirrored surface all fingerprinty, so it doesn't seem to cause noticeable internal reflection problems. And it's thinner than the layer of plastic on CDs, which are NOT first surface mirrors, which is easily provable by scratching the bottom of the CD and noting that you're scratching the plastic and not the reflective material directly.)

<comment><USER17> It's better because it's a surprisingly universally applicable solution.

<comment><USER15> Actually, I think my solution is more universally workable. You're overestimating how many teachers will have suitably reflective CDs on hand and underestimating how many will have small mirrors on hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reminds of the "hot pocket" Dr. Gillingham's surgical team developed in Iraq for keeping air-evac'd patients warm: wrap patient in blanket, put blanket- burrito-patient in a body bag with a hole cut out for their face. Battlefield hypothermia cases went to 0 overnight.

[https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032(17)30097-2/pdf](https://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032\(17\)30097-2/pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like how her hack doesn't involve using another video feed, which makes it a lot more accessible to anyone with a laptop.

One improvement I can see - maybe better to tape the pencil with the eraser point up, so you're less likely to accidentally stab yourself with the pencil if moving the laptop or CD?

<comment><USER20> We could drastically cut costs with a nickel instead of a quarter.

<comment><USER21> 2 pennies would be cheaper. Here are US coin weights, in grams:

      5.670 quarter
      2.268 dime
      5.000 nickel
      2.500 penny

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is similar to the solution I found for showing hands and face in a piano lesson. I spent a long time trying to get two cameras working. First by composing the video streams with ffmpeg or gstreamer and then by screen sharing a application which showed a second video. But in all cases the synchronisation was really bad.

Then I realised a mirror composes two images really well :)

Later I used transparent perspex with lighting (peppers ghost) as the mirror so the laptop screen on the piano is visible.

It is described here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Qp8iHre9o&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4Qp8iHre9o&t=1s)

<comment><USER23> This is super useful. I have a daughter who is a piano performance major and I spent ages getting a working two camera set up for her. I wish I had seen this then (or better thought of it myself).

I expect her university will end up going fully remote again next semester, so we will no doubt be putting this to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another option is to use a mobile phone and whatever can work as a "tripod". I used a large clothes peg and the lamp over my dining table.

There are apps that will stream the image from the phone to the computer, and in Zoom it can be added as a second video feed. That means the class can see the teacher's face as well as the paper.

I tried a few apps, but I don't remember which worked, or their names, except for [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dev47apps....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dev47apps.droidcam&hl=en)

<comment><USER24> I use this app over a USB connection. The phone (Pixel 3a) used to overheat but I picked up a USB fan which keeps it cool. Only downside is no virtual webcam driver on FreeBSD, so I boot to Windows for video chats.

<comment><USER25> How is a video streaming app making your phone overheat? Doesn't that phone have specialized hardware for video processing?

<comment><USER24> It would be interesting to compare against just taking a very long video. Charging over USB (used for the connection) is probably a factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _This_ is what real judaad [1] looks like! It blows my mind when people come up with such ingenious solutions, only partly because I've never been able to.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24459888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24459888)

</comment><comment><USER27> While it is mind blowing how less we've invested in modernizing education, the biggest barrier I've seen in recent times is - educating the educators.

For reference, I helped set up my high school with a <insert-suite-for- education> for free and they were very happy as there were folks charging them to get it set up. But next biggest problem I saw was - teachers who have been using a blackboard all their life trying to do their best to teach with a powerpoint presentation.

Problem is exacerbated when you throw in more variables like - flaky internet connection, inconsistencies in UI all across, hardware failures, zoombombing and a certain lack of features. Now do this in India - where the student:teacher ratio is absolutely crazy.

Really goes to show how we should get the fundamentals right.

<comment><USER28> > Really goes to show how we should get the fundamentals right.

We did for a long time then everyone said that computers had to be used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe I'm missing something but how is the image so clear? CDs don't have a mirror like surface, they reflect light in unusual ways

<comment><USER30> The rather shallow angle probably helps a lot. On top of that the camera probably has some form of auto white balance which will counteract the tint the CD will give to the image.

