Latin for an Old Man

In high school I dropped the ball when it came to Latin. It was 1964 and one of the 'cool' kids in my all boys, St Aloysius High School brought a pony to Latin class. It galloped around the room and every one of us used it to quickly do our translation homework.  Everyone except Glenn Hymel!

Consequently I didn't learn Latin in high school.  In fact, other than Ola, Adios, si, no, and gracias, I speak only English, and being from New Awlins, even that is barely intelligible.

So, here I am at the age of 75 on a quest to rectify my academic failing.

Since this isn't the first learning quest I've attempted (my previous forays have been short lived, ending when my steed gets entangled on the windmill of enthusiastic lethargy) I'll try to be wise by adopting the following guidelines:

1. Complete 4 chapters a week.
2. Devote no more than 60 minutes to a lesson
3. Do an assessment at the end of each fortnight to adjust guideline 1 and 2

I've reviewed some on-line resources and decided to make my learning goals simple:

1. Complete the 14 Duolingo Latin Lessons
2. Read the 40 chapters in the 6th edition of Wheelock's Latin
3. Do an assessment when goals 1 and 2 are achieved.

Assuming that I can digest 4 chapters each week, it will take me a minimum of 10 weeks to do this.

3 WEEK UPDATE: It has become obvious that 4 chapters a week is too ambitious for me. The book is used for 4 quarters of first year Latin, so one chapter a week is more realistic.  To help me digest these chapters I've found two collection of videos:

1. Wheelock's Latin Chapter Videos by Rebecca Ceferatti
2. Wittenberg Academy: Wheelock's Latin by PastorCurtis

It seems that learning the declensions and conjugations is important so I've backtracked a bit to 'catch up".

The DuoLingo is fun.  It's more user friendly as a web app than a tablet/phone app (there are less advertisements in ther browser version). I may be able to complete the 14 Lessons within 40 days.

GitHub 101.0: cloning a repository on my work machine

(This has been superceded by GitHub 101.1)

Even better than a paragraph a day, a web app project that my son invited me to work on. He started me off with 2 tasks:

1. Make a repository on GitHub
2. Clone the repository to my work machine

So I haven't used GitHub, so first step was auditing the Coursera Introduction to Git and Github.  In this is 16 hour course you will learn to do the following steps. (But, yeah, I didn't take the class as my 'first step'. I went directly to Github, signed up and proceeded to do the steps below.  Then I realized that I really didn't know how Github works. So I'm taking the class : )

Next step, create a New repository by going to the upper right hand corner (if you're just starting you'll receive a prompt to create a repository).

So Task 1 was complete.

Task 2 turned out to be more complicated for me because I didn't have xcode installed.  So, if you are working on a Mac, create your AppleID, and download Xcode. 

I ran into an error when I tried to do the cloning so I had to install the Command Line Tools (reboot your computer after doing the install).

The cloning requires you to sign in from the terminal app and you'll need to create a GitHub personal access token.  

With these precursor steps taken care of, the cloning process was simple. Open the repository you want top clone, go to the "< > Code" drop down and get a copy of the HTTPS url.

Open the terminal window on your computer and enter:

$ git clone <HTTPS url>

You'll be prompted to enter your GitHub user name. Insert a copy of your personal access token when you're prompted for your password. 

Here is a link to the GitHub Cloning a Repository

a paragraph a day

I’m reading “Will College Pay Off” by Peter Cappelli which leads to an examination of the K-12 schools and how well they are preparing our young for life after high school graduation. The federal government National Assessment of Educational Progress provides an annual report card of how we’re doing as a nation as well as how individual states are doing. It turns out that Massachusetts is doing the best in the country, which begs the question, why are its schools so much better?

In short, Massachusetts uses a strategy of increased funding, paying attention to the under performers, longer school days, higher expectations of teachers, holding graduating students accountable (either an acceptance letter from a college or a job offer on company letterhead before they graduate), and covering the basics (students in vocational schools are expected to write about their daily activities.)

Obviously increasing funding for the Kansas school system is beyond my solitary capabilities so I'll focus on the basics: incremental increase in learning time and writing. Based on this I'll model behavior that I hope my children and their children will adopt: 

Write at least a paragraph every day

In Massachusetts schools they write essays. This is a hard task for most people and therefore counterproductive. What is do-able for me is a 15 minute writing session with the goal of 1 paragraph that I could enter in a journal, on a scrap of paper I put in a file folder, or on a social media app. If I can’t think of something impromptu to write about, here are two websites to get me started:

12 Things to Write About When You’re Fresh Out of Ideas grammarly.com

Interesting Topics to Write About journalbuddies.com

. . . and if I feel like a story:

Top 100 Short Story Ideas thewritepractice.com

Lastly, here is an excerpt from the article about why Massachusetts’ schools are 'so much better':

“I’ve always praised Massachusetts for their work on education, but they never want to be praised. They want to know where they’re weak,” he said. “K-12 education is supposed to prepare people to go to college, and a 78 percent graduation rate in Washington state — even though you thump your chest and feel good about your quality of life — means 22 percent of kids are immediately going to the very tail end of the labor-market queue, to the jobs no one else wants — if they get jobs at all.”

That was precisely the fate of 21 percent of students at Worcester Tech when Sheila Harrity, who had never set foot in a vocational school, took the reins when the new building opened in 2006.

Task No. 1: Double the number of honors courses and open them to all.

“What are you doing to our school?” her teachers shrieked. “These are not academic kids!”

A former college basketball star with a straight-shooting style, Harrity next took a hard look at test results. Forty percent of Worcester Tech students were scoring zeros on the written portion of the MCAS, she said. So Harrity imported teacher-trainers to address this. In every classroom, from home construction to hair-coloring, kids were taught to write essays in response to exam questions.

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