Humans err, of course: We overlook or glaze past the flaws in these systems, all too quick to trust that computers are hyper-rational, objective, always right. Studies have shown that, in situations where humans and computers must cooperate to make a decision — to identify fingerprints or human faces — people consistently made the wrong identification when a computer nudged them to do so. In the early days of dashboard GPS systems, drivers famously followed the devices’ directions to a fault, sending cars into lakes, off cliffs and into trees.
Is this humility or hubris? Do we place too little value in human intelligence — or do we overrate it, assuming we are so smart that we can create things smarter still?
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word hubris 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 hubris can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
If you enjoy this daily challenge, try using multiple Words of the Day in a 50-word story that you submit to our Monthly Vocabulary Challenge.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
Above is an image related to one of the news stories we followed over the past two weeks. Do you know what it shows? At the bottom of this quiz, you’ll find the answer.
Have you been paying attention to the news recently? See how many of these 10 questions you can get right.
Collaborative coding leads to better code. Whether it’s tackling problems, building solutions, or sharing knowledge, learning to code with others is increasingly essential. That’s why we’re excited to roll out Career Path groups — a new curriculum feature designed to help you gain confidence and learn the collaborative coding skills you need to succeed in your new career.
Now, when you enroll in a Career Path, you’ll be introduced to your peers who are also starting out on the same Career Path at the same time. Think of them as your fellow classmates! They are people you can reach out to for code reviews, pair programming, and group projects as you progress through your learning journey.
“Much of our curriculum is self-paced learning, but it doesn’t mean you need to learn alone. Your peers are the people that you can learn with,” says Alyssa, a Community Manager here at Codecademy.
Once we introduce you to your fellow learners, and the next step is up to you — message each other in the Forums, chat on Discord, or join a Chapter to meet over video call and practice collaborative coding with one another. The best way to get started is reaching out to your fellow learners and taking that first step!
Below, we’ll take a look at the collaborative coding skills you’ll need to know. If you’re looking to start a career, it’s important to get practice in these collaborative coding techniques — they are skills you’ll be using on the job, whether it’s with co-workers or if you’re working on a team.
Code reviews
Code reviews involve other programmers looking over your code and providing feedback. They will review the code for things like logic, functionality, and readability, or based on any specific questions you might have. Code reviews also involve looking over someone else’s code and providing clear feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Code reviews are a great way to practice giving and receiving code feedback. The process involves formatting and commenting your code so that others can read it. And it’s a best practice for checking whether a program runs as intended, spotting inefficiencies, and making sure code is consistently formatted. Code reviews are terrific for discussing and sharing ideas with fellow developers.
Pair programming consists of two programmers working together on at the same terminal, at the same time. One person writes the code (the driver), while the other checks the code being written and figures out where to go next (the navigator). They can switch roles frequently over the course of a session.
Pair programming is a useful technique to learn and experience. You’ll gain exposure to different ways of tackling the same challenge. You’ll also get to experience the unique dynamics of working alongside another developer in real-time. It’s an efficient way to work through tough problems by applying two brains instead of one. And it’s a great method for sharing knowledge and cementing your learnings as a new developer.
Group projects bring together diverse skill sets to take on large technical challenges. Unique to the project and its goals, these skills sets can include UI, UX, front- and back-end, data analysis, and more.
Working in a group means being able to tackle more complex challenges than you could on your own. And it’s great for exploring solutions from different perspectives. You’ll be able to work with your peers toward a shared goal — leaning on each other to get through tough problems, and celebrating the successes that you have along the way. Learn more about group projects by checking out our guide on tackling a group project.
Get started with collaborative coding
Career Path Groups are friendly spaces for getting to know your peers who are also at the same stage in their learning journey. Once you’ve introduced yourself, the possibilities are in your hands! Continue meeting in the Forums, find one another on Discord, or create a Chapter to meet regularly over video call and support one another to Career Path completion, and beyond.
To enroll in a Career Path, check out the list below and click through to learn more:
Time for classic stripes! With this download, we bring you six versions of seamless striped pattern backgrounds. They are great to use for any digital and printable projects, so make sure to add them to your collection.
The download contains striped pattern backgrounds in 6 different colors available as Photoshop patterns file. For those of you who don’t have Photoshop, the package also includes a .jpg file of each background ready for you to upload and use.
Download Seamless Striped Pattern
FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY.
There are almost no limits on using these seamless striped patterns! Use them to decorate your blog, for printables, or any digital project you are currently working on.