Here's a quick proof of concept using a random CD and my phone's camera: [https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200914-000627_psx-cd- reflectio...](https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200914-000627_psx-cd- reflection.jpeg)

Note that the color of the reflection is not much different from a normal picture (visible at the bottom). For added difficulty I used an original PlayStation disc, that's dyed black: [https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200914-000836_psx- cd.jpeg](https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200914-000836_psx-cd.jpeg)

<comment><USER31> It's very HN that we've been trolled into debating the irrefutable, widely- known, totally obvious fact that a CD reflects light.

<comment><USER29> Didn't mean to come across as a troll, this is how I remember CDs, with rainbow diffraction. [https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cd](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=cd)

<comment><USER30> I think at such shallow angles it's the plastic surface that becomes reflective, not the metal layer with the pits and grooves. Hence the lack of diffraction (and hence why it works with my black PSX disc).

<comment><USER32> She's using a CD-RW with blue/purple dye. The reflection is definitely coming off the surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Amazing how creative people can be when faced with little resources and an important problem. This is one of the few pieces of content that is truly able to wow me.

Now it needs to go viral for all the other teachers. Maybe a site will emerge from this where teachers can share best practices, and everyone can benefit from some of the creations.

</comment><comment><USER34> You can use the same trick to make a touch screen for any laptop with a webcam! [https://github.com/bijection/sistine](https://github.com/bijection/sistine)

The mirror system isn't quite as macgyvered though :)

</comment><comment><USER35> I like the hack. Kudos to that teacher.

Reminds me of the "space pen" urban myth.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or- fiction-n...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa- spen/)

</comment><comment><USER36> My wife is a 2d grade teacher. She brought home her lumens ladybug that she used with her Promethean board in the classroom. However, the lag was terrible, her 2012 macbook pro just couldn't handle it. Our solution was to re-purpose an old ipad along with reflector teacher [https://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/teacher](https://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/teacher) ($17.99). Yeah, just in case you're curious - my wife teaches for a SF Bay Area school district where I suppose they can afford lots of stuff except a refresh of eight year old laptops.

<comment><USER25> They could literally go to Apple's doorstep and ask for sponsorship; I'm sure Apple can use it in one of their saccharine marketing videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Another option (although requires more tech) is to use the camera from a mobile phone connected to the computer via USB. Requires app + USB cable + "drivers" installed on the host computer.

My teacher friend recommended DroidCamX (paid) but the drivers are windows only so I wasn't able to use that.

I instead tested with Iriun [https://iriun.com/](https://iriun.com/) and it worked OK with my newer phone (the older phone I wanted to use had trouble with autofocus... though maybe that's because of the way I have it suspended from a desk lamp).

It lags a little, but overall usable.

<comment><USER38> Can't you also just join the Zoom/Meet/Whatev from your phone?

<comment><USER37> Yes for a live call that would probably be the easiest.

The USB camera use case is to send "table top" video input into OBS, mix with other sources, and record the lesson for offline async viewing (flipped classroom).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if a DVD versus a CD produces better or worse diffraction/distracting artifacts in the image? or maybe it doesn't even matter given the resolution of the camera.

</comment><comment><USER40> My kid has an Osmo kit that did the same trick with a little mirrors that fit an iPad perfectly:

[https://www.playosmo.com](https://www.playosmo.com)

<comment><USER9> Official app for students\teachers [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1502489790](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1502489790)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Theres got to be tons of sellers/makers in shenzhen that are either laughing or dismayed over the lack of tooling for our teachers in response to this.

</comment><comment><USER42> What I find the most striking about this hack is that by doing it, the teacher is indirectly modeling clever problem solving techniques to the class.

</comment><comment><USER43> Wouldn't the text be a mirror image (backwards)

<comment><USER44> I had the same question (and tried it with my webcam app and a handheld mirror just to make sure I wasn't crazy) but I see another commenter has mentioned Zoom's feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I applaud the inventive of being able to solve a problem with the tools and knowledge at hand but I must say it hit me like a blow to see that one key component to a low tech hack was a MacBook, one of the most expensive laptops out there.

