Housework can also become a form of play, and depending on how well or poorly your children do it, may be some help. In the 19th century, Hodgkinson said, “children were seen as not necessarily a burden on the household, but a welcome labor force.” Employ them.
“The thing to remember is that kids want to help, so try to get them in the habit of doing some of those things,” Lenore Skenazy, president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence, said. “A 3-year-old separating laundry is quite possible and also quite fun. Six-year-olds can be making breakfast.” So, yes, children can cook, they can clean. If you can take a few extra minutes to gamify the chore — Mary Poppins’s “Spoonful of Sugar” approach — they may even enjoy it.
Muddle Through
A pandemic isn’t forever. Probably. So if it’s easier, leave historical practice aside, give guilt the vacation that you can’t take and get through it. “Don’t think that there’s something wrong with you or that you haven’t been the perfect camp counselor and made it a fun and exciting and rewarding summer for everyone,” Skenazy said. “I mean, just give yourself a break.”
If that break involves a lot of screens, remember that new entertainment forms and technologies — from the written word on — have always attracted suspicion that they will pulp or corrupt young minds. And most of us have turned out OK, no matter how many “Smurfs” episodes we may have once absorbed. Video games provide an opportunity to socialize, a streamed musical is still a musical, a virtual tour of a gallery or museum isn’t the same as wandering the halls yourself, but take what you can get.
In general, find out what your children like to do and encourage them to do it. Or go with the obverse: When you have time available, make them do stuff that you like. In my case, that means playing board games and watching toy theater videos on YouTube, plus the occasional Hayao Miyazaki movie. Or the more than occasional one.
“Just let them watch a lot of films,” Hodgkinson said. “It’s temporary, it’s not forever. We really shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves.”
“Switching Letters, Skipping Lines: Troubled and Dyslexic Minds” By Hayden Miskinis, age 12, Epping Middle School, Epping, N.H.
I look down at my book. I slowly read the first line of jumpy letters that won’t stay still. It takes me a minute to find the next line, as my eyes jump around. This is a repeating process until I’m at the end of the page. This doesn’t just happen to me; it happens to 70-80 percent of dyslexic students in schools, and yet schools aren’t providing resources, teachers aren’t getting trained and people don’t even really understand dyslexia.
What is dyslexia? I didn’t know until 2015 when I was faced with the truth as to why I wasn’t progressing in school. I had been given interventions through a program called Title I which helps kids who don’t have access to books or reading in their homes, but it wasn’t working for me. I had plenty of books; I just couldn’t read them. What I needed were interventions that would work for me.
Many people think that dyslexia is just switching letters. In my case, and that of many other dyslexic people, switching letters is only a small part of the bigger issue. A recent study suggests that “The brains of dyslexics do form accurate neurological representations of language sounds” (Paul). This would explain why a dyslexic learner’s comprehension is so much higher than their reading ability. In other words, a dyslexic student could understand Harry Potter but not be able to read a simple word like “the.” In order for a dyslexic student to succeed, correct interventions should be applied early in school.
While it might be true that some schools acknowledge dyslexia, most schools don’t. In my case, it wasn’t until third grade that I started to get the right interventions. The delay made becoming a strong reader especially challenging. I don’t blame my teachers for this. Teachers don’t recognize dyslexia or use interventions because they aren’t prepared to. “One-on-one, individualized intervention is almost never an option in the public school system, but it is necessary for a dyslexic student” (Lunney). Students need to “attain functional reading and spelling as fast as possible. The longer that is delayed the farther behind they fall academically” (Lunney). I was fortunate that my school hired an Orton-Gillingham specialist who was trained in dyslexia. But, I’m one of the lucky ones. Most schools don’t have the funding to provide these necessary resources.
After years of intensive interventions including tutors and outside programs, I can finally pick up a book and read it like it’s nothing. This could be the future for many kids but not until teachers are trained properly and appropriate interventions are provided. In the meantime, we all need to remember, “Great minds don’t think alike.”
Instead, the coronavirus-fueled bias against Asian-Americans is symptomatic of a wider phenomenon: American society has always regarded Asian-Americans as “non-American.”
Many Americans, of all stripes, are unfamiliar with the breadth of cultures and backgrounds that “Asian-American-ness” comprises. Without that awareness, it’s easy to paint a generic picture of Asian-Americans with broad, stereotypical brush strokes: industrious, high-achieving, passive and foreign. A local university thinks we lack “personality.” This unfamiliarity leads to a subconscious categorization of Asian-Americans as being “other,” a one-size-fits-all group too different to be fully “American.”
