By Leah Belsky, Chief Enterprise Officer, Coursera
Students entering today’s competitive job market need flexible pathways to a college degree and opportunities to learn career-specific skills. Today, we’re proud to announce two new initiatives to help broaden access to job-relevant learning for students of all backgrounds.
Free certificates for any U.S. community college and CTE high school
Starting today, Google’s Professional Certificates on Coursera are available to US community colleges and Career and Technical Education (CTE) high schools for free. Institutions that sign up can offer industry-relevant skills training to their students. With the Google certificates, students can prepare for a range of well-paying roles, including data analytics, project management, UX design, or IT support.
In addition to receiving career services to help in their job search, participating students will be able to apply for open jobs from over 150 employers who are currently hiring, including Walmart, Verizon, and Google. Institutions will have access to skills development analytics offered through Coursera for Campus that allow administrators to track student progress against their career goals and benchmark against employees in the industry.
ACE®️ Credit Recommendation for entry-level Google certificates
Additionally, we’re pleased to announce that now, learners who complete any of Google’s entry-level Professional Certificates on Coursera—which include Data Analytics, IT Support, Project Management, and UX Design—are eligible to receive up to 12 college credits from participating colleges and universities in the US, or the equivalent of four college courses at the associate’s degree level. While each college and university has its own policies around credit for prior learning, ACE®️ recommendations enable more universities to accept the certificates for credit toward a degree.
“We are excited about this expansion of our Grow with Google Certificates program and the opportunity to partner with academic institutions across the US, including community colleges, which are critical to workforce development and economic mobility,” said Ruth Porat, Alphabet and Google CFO. “We believe that to have sustainable economic growth, we must have inclusive growth, and we are committed to continuing to help people develop the digital skills they need to participate in this economy.”
The free initiative for community colleges and CTE high schools along with ACE®️ Credit Recommendation are major milestones on our journey to build a more just world through equal access to learning. To further expand flexible degree pathways, we’re working with our industry partners to put more entry-level Professional Certificates on Coursera through the ACE®️ Credit Recommendation process.
From catering for trick-or-treaters to costume-making, from bonfire safety to decorating, this Halloween you’ll find yourself using skills that don’t get called on most days of the year! So it’s understandable that perhaps you’re costume-making skills are a bit rusty.
As a free treat, we’ve put together five great courses that cover all of the unique skills that you’ll need to have a fantastic Halloween. One thing you definitely don’t need to be scared of this Halloween is not having the right skills!
Happy Halloween from everyone at Alison!
Halloween is a great opportunity to let your hair down and eat whatever you want! This delicious baking course covers all varieties of cakes and pastries. By baking your own treats this Halloween, you can indulge your sweet tooth while also staying reasonably healthy! Homemade baked goods have less sugar and additives than shop-bought cakes and you can also adapt recipes for individual dietary requirements.
When was the last time you had to design a witch’s costume from scratch? If you need to brush up on your sketching, sewing and design basics then this is the course for you. Home-made Halloween outfits are a great way to spend time and bond with children. They can exercise their imaginations while also trying out skills they never get to use any other time of the year. Who knows, this year’s witch might be a future fashion designer!
While Halloween is a time to celebrate and have fun, it’s also important to make sure that the fun and games remain safe. Fireworks, bonfires, unsupervised children – this can potentially be a recipe for disaster if the adults aren’t paying attention. To make sure that you’re prepared for all possibilities this Halloween, our popular First Aid course is a must to make sure that your Halloween is remembered for all the right reasons.
Halloween offers endless opportunities to let your imagination and creativity run wild! From pumpkin carving to home-made decorations to costumes, all visual projects need to start with sketches and design plans. Our How to Draw course will teach you everything you need to know to be able to transform your great ideas into fantastic drawings and then into even better realities!
Halloween always has incredible potential for great photographs. The decorations, the fireworks, not to mention the autumn leaves! Kids always love being able to look back at their different costumes over the years and you’ll never regret having an album to look back on. Make those photographic memories even more special by upskilling in digital photography with this in depth diploma course.