My teachers all have laptops with cameras that don't reach even half of that kind of crispness of image sadly.

</comment><comment><USER46> My friend is a teacher and uses an application that turns his phone into a webcam.

He puts the device on a shelf with the camera facing down.

</comment><comment><USER47> Fascinating how the article has "how it works" explanation, despite showing the picture right above that.

<comment><USER48> For a nation that so unwisely overspends on other foolish things, and not enough nor intelligently on education, thus leaving school districts lacking in the basics - which require teachers to hack their way through classes...yes, i can imagine the author(s) might assume that such an audience might need extra help in understanding.

Disclaimer: I'm an American and while i'm often proud of my country, i acknowledge how awful our collective priorities have become with education in general suffering from it...and at the risk of sounding political (apologies)...Neither of the 2 major political parties seems to have the answer. <sigh>

<comment><USER49> I realize politics is frowned on here, and there is much I'd like to say yet won't, but do take a look at [https://articlesofunity.org/](https://articlesofunity.org/).

<comment><USER48> Interesting, I've never heard of this; thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> That's why I think the iPad pro has so much potential to replace laptops for a lot of people.

<comment><USER25> If only they were affordable. You can get a good enough laptop for $300, an ipad pro is thrice that, more if you need the keyboard / stand to go with it.

<comment><USER51> The basic iPad is $329. It is a modern fast computer that has everything built-in. The only things you need to add is a keyboard and/or a stand/case.

Apple hardware is no longer expensive these days — I mean, they will let you spend as much as you want and take your money, but their lineup starts quite low and provides excellent value for the money.

<comment><USER52> Basic ipad hits it limits pretty quickly in multitasking use cases and the screen real estate is half that of a laptop.

<comment><USER50> are we still comparing that to a 300$ laptop?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is such a simple hack. It's basically equivalent to the classroom transparency overhead projectors of the past. You could 3d print a similar device with a USB webcam and a proper mirror for pennies. Is there a market for this?

<comment><USER54> Yes, there is a market for things that do this - it's the projector market, so if people don't have the money to enter the projector market they use hacks like this one - <USER2>

[https://hackaday.com/2014/03/13/make-an-hd-projector-for- nex...](https://hackaday.com/2014/03/13/make-an-hd-projector-for-next-to- nothing/) [https://www.instructables.com/id/Convert-a-40-years-old- DIA-...](https://www.instructables.com/id/Convert-a-40-years-old-DIA-slide- projector-to-a-De/)

first couple of hits for me when googling "convert old olverhead projector"

So market wise maybe there is a hacky way that allows you to get a cheap reasonably efficient projector thaat would make these hacks irrelevant, without naturally pushing to solve the problems of the projector market and thus pushing the product to have a projector type price. I certainly wish I could think up something that fell in that niche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> There is a "Phone Periscope" I use, that you can buy on Amazon / eBay for a few dollars, that might be useful if you need something like this: [https://www.amazon.com/s?k=phone+periscope](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=phone+periscope)

Some have a little magnet so it can be detached and re-attached quickly.

We use it to make a phone-based people counter. Recently found out that in China they're marketed as phone attachments to take pervy, upskirt photos of girls without getting caught.

</comment><comment><USER56> Cool, but they could have just spent less money on a Windows laptop with a stylus and touch screen. I use my stylus extensively at work, but many employers still have their users on machines without them. Such a shame.

I don't understand why Apple keeps holding back the Mac platform, but I finally had to give up. I love my iPad for what it is great at, but gave up on Mac eight years ago. This reminds me of the black and white Mac Classics with tiny screens in school, when everyone had colour PCs that cost less.

</comment><comment><USER57> In our district some teachers were trying to do this until my wife reminded them they can run webex on their cell phone... Sad the district spent a lot of time and money on owl webcams to follow the presenter but nothing to cover the basic class room ops.

</comment><comment><USER58> This is quite impressive, but - to nitpick a bit - doesn't this setup get messed up by the keyboard being pressed due to pressure on the writing pad, and the focus going to some other window, or menu, or something?