Nearly every Asian kid (myself included) experiences this categorization through the question, “Where are you really from?” It doesn’t matter that I was born in Boston, or that my dad cried tears of joy when his hometown team won the World Series “after 108 years of futility.” It’s usually an innocuous question phrased poorly, and I’ll happily talk about my background, but it assumes that Asians can’t quite be considered “American.” That assumption quietly breeds suspicion, and suspicion breeds fear.
We’ve seen this fear of the unfamiliar, combined with external “proof” that Asians “threaten the American way of life,” give rise to active discrimination, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to Japanese internment during World War II, to the verbal and physical attacks of today. This is only possible because Asian-Americans were always viewed with suspicion. For sure, the Communist Party of China has been untrustworthy, but it doesn’t justify linking my Chinese-American friends to the coronavirus. President Trump’s “Chinese Virus” label holds power against Asian-Americans because they’re seen as outsiders — it taps into the fear and anxiety that Americans feel, and the need to displace that fear.
Yet, the coronavirus, and the heightened bias associated with it, gives Asian-Americans a unique opportunity to hold a national dialogue about being “forever foreigners” — to go beyond cultural stereotypes and share our individual experiences. By approaching one another as human beings, not faceless “others,” we might someday view each other as Americans first.
The UK joined a third of the world’s population in lockdown this year. The Prime Minister announced lockdown measures starting on the 23rd March to slow down the spread of the virus and reduce excess deaths. As a result, 8.9 million workers were furloughed from their jobs and record numbers of people Googled home office setup, bikes, veg boxes, and learn a language.
A huge number of Britons used this time to improve their skills or find a new online hobby. FutureLearn.com saw a 350% increase in visitors from the UK, looking to boost their CV, adjust to the new normal, or just fill their time with something new.
Unsurprisingly, London led the charge as the UK’s largest city with Birmingham following, but Glasgow, Bristol, and Edinburgh made up 3 of the top 5 despite having much smaller populations.
Rank
City
1
London
2
Birmingham
3
Glasgow
4
Bristol
5
Edinburgh
6
Manchester
7
Leeds
8
Cardiff
9
Liverpool
10
Nottingham
What were people learning?
COVID 19 has been the world’s focus since early 2020, and courses on the topic have dominated the top 5 lists for most UK cities. Teachers around the country have also had to pivot online quickly, and have dedicated time and resources to improve their understanding of online learning, teaching, and how to provide good continuity for their students.
Interestingly, there has also been a nation-wide focus on mental health issues and how to support yourself or others. Many of our learners from top cities have focused on improving their understanding of ADHD and learning to support young people with depression/anxiety.
Lifelong-learning is a huge focus at FutureLearn, and it’s been encouraging to see so many people improving their skills for work, including a large number of visitors from Leeds showing interest in people management skills, and plenty of people in Bristol, Manchester and Liverpool improving their digital skills with a social media course.
There have been some fun courses too – users from Birmingham have been keenest to get into journalism, while people from London and Cardiff are most likely to start writing fiction. Glaswegians have been the most concerned with caring for vulnerable children or people with anxiety or depression, and Liverpudlians have been the keenest British historians, looking at the controversies of the British Empire.
To help the world combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Alison launched the course Coronavirus – What you need to know. In order to make sure that no one was excluded from accessing possibly life-saving information, Alison committed to translating the course into as many languages as possible. To achieve this ambitious goal, Alison reached out to its community of Learners, seeking volunteers willing to use their language skills to help translate the course and spread important information on coronavirus. Ko Nyi Nyi translated the course into Myanmar and played his part in spreading free learning that has helped save lives.
Nyi, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
I am a 29 year old man from Myanmar. I graduated from university with a Bachelor of Law and also have an Engineering Vocational Diploma. I’m a civil engineer working in project management and am currently involved in a government project sponsored by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
How did you learn that Alison was looking for translators for its coronavirus course?
Translation is my favourite hobby since my intermediate school days and I regularly get in touch with online learning websites. I was contacted by Alison to translate the coronavirus course from English to my native language, Myanmar.
What was your experience of Alison before volunteering to translate? Had you studied with Alison before?
I had studied with Alison before. Alison is great, with thousands of online courses for free. All the courses are really effective and they are easy to understand. If you have sufficient time to study with Alison, then I trust you will be very qualified in no time.
Why did you offer to translate our coronavirus course?
I took part in this translation project in February, when the spread of coronavirus was increasing but had not yet infected our country, or most parts of Asia. I’m very interested in translation work and also the coronavirus seemed to become more and more of a threat to people’s lives. That’s why I joined the project.
Why is it important that everyone has access to important information on coronavirus?
We have never experienced such a situation before and it is horrible. Due to the development of the internet and social media, misinformation has become a great threat to all of us. Therefore it is vitally important for everyone to have easy access to important information about coronavirus and related matters to avoid and defend against the impact of misinformation.