Multiple forms of testing, both manual and automated, can ensure quality control and determine how well the software performs. One such type, integration testing, is sometimes lumped in with other types of tests.
But, integration testing happens at a specific part of a development project, and it has a very particular purpose. But what is it, exactly?
Integration testing is the testing of various modules of the software under development together as a group. This determines whether or not they function together seamlessly as part of the system or whole.
Some confuse it with unit testing, which also tests parts of the whole, but the difference is when you perform the test and how you carry it out.
Unit testing is done on modules or units of the project individually to make sure they function as they should. Integration testing is done on groups of these modules to make sure they work together and interact properly. While unit testing is one of the earliest tests performed in a project, integration testing is usually done later in the project timeline.
Below, we’ll take a closer look at integration testing, why it’s important, best practices for integration testing, integration testing tools, and more.
Why is integration testing important?
No matter how well you write code, the potential for bugs, vulnerabilities, and errors to occur will always exist. This is more likely when multiple programmers work together and collaborate on a single project.
Each will use their own logic and problem-solving methods, despite the plans and strategies created by the development team. So, integration testing has multiple benefits in this environment, including:
Successful integration of modules. Most projects are big enough that development is broken down into numerous parts or modules. Integration testing verifies that all the parts communicate well and work together to achieve the purpose of the software.
Data integrity. When programmers move from one module to another in development, there’s always the risk of losing or inadvertently changing pieces of data. Integration testing can be used as a form of regression testing to verify that no inadvertent changes or corruptions have taken place.
User-based scenarios. One of the most important reasons to conduct integration tests is to create critical user-based scenarios and make sure they play out correctly. Individual components of the software will need to communicate properly when grouped, adapting and responding to multiple possible results.
Third-party testing. Integration testing also verifies that groups of modules or units of coding interact properly with Application Programming Interface (API) tools. This lays the foundation for acceptance testing toward the end of the project, ensuring a user-friendly end product.
Criteria and best practices for integration testing
Since integration testing has a specific purpose and place within the overall software testing strategy, what are the requirements for running integration tests?
The team should create a test plan to determine the type of test and the desired results.
Test cases need to be prepared and testing data created.
Unit testing must have been completed already (this is perhaps the most important criteria).
Any of the defects exposed by unit testing must be resolved.
A test environment needs to be set up.
Some examples of the test cases you could run to verify that components work together to achieve the desired result might be:
The checkout process on an e-Commerce site.
The login process on a site where users enter credentials.
Message notifications and their respective redirect links.
Types of integration tests
In general, there are two types of integration testing: The Big Bang Approach and The Incremental Approach.
The Big Bang Approach
As the name suggests, in this type of test, all the units or modules are grouped together and tested as a whole.
Advantages:
Works best for small systems.
Yields quick results.
Disadvantages:
Greater difficulty in locating faults.
Potential for overlooking a component.
All units need to be complete, so testing can’t begin early.
High-risk modules don’t get specialized attention.
The Incremental Approach
Rather than grouping and testing all the modules at once, incremental testing tests the integration or interaction of a few units at a time. There are two basic methods for this: “Bottom-Up” and “Top-Down.”
Bottom-Up
In this approach, lower-level modules are integrated and tested first. The results lay the foundation for higher-level testing later.
Advantages:
Locating and fixing faults is easier.
No need to wait for all units to be completed before testing begins.
Disadvantages:
Critical, high-level components are tested last.
Not possible to create an early prototype.
Top-Down
This approach is the opposite of the bottom-up approach. High-level modules are integrated and tested first, and then low-level modules are tested and then integrated as their functionality is verified.
Advantages:
Locating and fixing faults is easier.
It’s possible to create an early prototype.
Tests performed based on priority reveal major flaws you can fix before complete integration.
Disadvantages:
Stubs have to be created for missing modules.
Lower-level units are often inadequately tested.
A third approach that combines the best of these two approaches is called Sandwich Testing or Hybrid Integrated Testing.