</comment><comment><USER41> I was pointed to this by Naomi Wu:

This maybe something that local hacker spaces could pump out:

[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4588215](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4588215)

</comment><comment><USER59> I happened to have a HD Webcam from years ago. I plugged that into my wife's laptop, use the default windows Webcam software...And then share screen.

I rigged up a stand so she can slide papers in and out.

</comment><comment><USER60> _This_ is what I think of when I think "innovation": a different perspective. Not lost in the weeds of details, but a thousand miles above them.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wouldn't writing on that transfer the pressure through the notebook to the keyboard? How would you avoid random key presses?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hardware solution: plastic tray over the keys.

Software solution: Keyboard Cleaner [http://jan.prima.de/~jan/plok/archives/48-Keyboard- Cleaner.h...](http://jan.prima.de/~jan/plok/archives/48-Keyboard-Cleaner.html)

<comment><USER62> Hardware solution: $1 plastic cutting board

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> You can also connect your phone to your laptop through usb or wifi and use it as a camera positioning it however you like.

</comment><comment><USER64> Better wait until Apple Mirror is available which does the same, but in a beautiful aluminium finish and just costs $99.

</comment><comment><USER65> [https://twitter.com/yadav_monica/status/1292047281676382210](https://twitter.com/yadav_monica/status/1292047281676382210) is another instance where a teacher from India used a smartphone and a refrigerator tray for sharing hand-written notes. I believe that this would give more clarity than the surface area of the CD.

</comment><comment><USER66> It solves two problems at once: Letting the document lay flat, and mirror- imaging the camera.

</comment><comment><USER67> > A pencil (a pen should also work fine)

That's a detailed explanation :-)

</comment><comment><USER68> Literally gonna do this for "System Design" interviews

<comment><USER69> Now with it on HN front page you have to think up something different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> This is classic jugaad. Well done, and to great effect!

</comment><comment><USER71> That's an absolutely brilliant hack! wow!

</comment><comment><USER72> Who said people don't use CD-ROMs?

</comment><comment><USER73> She should have just got a Surface device, or a million other laptop SKUs with pen support that are cheaper than the MacBook she's using.

<comment><USER74> That model Macbook is 4-8 years old. This is a pretty useless and condescending comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Sure, this works, but a cheap USB webcam would have been a far better solution than writing on top of your keyboard

<comment><USER76> What makes it a better solution? Albeit a bit "life hack"-y, this is something that requires no technical skill or support, and is easily assembled from household items, so very little outlay.

I don't think I'd concede that webcams are a better solution, when thinking as an underfunded body such as a school district who may have to provide support for potentially thousands of these webcams to work for all their teachers.

Furthermore, I don't think this is something that we should hold the individual teacher responsible for: teaching is already a full time job, and workers should not have to buy their own equipment to do their job with, something that already happens too much in that field.

I did also think the writing on the keyboard might prove problematic, but also the teacher could theoretically remove the notepad and place it back if they wished. It's a relatively "open" technique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Presented by Disney and Apple ;)

But from where do they have those round mirrors i ask? What is it?

</comment><comment><USER78> Clever. Now someone from China needs to make a plastic mirror reflection mount device to put on top of your laptop camera.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.ipevo.com/products/mirror- cam](https://www.ipevo.com/products/mirror-cam)

<comment><USER52> Need a periscope version so it doesn't awkward cram onto the keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I wonder how long it will take Apple to offer this as a product for $99 and come up with a clever way to make the makeshift version to stop working.

Not a common enough use case for them to bother, I guess. But if it were we all know they totally would.

<comment><USER69> Not Apple, but for accessory (esp. webcam) vendors virtual classes surge is definitely an opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> Jesus christ. Just get a cheap wacom tablet.

<comment> chris-orgmenta This would come across as extremely tone deaf from teachers that are on low salaries, paying out of pocket already for student tools and consumables.

There are quite a few posts in this thread where 'check your privilege' applies.</comment></comment>


How To Fix Your Broken NES - <AUTHOR> http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Fix_Your_Broken_NES <comment><USER2> HA! I used to do that for a living. That black plastic harmonica-looking thing cost 15 bucks direct from Nintendo.