Remember that they are for personal use only which means you can’t sell them or use them in any work you intend to sell.
For more Freebies make sure to visit our free printables library or check our monthly wallpapers! if you would like to see more seamless patterns option on our blog, make sure to let us know in the comments below.
As with most things, the state vs trait debate is nuanced. I don’t think any personality psychologist would claim that personality is entirely state-based or entirely-trait-based. Instead, it’s somewhere in between. You may have general tendencies, but find yourself thinking, feeling, and behaving differently depending on the context. While you may tend to be shy and introverted, you may find yourself developing the skills you need to be outgoing and sociable if your job demands it. To use myself as an example, as a student I used to turn beet-red and mumble whenever I talked in class. I still get easily embarrassed in front of people, just not when I’m teaching or speaking about my area of expertise. Your range of comfort or ability will vary, but it’s not immutable and unchanging. It’s not impossible to learn a new skill over time.
If these soft skills can be trained and measured, what makes them soft skills? I’m not entirely sure. Even if personality is treated as an immutable trait, there is a lot of variability in what makes a certain personality good or bad for a job. Personality traits that are good in one job, may be a hindrance in others. The other “soft skills” – leadership, communication, time-management – are all skills that require experience to develop. While there are commonalities, these will all vary depending on the workplace and workplace culture.
These are also a set of skills that are often studied by social scientists. It therefore takes some level of expertise and knowledge of behavioral research to measure them appropriately. When looking at the research on these types of skills, I pulled largely from research within psychology and economics. You can train and measure ‘soft skills’, it’s just a bit harder than checking for a certification for a software program.
Perhaps most telling, whether or not something is considered a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ skill seems to depend on who is making the list. There appears to be some debate about whether problem solving is a hard or soft skill. The infographic above from indeed lists it as a soft skill, but edupristine lists it as a hard skill. Time management also hops from hard to soft depending on which list you look at.
I don’t think it’s useful to label something as a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ skill. While there are certainly differences in how one can acquire, develop, and demonstrate different skills, the labels ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ don’t seem to adequately convey those nuances. Instead, I would argue that labeling something as a ‘soft’ skill glosses over some important information. Skills can be trained and assessed. Understanding what skills an employer is specifically looking for can help job-seekers (and students) understand how to develop that skill. “Communication” is pretty vague. Does this job require the ability to give engaging presentations? To provide effective feedback on team members’ performance? To mitigate disputes and clear up misunderstandings? To explain complex processes to clients in terms they will understand? All of these are communication skills one might need in a specific job, but are very different. If anything, it seems like ‘soft skills’ is shorthand for “a vague sense these things are important, without taking the effort to list out the specifics”.
Critical thinking, then, is both and neither. It can be trained and can be measured, but will rely on domain-specific information and experience (3). We can teach some domain general skills and techniques, like understanding the need for persistence, looking for contradictory evidence, and so on; but the speed and ease with which you can do those things depends on practice.
What do you think this image is saying? How does it relate to or comment on society or current events? Can you relate to it personally? What is your opinion of its message?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, 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.
2. the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time
3. systematic arrangement of all the inflected forms of a word
4. the class of all items that can be substituted into the same position (or slot) in a grammatical sentence (are in paradigmatic relation with one another)
Women’s sports, through no fault of the athletes, are also inherently political and politicized, much like women’s bodies. To Manuel, who spent much of the pandemic training for the upcoming Olympics in a backyard pool, all of the complicated ways in which women must navigate through sports and the world means they are “bursting at the seams to tell these stories.”
It might also mean they have more interesting stories to tell — Manuel wants to tell stories about Black hair, mental health, minorities in swimming and perhaps cooking — than male athletes who might begin focusing on a multimillion dollar career when they are 14 and begin media training at 16.
“Being a woman, you are told you are too much or not enough of any one thing, all the time, especially in sports,” Manuel said. “It is a consciousness that isn’t even ingrained, it is a byproduct. If we are talking literal financial opportunities, you have to dimensionalize yourself because there isn’t enough respect for women athletes and their athletic performance.”
Success for TOGETHXR could look like many different things, but for the founders, it’s rooted in changing that paradigm.
“We won’t know until we are looking back on this time and ask ourselves if we were right,” Robertson said. “Did coverage grow? Did pay change? Whose stories are we centering and how often are we centering them?”
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word paradigm 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 paradigm can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
This map shows the world’s top climate risks by 2040 if greenhouse-gas emissions are not cut drastically.