Tools for integration testing can be categorized as follows:
Popular programming-language specific
Some tools are designed to test software coded in a specific coding language, for example, Pytest for Python, H2 Database for Java, or jQuery for JavaScript and PHP.
You can qualify for a job developing and testing software by signing up for any of our online courses. For example, if you’re already familiar with JavaScript, you can learn jQuery.
Rare-language tools
These are tools used for rarer languages or languages with fewer tests available. An example is GoConvey for Golang. You can begin programming with Go by enrolling in our online course for learning Go.
Multiple-language tools
These tools are designed to be able to perform tests on programs coded in various languages. Some examples are VectorCast for C and C++, Selenium for Java and Dockerfile, and Cucumber for Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and Kotlin.
Careers using integration testing
Professionals of all kinds either conduct integration tests or use their results for their job, including:
Business Analysts
Quality Analysts
Software Engineers
We can quickly equip you with the skills you need to start or further a career in various tech positions. To start learning some of the programming languages used in software development and testing, check out courses like:
JavaScript is a scripting language for making dynamic web pages and so much more. As a beginner, you may be wondering what JavaScript can do.
A good way to learn its capabilities is to practice by building projects. Here are 15 JavaScript projects for beginners to help you develop your JavaScript abilities and propel you to an intermediate skill level.
1. Master the navbar
Learning how to build modern web page navigation with JavaScript is a time-worthy and skill-building task — especially if you anticipate working on web pages in the future. JavaScript can create slide menus, interactive tabs, modals, and the three-barred hamburger menu.
Hamburger menus are handy on smaller screens. They allow the web browser’s navigation tabs to be hidden away but viewable with just a click or tap. To get started on this, you’ll want to use event listeners to trigger certain actions on the webpage.
2. Create inventory
Building and managing an inventory is another great beginner-friendly project. If you don’t know what to keep track of, start small with an imaginary list of items. For example, if you were selling a product line and housing it as inventory, what would your items be, and how would you want to keep track of them?
This is an excellent project to understand arrays. Within an array, you can create product classes to set the properties for your products, such as name and a value stat. Then, to keep track of certain aspects of those products, you can create subclasses.
3. Make a responsive image gallery
Programming a responsive image gallery allows you to practice with looping and event handlers. Whether you want images to enlarge with mouse rollover effects or create a flip image, scripting is the way to do it.
4. Create interactive elements
Interactive elements are fun and simple to practice different JavaScript techniques with. They’ll get you up to speed with implementing variables and if/else conditionals. Some common elements that beginner programmers can make are calendars, calculators, and any other responsive widget-like tools you can think of.
Projects like these can help you grow quickly, so don’t skip them because they sound simple. Building a foundation of skills is essential in taking on larger, complex application builds.
5. Interact with HTML lists
These are sometimes called CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) applications. For this project, you’ll assign functions that allow users to add or delete items in lists. It’ll also involve implementing event listeners and grabbing elements by their CSS ID selectors.
6. Create a responsive questionnaire
HTML forms are a commonly used tool on web pages to collect data from site visitors. You can also use forms with booleans and conditionals to interact with a visitor’s answers right in the browser.
You’ll use conditional expressions that respond depending on the answer to specific questions. Another option is to create a quiz or test that displays results after all the questions have been answered.
7. Make a music player
A lot of fun things can be done with audio in JavaScript. Making a personal music player is one of them. At its core, this project utilizes functions to play, pause, and load the next or previous track. You can also create a playlist of your all-time favorite songs.
8. Get creative with the canvas API
Another JavaScript project is using Canvas to create graphics, which is also a good introduction to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Canvas is an HTML element and beginner-friendly API. Even though you may have never used a programming interface before and don’t understand what they’re all about, don’t worry. Taking on this project is a great way to add APIs to your coding repertoire.
Note, APIs usually require intermediate coding skills to incorporate, but we think you can handle the Canvas API because it’s more of a creative tool. Have fun layering to create something awesome!