Nintendo had a seriously paranoid setup, too: every month they'd send the new price lists and we were told to to cross-shred the old ones, mix the shards, put in separate bags and dispose of in 3 or more locations.</comment>


Athletes in YC or other top tier Accelerators  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.athletepreneur.com/post/81457488182/top-startup-accelerators-w-athlete-founders

<comment><AUTHOR> Are there any other former collegiate or pro athletes that have been accepted in to YC?</comment>


Git Large File Storage 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/2069-git-large-file-storage-v1-0 <comment><USER3> While I'm sure this will help some people use git to address a use case that was previously impossible with git, I can't help but feel that it a bad step overall for the git ecosystem.

It appears to centralize a distributed version control with no option to continue to use it in a distributed fashion. What would be wrong with fixing/enhancing the existing git protocols to enable shallow fetching of a commit (I want commit A, but without objects B and C, which are huge). Git already fully supports working from a shallow clone (not the full history) so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to make it work with shallow trees (I didn't fetch all of the objects).

I'm sure git LFS was the quickest way for github to support a use case, but I'm not sure it is the best thing for git.

<comment><USER4> Mercurial marks their Largefiles[0] support as a "feature of last resort". IE: enabling this breaks the core concept of what a DVCS is, as you now have a central authority you need to talk with. But at the same time, many people that use Git and HG use it with a central authoritative repo.

[0] [https://www.mercurial- scm.org/wiki/LargefilesExtension](https://www.mercurial- scm.org/wiki/LargefilesExtension)

<comment><USER5> ++! When I was in the games industry, it was extremely important to have this feature (and yes, it was a last resort!) This is why, then, we choose Mercurial over Git.

Unfortunately there is a lot of wackyness and far too often assets got out of sync. We ended up regressing, and put large assets (artwork) into a subversion repo instead.

I wish there was a better option, such as truncating the history of largeFiles, but that seems to break the concept of Git/Mercurial even more than the current "fix"

<comment><USER4> How long ago were you having problems with it? I've heard it's been a lot better in the more recent years.

<comment><USER5> Indeed that was about 5 years ago. The problems generally were around assets getting out of sync, and occasionally corruption when uploading to the large- file storage server.

Problems generally occurred when a client timed out in the middle of an upload or download.

They were troublesome issues (and silent failures) which made it unusable for production use.

Hope they got it fixed, it was a great concept, and well ahead of Git in attempting to solve!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Without locking this is largely useless.

Usually large files are binary blobs(PSD, .ma, etc) and it becomes _incredibly_ easy to blow away someone's work by not pulling before every file you edit(or two people edit at the same time).

As much as some people hate Perforce that's exactly what they are setup to do. Plus their binary syncing algorithms are top-notch. We used to regularly pull ~300GB art repo(for gamedev) in ~20 minutes.

Git is great for code but this seems like square peg, round hole to me.

<comment><USER7> Git annex solves this without locking nor losing any of the versions - <USER2> actual files get different names (based on hashes of the contents), which are referenced by a symlink tracked by git. If two people edit the same file - pointing the symlink at different filenames - you get a regular git merge conflict.

<comment><USER6> That's the thing with binary assets, there is no merge path due to them being binary by nature.

<comment><USER8> No /automatic/ merge resolution. Obviously you have a tool that can open them (if you edited it in the first place), and you can use that to view the differences, and replay one set of changes. The fact that the SCM detected the conflict, and alerted you, allowing you to resolve it, is a solid improvement over not using an SCM. Further, automatic merge resolution isn't always possible with text-based assets either (and even when it is, it isn't always the correct option!).

<comment><USER6> I don't think you follow. Programs like Photoshop, Maya and 3DSM don't merge.

Period.

Your only option in this case is to throw away someone's work and force them to redo the work on the file that you decided to keep.

<comment><USER8> Programs like gedit don't merge. Period.

Yet I can still use it to resolve a merge conflict.