Tell us a little about your method when translating.
When translating, I use Google Translate for an approximate translation. But Google Translate has many limitations when it comes to my native language, Myanmar, because Myanmar is one of the most difficult languages in the world. But I get a raw translation from it and then I perfect it with my knowledge and by using dictionaries.
Why is free learning so important and why is it important to translate it into many languages?
In recent years, network development has massively increased in many countries but there are still many things that are yet to be accommodated, such as online billing systems. This means that we cannot pay for, and so cannot access, paid courses from where we are. But with free courses, it’s easy for everyone to take part and participate as long as there’s a network connection. Free learning is so important because it covers almost everyone. It’s also very important to translate courses into many languages. English is a global language but courses will be more effective, and more capable of reaching people around the globe, if they are translated into their native languages. Here in Myanmar, we are mostly poor in English and so to be more effective, translating courses into Myanmar is necessary, so that everyone globally can participate in learning.
Have you been learning through Alison during the pandemic? How has the lockdown been for you?
Yes, I’ve learned about coronavirus by participating in the translation project. During the lockdown, I was at work as our project is still running under the guidance of the government. So lockdown hasn’t meant anything to me, just regularity.
What would you say to people who might be interested in translating for Alison?
For those who are interested in translation, my opinion is that there are thousands of quality free learning courses out there and translating them into our native languages is very important, not only to allow others to be able to learn, but also for ourselves to promote our knowledge and abilities as translators.
If you’d like to play your part in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic by helping Alison give people access to the information necessary to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, please get in touch.
To help the world combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Alison launched the course Coronavirus – What you need to know. In order to make sure that no one was excluded from accessing possibly life-saving information, Alison committed to translating the course into as many languages as possible. To achieve this ambitious goal, Alison reached out to its community of Learners, seeking volunteers willing to use their language skills to help translate the course and spread important information on coronavirus. Thomas L Dugue translated the course into Haitian Creole and played his part in spreading free learning that has helped save lives.
Thomas, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
My name is Thomas Lamarre Dugue. I am Haitian and I live in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haïti. I am married and I have three children. I’m a computer specialist and a network security expert. From 2002 to 2010, I worked for a medical research organisation in my country as a Data Manager and a Quality Assurance and Quality Control officer on research studies on HIV/AIDS. Currently, I am the Technology Director at a Christian school in Haïti. Beside this, I also provide technology support both on site and remotely to various clients.
How did you learn that Alison was looking for translators for its coronavirus course?
In February 2020, a few weeks after I successfully passed the free coronavirus course, I received an email from Alison looking for volunteers to translate the course into different languages, so I decided to volunteer.
What was your experience of Alison before volunteering to translate? Had you studied with Alison before?
I’ve studied courses with Alison since 2010, among them, the coronavirus course.
Why did you offer to translate our coronavirus course?
I am a Christian and I know that the Bible says in Philippians 2:4 “Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” This is what Alison has done. If I could learn a lot about COVID-19 from Alison for free, it is because someone else made it available in English. This has inspired me to help to make this course available in Haitian Creole for my fellow citizens since few speak English.
Why is it important that everyone has access to important information on coronavirus?
This is a new pandemic virus and, as time has showed us, no one has a clear and exact answer to it. So the more we know about the evolution of the virus, the more we can protect others and ourselves.
Tell us a little about your method when translating.
My primary languages are both Haitian Creole and French. Because I learned English and practice it almost every day due to my work environment, it was quite easy for me to just translate from English to Creole, Google Translate the English version to French and then practice a sort of back translation by comparing the French version with my translated Creole version.
Why is free learning so important and why is it important to translate it into many languages?
I would say that, whether it is free or paid, learning is important since what you know today may change tomorrow. One needs to be in the loop. In my country in particular, a lot of people would learn a lot of things but nearly 99% of the time, money is a barrier. It happened to me, so I know how valuable it is to acquire knowledge when you are broke but willing to change your situation.
Have you been learning through Alison during the pandemic? How has the lockdown been for you?
Yes, since the beginning in February 2020. The lockdown was, and is still, challenging. In Haïti, as of mid June, we are still in lockdown mode. But with the help of technology, I still can do a lot while remaining at home.
What would you say to people who might be interested in translating for Alison?
We need a better world. Everyone can positively contribute to help make things easier for needy people and for anyone else too. While we cannot share all our tangible belongings with everyone, we can share our knowledge with all.
If you’d like to play your part in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic by helping Alison give people access to the information necessary to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, please get in touch.