9. Build a 2D/3D game
Everyone loves games! Today, it seems like there’s an endless variety of web games coded in JavaScript. Canvas API is a tool often used for game graphics (mainly 2D). So, once you get comfortable with the basics of implementing your first API, you can start putting your new skills to the test.
Making 2D games is more straightforward than making 3D games, so maybe start with 2D. When it comes to game ideas, creativity is encouraged! Maybe try to recreate your favorite Atari game or create something new, like Neptune Cows versus Plutonian Droids (working title).
10. Build a simple front-facing social platform
Creating a basic social platform isn’t as complicated as it seems. All you need to do is add a text box, allow a log of chat history, and maybe some emoticon-like buttons. Don’t worry about setting up a server just yet since we’re building the foundation for JavaScript.
11. Automate tasks
A popular chore to automate is repetitive, monotonous spreadsheet tasks. This is possible with help from Excel JavaScript API.
This one is a bit more advanced, but it’s a good project to take the time to learn because it has various applicable uses. Take it one step at a time. The first part of this project could be simply loading a worksheet.
12. Data science
Do you want to take spreadsheet tasks a bit further? Maybe you want to get comfortable with working with a lot of data. Or perhaps you want to be able to compute some statistics from said data. This is possible with JavaScript.
If you’re a Data Analyst or prospective analyst, you can program an application that’ll calculate the significance of a given data set.
13. Generate things
This one partly falls into the interactive element’s project column, but we included it as a separate project because it’s an enjoyable way to learn about arrays. What you generate is up to you, but here are some ideas: jokes, usernames, or maybe images.
Essentially, you’re scripting an application that will pull an item from a list when a button is pressed in the browser. Some websites are solely dedicated to this, so if you pick a niche enough topic, you could get some decent web traffic from folks who need help deciding on something.
14. Play with algorithms
Once you’ve mastered the fundamentals of variables, arrays, loops, and functions, you’ll be ready to take on algorithms. Programming algorithms is a robust skill set that teaches problem-solving techniques.
To get started with JavaScript algorithms, you’ll want to identify a simple problem that you can solve with code. Then, build your algorithm to solve the problem one step at a time.
15. Create a single page application (SPA)
SPAs give users a smooth navigation experience by loading all web pages’ contents onto a single page. The page updates the document with the help of JavaScript APIs.
This one is for JavaScripters ready to advance to the intermediate level. If you decide to take on this project, you’ll want to look into which JavaScript framework is best for you. Good luck coding, and don’t forget about your vanilla JavaScript foundation.
Continue building your JavaScript skills
Finding the right project to devote your time to can be difficult. If this list doesn’t quite do it for you, we have more project ideas in our forums.
Or maybe you’re interested in building a more complex project that’s tailored toward your career path? Take a look at the new Portfolio Projects in our Career Center. And, if you still need help brushing up on your JavaScript fundamentals, check out our Learn JavaScript course.
If you’re exploring a career in tech, you’re probably discovering a lot of exciting potential career paths, including cloud engineering. But, before you start putting all that time into building your skills, it makes sense to first ask: How much does a Cloud Engineer make, anyway?
The short answer is, “a lot.”
Over the last decade, there’s been a digital mass migration as companies moved their data and resources from local servers to cloud-based services and adopted cloud computing. This is much easier said than done, and businesses in every industry rely on Cloud Engineers to make sure the transition to the cloud is a smooth one. Once the new systems are up and running, Cloud Engineers keep those systems maintained and updated.
The bad news for companies is that there just aren’t enough Cloud Engineers to satisfy all this demand. This is good news for new developers like you though, since it means Cloud Engineers are likely to land secure, well-paying jobs.
In this article, we’ll go over how much Cloud Engineers can expect to be paid, as well as factors that affect a Cloud Engineer’s average salary.
What is the average Cloud Engineer’s salary?
According to the latest survey of Cloud Engineer salary information in 2021, Cloud Engineers in the U.S. can expect to make $118,250 per year on average. They can also count on an average annual bonus of $10,000.
Remember that these numbers include salaries for Cloud Engineers from all over the country with different experience levels and different employers. Let’s take a closer look at what factors have the biggest effect on a Cloud Engineer’s salary.