After looking closely at the map above (or at this full-size image), answer these four questions:
What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order.
2. Next, join the conversation online by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box. (Teachers of students younger than 13 are welcome to post their students’ responses.)
3. Below the response box, there is an option for students to click on “Email me when my comment is published.” This sends the link to their response which they can share with their teacher.
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, March 31, 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, April 2, we will reveal more information about the graph, including a free link to the article that included this graph, 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 and how and why other teachers are using this feature 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.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, 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.
What springtime activities and celebrations are you planning?
Will you observe a religious holiday like Ramadan, Passover or Easter? Do you go on walks and picnics to enjoy warmer weather? Have you been watching March Madness or are you eagerly anticipating the beginning of baseball season?
How does the coronavirus pandemic factor into your plans? As vaccinations increase and case numbers decline, are you approaching springtime gatherings any differently than you did last year?
The weather is warming, the days are looking brighter and the number of people getting vaccinated is on the rise. So can we finally celebrate the spring holidays together like we used to, back when we could see the bottom halves of everyone’s faces?
Well, not exactly.
Although coronavirus cases and deaths are declining nationwide and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued new, looser safety guidelines for vaccinated people, the agency recommended against unmasked indoor gatherings with unvaccinated people except in certain circumstances.
We asked public health experts to help us understand the latest guidance and offer advice on how to safely observe upcoming holidays like Easter, Passover and Ramadan.
The article describes how two families are planning scaled-down Passover and Ramadan celebrations:
Erica Fleischer, 42, a public policy expert and mother of two who lives in Chicago, said her family would typically celebrate Passover Seder, held on the first two nights of the eight-day holiday, at her in-laws’ home, surrounded by as many as 20 people.
Last year they met virtually, but this year, given the new C.D.C. guidance, her unvaccinated family will have a small dinner with her in-laws, who have each received the vaccine.
Ms. Fleischer said she feels “pretty confident” the risks of infecting one another are low. “I think I actually needed more convincing than my in-laws did.”
Dr. Shaun Din, 35, a radiation oncologist in Manhattan, is planning to spend part of the holy month of Ramadan with nearby family members. Five of the eight adults, including Dr. Din and his parents, have been vaccinated, so the family feels comfortable meeting unmasked on weekends for the evening iftars that break each daylong fast.
“Last year was very lonely, not being able to celebrate together,” Dr. Din said. “Ramadan is difficult, but the communal aspect of all of us going through it and then breaking the fast together is something that’s very fun.”
The experts Ms. Caron interviews acknowledge that loosening restrictions could create moments of disagreement between family members with different risk and comfort levels:
After a year of public health warnings, some family members might feel uneasy about loosening the rules while others might be anxious to get back to normal.
Last year, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, Claudia W. Allen, a clinical psychologist and the director of the Family Stress Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, told The New York Times that if there are differences of opinion, it’s important not to pass judgment, start lecturing or assume that your relatives have bad motives.
“The people who are willing to take more risks are usually doing it because they’re valuing connection. And the people who are less willing to take risks are usually less willing because they are prioritizing safety. Connection and safety are both good,” Dr. Allen said at the time.
What springtime celebrations are you planning? Whether you’re observing religious holidays or just celebrating a change in the weather, what are your plans?
What foods, songs, activities and traditions do you associate with springtime? What do they mean to you? Do you have a favorite memory of spring?
How are you balancing safety and community in your springtime plans? Are you planning small or outdoor gatherings? Do any of the plans shared by the families in the article sound like something you might want to try?
How has your risk assessment for gatherings changed now that vaccinations are underway in many places? What is your reaction to the advice of the public health experts quoted in the article?
Are your springtime plans different this year from last year? How did you feel last spring? How are you feeling now?
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, 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.
In “News of the World,” Zengel’s character, Johanna Leonberger, is left orphaned after her German parents are violently murdered on their farm when she is four. Taken in and raised by the Kiowa tribe, she is later removed by soldiers, and a traveling veteran, played by Hanks, agrees to bring her to a surviving aunt and uncle.
Zengel has received strong reviews for her performance, with critics praising her ability to imbue her defiant and alienated character with a sense of warmth and intelligence, and for channeling the emotional horrors of Johanna’s back story in near silence. Most of her lines are in Kiowa, a language she had to learn for the part.
Can you correctly use the word imbue 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 imbue can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
If you enjoy this daily challenge, try using multiple Words of the Day in a 50-word story that you submit to our Monthly Vocabulary Challenge.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