In Photoshop you would do this by opening both images, and visually comparing them to see what's different, then copying the appropriate parts from one to another. Instead of just visually comparing them, you might combine them into one file as separate layers, and use a transform to see the difference. If the tool doesn't support that, use ImageMagick to generate a graphical diff (either the `compare` or `compose` commands), and then copy the relevant parts from one to another.

We have fancy tools to help us, but fundamentally, merging is a /human/ operation, that requires human judgment to see how multiple sets of changes can be made to coexist. And that doesn't require a tool (though it can certainly help).

<comment><USER6> Cool, how do you merge After Effects, Autocad, Cinema 4D, Unreal 3 Packages, Illustrator, Sketch, Blender, XSi Lightwave or any other of the production packages that I've seen used in shipping actual products? What happens if no one used layers in your Photoshop file and collapsed history to save performance?

There's a reason Pixar and most mid-large game dev studios use Perforce or a similar tech, it's because fundamentally you need locking if you're working with binary assets.

<comment><USER9> Your intelligent merge tool has access to the file history. If one user modifies a layer, and the other one squashes them down, in the merge you probably want to apply the changes in that order, even if it's out-of-order chronologically. If the file format has a full edit history baked in, great; even more info for the intelligent merge. Maybe the in-file history can even be kept in sync with the repository level history.

In the current ecosystem you probably need locking for your sanity, but some day software will suck less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great, we plan to ship alpha LFS support in GitLab CE & EE & .com in 8.1 or 8.2. That is in addition to the git annex support that EE & .com already have for a longer time [https://about.gitlab.com/2015/02/17/gitlab- annex-solves-the-...](https://about.gitlab.com/2015/02/17/gitlab-annex-solves- the-problem-of-versioning-large-binaries-with-git/)

<comment><USER11> Is it safe to assume that Gitlab's implementation of Git LFS will allow to host the file storage server on premises and potentially on another machine than the one running Gitlab?

<comment><USER10> It for sure will allow you to host it on premises. We'll open source our LFS server so people can use it for other purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I haven't been following the various Git large file solutions - can someone comment on how this implementation compares to git-annex or whatever else is out there?

<comment><USER10> There are a lot of comparisons in the original announcement of LFS on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9343021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9343021)

<comment><USER10> Also interesting is the comparison in [http://git- annex.branchable.com/not/](http://git-annex.branchable.com/not/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The complaints about git-lfs make me think we need to tell people about BAM for BitKeeper.

[http://www.bitkeeper.com/features_binary_asset_management_ba...](http://www.bitkeeper.com/features_binary_asset_management_bam)

BAM works with a similar idea, instead of saving large files in the local repository, users are allowed to save them in a centralized server. This saves disk space and network transfer time.

However, unlike other solutions, BAM preserves the semantics of distributed development.

Instead of requiring a single or standardized set of servers, every user can have a different BAM server. Data is moved between servers automatically and on demand.

One group in an office might use a single BAM server for storing all their data close and locally. When another development group is started in India, they can use a server local to them. The binary assets will automatically transfer to the India server as commits are pulled between sites.

This allows centralized storage of your data and yet still supports having a team work while completely disconnected from the internet.

<comment><USER14> I've been using BAM for quite a while (I'm one of the developers of it). I use it to store my photos. I've 55GB of photos in there and backing them up is

        cd photos
        bk push

Works pretty well, when my mom was still alive we pushed them to her imac and the screen saver was pointed at that directory. So she got to see the kids and I got another backup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If for whatever reason lfs doesn't work for you, check out our solution to large file storage on git: [https://github.com/dailymuse/git- fit](https://github.com/dailymuse/git-fit)

We wrote it because of various issues with tools at the time, basically boiling down to an inclination to have a dead simple solution.

I haven't tried lfs, but if it's anything like github's other software, then I'm sure it's substantially better than our tool.

</comment><comment><USER16> I worked at Unity for a couple years and they are one of the biggest users of (and maintainers of) the Mercurial LargeFiles extension, so I was using that on a daily basis.