Factors that affect how much a Cloud Engineer makes
Your location
Cloud engineers are needed all over the country, from small towns to big cities and everything in between. And just like other jobs, where you live impacts your salary since the cost of living is higher in some areas than in others.
To account for this, employers adjust the salaries they offer, and some of the highest salaries for Cloud Engineers are offered in the biggest cities in the country.
Here are the seven U.S. cities with the highest average annual salary for a Cloud Engineer:
Even within a particular city or area, some companies are willing to pay their employees well above the regional average salary. This is usually for one of two reasons:
First, big cities that are home to a lot of companies’ headquarters are all competing to hire the same talented Cloud Engineers
Second, companies located outside of the biggest and most desirable areas are at a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting. So, they offer high salaries to convince more Cloud Engineers to move out of the city and work for them.
Here are 10 companies that offer some of the highest average salaries for Cloud Engineers.
It’s no surprise that a Cloud Engineer with more hard and soft skills can command a higher salary at the negotiating table. But it’s also important to remember that certain skills are more helpful to Cloud Engineers than others. And, while Cloud Engineers have overlapping skill sets with Back-End Developers and cybersecurity specialists, they also use their own specific tools on the job.
Here are the top hard skills for Cloud Engineers and how much more you can expect to make when you have those skills, according to Indeed.
Skill
Salary Boost
1
Adobe Experience Manager
67.37%
2
PPM Tools
58.6%
3
Drupal
50.1%
4
ZooKeeper
32.7%
5
Informatica
26.2%
6
Maven
13.4%
7
Docker
10.1%
8
Terraform
7.3%
9
Google Cloud Platform
7.2%
10
Ansible
6.7%
As far as soft skills, team management is critical for Cloud Engineers, and companies are willing to pay over 50% more for people who bring that experience with them. So, if your previous job involved managing teams and projects, make sure to emphasize that experience as you put together your technical resume.
Salary isn’t the only kind of compensation
It’s exciting to think about a six-figure paycheck once you land your dream job as a Cloud Engineer, but keep in mind that salary is just one part of the story when it comes to compensation.
So, as you start to apply to cloud engineering jobs and compare job offers, remember that a company offering a lower starting salary can make up the difference in other ways, such as:
Annual bonuses based on your performance
Health and dental insurance coverage
A good remote working or flextime policy
More vacation and comp days
An employee ownership structure and stock purchase options
Contributions to your 401(k) or retirement account
Sign-on bonuses and relocation reimbursement
Becoming a Cloud Engineer will pay off
As you continue along your path to becoming a Cloud Engineer, always remember these words: It’ll all pay off in the end. And we don’t just mean financially, but personally and professionally too.
Cloud Engineers can look forward to a stable, well-paid, and fulfilling career for years to come, so there’s no better time to build up your skills. Our online programming courses, like Python and Ruby, will help you focus on all the skills you need to succeed.
4. After you have posted, read what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting a comment. Use the “Reply” button to address that student directly.
On Wednesday, Nov. 3, teachers from our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time.
5. By Friday morning, Nov. 5, we will reveal more information about the maps, including a free link to the article that includes these maps, at the bottom of this post. We encourage you to post additional comments based on the article, possibly using statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets.
Reveal
We’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!
• Learn more about the notice and wonder teaching strategy from this 5-minute video and how and why other teachers are using this strategy from our on-demand webinar.
• Sign up for our free weekly Learning Network newsletter so you never miss a graph. Graphs are always released by the Friday before the Wednesday live-moderation to give teachers time to plan ahead.
• Go to the American Statistical Association K-12 website, which includes teacher statistics resources, Census in the Schools student-generated data, professional development opportunities, and more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
[SEAGULLS SQUAWKING] You could not learn to swim in Harlem if you didn’t go to the Harlem Y. There was no effort to really encourage youngsters in Harlem and Brooklyn to learn how to swim. So a lot of my friends never learned how to swim. And that’s sad, because 3/4 of the world is water. So if you don’t know how to survive around water, you’re a little more in jeopardy. But segregation, that was another cost of segregation and discrimination. You couldn’t even learn to swim in New York. I mean, New York is surrounded by water. [MUSIC PLAYING] When most Japanese [INAUDIBLE] it is not in the middle of a vast, smoke-clogged, industrial metropolis, but in the tree-lined outskirts of a small American town, the seaport community named Sag Harbor in the state of New York. The history of Sag Harbor, U.S.A., has been tied to the sea. A century ago, its name was known on almost all of the seven seas, for Sag Harbor was home port to some of the most famous of America’s whaling fleet, ships that scoured the world for the most precious and largest of the ocean’s creatures. [MUSIC PLAYING] Many of the African-American males that were here established their wealth through the occupation of whaling. Black folk learned how to sail. Now, we came here on sailboats 300 years ago, but we weren’t running those boats. Here, you run your own sailboat. You’re in command. African-American women were matriarchs in this community because of their husbands’ occupation. They owned land here legally before women were allowed to own land. They were head of households because of the wealth that they accumulated together. Sag Harbor was always a place, especially Eastville, where free Blacks lived among Natives and among working-class white people. And so the idea that all these people living together doing their thing in this community – and this is in the 1800s – was obviously not common. This house has a history of having three families of Black ancestry living in it. Before SANS developed, the summer houses were mine and the three or four here and a few that are on Liberty Street. They were all summer houses. And it’s basically from that group that SANS really got started. [MUSIC PLAYING] This wasn’t desirable land back then because it was marsh. It wasn’t developed. And so it was attainable. [MUSIC PLAYING] Sag Harbor was a rare opportunity. So, we live in the Azurest neighborhood. Azurest is the “A” in SANS. SANS stands for Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, Ninevah, Subdivisions. The early houses were small. There wasn’t a lot of cash in the old days, and so people built what they could afford. And at the time, African-Americans had difficulty getting mortgages. So they really were just building what they had in cash on hand. [MUSIC PLAYING] The Black banks developed because Blacks couldn’t get money from the predominantly white banks. African-Americans were not being offered beautiful, virgin land on the water anywhere in America. This is in the ‘40s, you know, and so we were up against a lot of resistance. And so we had to certainly use our own people to get financing. [MUSIC PLAYING] Now, this tree is an old hickory tree. And it’s famous on these grounds because this is a tree that Langston Hughes wrote poetry under in 1952. He was visiting the Pickens, and he came here, and he knew the Trotts, because all the families knew each other in the area. And he came here, and he loved the tree, and he loved the bench, and he just sat here and wrote poetry. Well, when we were children, really you knew everybody. Back then, there were only about 14 or 15 houses in all of Sag Harbor Hills, so everybody was an aunt or an uncle. It was like a big, extended family. Our grandparents knew each other, our kids are now friends, and our grandchildren are friends. So we’ve had five generations of friendships. I think places like Sag Harbor are very important to the African-American community, because it is really a safe haven. The word community has the word unity in it. And we’re united in the love and reverence for this place. In my family, I’m the fifth generation, through my granddaughter, to occupy this land. Five generations. I’d like it to be 10. [MUSIC PLAYING] The developers are really targeting our community. It’s ideal real estate. They want to flip it to a different kind of community, and we want it to be ours still. And it’s not that we object to other people moving in, it’s just that we want to maintain the sense of community. If they want to come and be a part of the community, it’s fine. But if you want to come and chase all of us out, it’s a whole different thing. And that’s the problem. And you have a developer and some people pushing an agenda that isn’t the proper agenda to approach, and it’s more of a scare tactic. [MUSIC PLAYING] [CHILDREN GIGGLING] There are things that can be done, but it is supposed to be done collectively by the community. So for me, as a historian, a preservationist, a history teacher and professor, I will continue to tell the story and write it down until everyone learns about the tenacity of the women and the men who continue to make sure that their children have access to what every one mother, grandmother, auntie, cousin wanted. So, I think for kids, and particularly our kids, like to see that this is what they come from and this is their history, this is not new, and just kind of understanding how their great-grandparents, I guess, got here. It’s just something that they need to know. And hopefully, they value it, because what we really want to have happen is this gets passed on and on and on. And I think the worst thing you would see here is things not being passed on to the next generation. [MUSIC PLAYING]
We asked them: What comes to mind when you think about the last year, or even the 19 months since quarantines first began? What small details of your life seem especially interesting, poignant, funny or relatable?