I agree that it should be a measure of last resort, but if you can't avoid working with big binary files, it makes the difference between a workflow that is a bit more cumbersome, and one that just grinds to a halt. Getting this functionality in git is great. And it'll mean a huge step forward in collaboration tools for game developers. You pretty much can't avoid big binary files when making games - and so far they've been stuck with SVN or Perforce (or the more adventurous ones are trying out PlasticSCM, which apparently is pretty nice too, but is proprietary and doesn't have a big ecosystem around it like git does). I hope this can lead to a boom of game developers using git.

<comment><USER17> Yup. I'm using git for game source code and I'm often holding off any commits to graphics/music until project is done. Any workaround outside git means you have two systems to manage and it can get really painful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We had a pretty good discussion here when this was initially announced six months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9343021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9343021) Looks like they've had some success!

</comment><comment><USER19> Not sure if they were working together with GitHub on this, but Microsoft also announced today that Visual Studio Online Git repos now support Git-LFS with unlimited free storage:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2015/10/01/a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2015/10/01/announcing- git-lfs-on-all-vso-git-repos.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if it could leverage the HDF5 diff tool somehow...

[https://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/RM/Tools.html#Tools- Diff](https://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/doc/RM/Tools.html#Tools-Diff)

And perhaps GridFTP:

[http://toolkit.globus.org/toolkit/docs/latest- stable/gridftp...](http://toolkit.globus.org/toolkit/docs/latest- stable/gridftp/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Where are the files actually stored? I hear "git lfs server" in the demo video, can this be changed? Can I init my repo and tell it to push all my objects to my own private s3 bucket, or can I only rely on some outside lfs server I don't control?

<comment><USER22> Not with GitLFS, since it's designed under the assumption that the hostname serving your repo over ssh is also the GitLFS server over HTTP.

However git-fat[1] is an alternative system that works in much the same way, but lets you configure where the files are stored.

[1]: [https://github.com/cyaninc/git-fat](https://github.com/cyaninc/git-fat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This could be a corollary to P. Graham's "don't do anything that scales": don't do anything that involves plonking stupidly large files into version control.

</comment><comment><USER24> Good thing that Atlassian/BitBucket would also be supporting it: [https://blog.bitbucket.org/2015/10/01/contributing-to-git- lf...](https://blog.bitbucket.org/2015/10/01/contributing-to-git-lfs/)

And very glad to read that they decided to contribute to this instead of working on their own solution for the same problem. Kudos!

<comment><USER25> The fact that both Atlassian and GitHub intended to unveil their own almost identical competing solutions, both built in Go, in consecutive sessions at the Git Merge conference (without either being aware of the other) is pretty hilarious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Git-lfs has been helpful for managing my repo of scientific research data. Hundreds of large-ish excel files, pngs, and hdf5 add up quickly if you're doing lots of small edits.

There's still some warts (don't forget git lfs init after cloning!), buts it's mostly fast and transparent. I also ponied up $5 a month to get 50 gigs or so of lfs storage. Decent deal imho.

</comment><comment><USER27> As someone new to this idea, the README helped clarify the workflow: [https://github.com/github/git- lfs/blob/master/docs/api/READM...](https://github.com/github/git- lfs/blob/master/docs/api/README.md)

</comment><comment><USER28> That video is hilarious! I wish we had more awesome videos like this for new technologies!

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there a solution, that doesn't depend on external storage?

I have data that belongs to my source, but is rather big and I want it inside of my repo.

<comment><USER16> They do have a reference implementation of the serverside here: [https://github.com/github/lfs-test-server](https://github.com/github/lfs- test-server) \- though they themselves don't consider it production ready. But I'm sure it'll either get there in time, or another open source implementation will rise to the challenge (cf. syste's comment about GitLab planning support for this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10313495) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What happens if someone that hasn't downloaded their command line tools tries to clone your repo? Will they get the big files too?

<comment><USER31> I believe they just get the references to the big files, not the files themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Was I the only one who expected that bear to move on its own?

</comment><comment><USER33> Any information on GitHub Enterprise support?

<comment><USER34> GitHub Enterprise has been supporting LFS since 2.2 (current latest is 2.3.3) in a technical preview mode. See here: [https://enterprise.github.com/releases/2.2.0/notes](https://enterprise.github.com/releases/2.2.0/notes)</comment></comment>