Teenagers rose to the occasion with pandemic memoirs that brought humor, introspection and deep feeling to this moment. While short, these miniature stories convey much bigger ideas about online school, being trapped inside, missing friends, the political landscape, the “longest two weeks ever,” personal growth and hope.
Thank you to all those who participated in this exercise this week, including teenagers from Layton, Utah; Riverside University High School in Milwaukee; and Pittsburgh.
Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
_________
“Congratulations on graduating!” *closes Chromebook* — Jack, Hoggard High School
Dusty backpacks, my life on pause. — Charlotte, J.R. Masterman
I love sleeping. Not this much! — Reece, Hoggard High School
Don’t cough. It scares people now. — Vay, Utah
Day 582 of two-week masking. — Will, Illinois
Glazed donuts, glazed eyes, glazed life. — Cassidy, Hoggard High School
Google search: How to survive apocalypse? — La, NUAMES High School
Day three: I need more shows. — Terrell, J.R. Masterman
Sounds fun, but what about Covid? — Alexandra, J.R. Masterman
Sleep and procrastination: my closest friends. — Nicole, Cary High School
Technology. An escape, but not education. — Gwyneth, Kempner High School
Eyes open, but never really awake. — Kara, J.R. Masterman
Close with family, far from friends. — Shalom, Houston
48th time I’ve seen this video. — Jonathan, J.R. Masterman
every day is the same day — Hsamu, Milwaukee, Wis.
Wake up, get on Zoom, repeat. — Jack, GB
Together now, but still all alone. — Sophie, Union High School
netflix, missing assignments, doordash, sleep deprived — Joah, Glenbrook North
Productiveness overcomes bad feelings and thoughts. — Manar, Kempner High School
Sleeping, eating, strolling. Nothing to do. — Jasmine, Riverside University High School
Venice is worried about being overwhelmed by tourists. To prevent overcrowding as global travel rises again, Venetian city leaders will start requiring visitors next year to pay for entry to the city. They are also acquiring the cellphone data of unwitting tourists and using hundreds of surveillance cameras to monitor visitors and prevent crowding.
Have you ever had a vacation ruined by too many people? What do you think about the measures being taken in Venice: Are they necessary to fix an overcrowded tourist destination, or a misguided overreach? Will restrictions like these ruin the iconic city’s charm — or restore it? What sort of sacrifices, if any, would you be willing to make on vacation in the interest of preventing “magical” places from being overrun?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about Venice’s tourist surveillance plans.
Want more Picture Prompts? Find them all in this column.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
1. a person so similar in appearance to another as to appear to be a double
2. an alter ego
3. a person with the same name as another
4. a ghostly double of a living person that haunts its living counterpart
_________
The word doppelgänger has appeared in 34 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 26 in “The Boom and Bust of TikTok Artists” by Zachary Small:
“A video of my paintings went viral about a year ago; suddenly, I had more than 350,000 views over three days,” said Chessco, who is 27. He opened an online shop, becoming one of the most popular visual artists on the social media platform.
Soon he was selling artworks for around $2,000 each, partnering with music labels, and collaborating with advertising agencies. Those business deals, he says, often earn him nearly $5,000 per post on the platform, which is owned by the Beijing-based company ByteDance. But success breeds competition.
Chessco recently discovered that he had a doppelgänger on TikTok — another artist was copying his videos’ style, subjects and music, as well as selling his paintings for a fraction of the price, alongside prints and supplies, on a website nearly identical to the one Chessco uses.
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word doppelgänger in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how doppelgänger can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