To help the world combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Alison launched the course Coronavirus – What you need to know. In order to make sure that no one was excluded from accessing possibly life-saving information, Alison committed to translating the course into as many languages as possible. To achieve this ambitious goal, Alison reached out to its community of Learners, seeking volunteers willing to use their language skills to help translate the course and spread important information on coronavirus. Tomáš Kubašta translated the course into Czech and played his part in spreading free learning that has helped save lives.
Tomáš, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
I am ordinary working man but I never forget to wear a smile on my face.
How did you learn that Alison was looking for translators for its coronavirus course?
I received an email with the information from Alison.
What was your experience of Alison before volunteering to translate? Had you studied with Alison before?
I did the GDPR course, which was very important for my job.
Why did you offer to translate our coronavirus course?
I thought it would be very useful and that it could help other people.
Why is it important that everyone has access to important information on coronavirus?
In my opinion, if everyone has access to the correct information then it should help little bit with calming down the panic about coronavirus, and also with slowing down the transmission of the virus.
Tell us a little about your method when translating.
Alison sent me the course text in some very well organised spreadsheets, which was easy to translate. But sometimes a direct translation was inadequate because our language is very difficult. In the Czech language, we have lots of different word endings and so for precise translations we need to provide more context.
Why is free learning so important and why is it important to translate it into many languages?
Free learning is a necessary step for all people to have access to education. With regards the question of translation, I am of the opinion that ignorance of English should not be a handicap.
Have you been learning through Alison during the pandemic? How has the lockdown been for you?
I tried to but I had a lot of other tasks because in the lockdown I was very busy. What struck me most was that the gyms were closed. But, fortunately, life goes on.
What would you say to people who might be interested in translating for Alison?
It’s a very good opportunity to help other people. Don’t worry if you feel that you are not fully prepared for the task of translating. God does not seek the fully prepared, but primarily the willing.
If you’d like to play your part in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic by helping Alison give people access to the information necessary to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, please get in touch.
To help the world combat the Covid-19 pandemic, Alison launched the course Coronavirus – What you need to know. In order to make sure that no one was excluded from accessing possibly life-saving information, Alison committed to translating the course into as many languages as possible. To achieve this ambitious goal, Alison reached out to its community of Learners, seeking volunteers willing to use their language skills to help translate the course and spread important information on coronavirus. Mosab Altaher translated the course into Arabic and played his part in spreading free learning that has helped save lives.
Mosab, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
I’m a Sudanese doctor working in Saudi Arabia for the last five years as a GP. When the pandemic started, I had just received my Occupational English Test result that will allow me to register for work in western countries. Currently, I am working on moving to the UK or Ireland.
How did you learn that Alison was looking for translators for its coronavirus course?
Because of my work, I have to keep updated on any dangerous diseases and I have been keeping up with this pandemic’s progress since it started. I have been providing orientations and presentations, which led me to check on Alison to see if there were any related courses. I found Coronavirus – What you need to know and, after finishing it, I thought it was an impressive course and that more Arabic-speaking people needed to learn about it. I volunteered and started to translate immediately.
What was your experience of Alison before volunteering to translate? Had you studied with Alison before?
Yes, indeed. I studied English Grammar and two diplomas, in English and in Human Resources. I also invited my brother to start to learn from your website.
Why did you offer to translate our coronavirus course?
In a situation like that of COVID19, having access to clear and accurate information can be the difference between life and death for some people. Having translated versions of the course is essential to allow people to learn about the coronavirus origin, spread and all related information. Also, I feel that by helping translate this course, I am contributing much better information to people than what is being presented to them through regular or governmental media.
Why is it important that everyone has access to important information on coronavirus?
Ignorance about how to prevent the transmission of this virus can lead to a faster spread that will lead to higher casualties. In the end, those who will be infected most of the time are one’s family members.
Tell us a little about your method when translating.
I used Google Translate on each paragraph and then I would read through it in Arabic and make the necessary corrections as I read it. I found if I put in more text than that, the translation would be wrong. Sometimes the changes were few, and other times it really required me to go through it all to make sure it was accurate.
Why is free learning so important and why is it important to translate it into many languages?
Knowledge is power. Not everyone has access to medical information and, without a doubt, everyone needs to be aware of the disease during a pandemic. Everyone needs to know how to survive, and with these provided translations, they may have a better chance to learn how to fight it in their homes and survive.
Have you been learning through Alison during the pandemic? How has the lockdown been for you?
For me, as far as I remember, my work has never been busier. I have to work more hours and the workload has increased tremendously. As it became clear that the pandemic was spreading faster than anyone had anticipated, my Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board 1 Exam was cancelled due to the lockdown, as a result of the fear of the virus spreading. So not great for me.
What would you say to people who might be interested in translating for Alison?
If you have a good understanding of your language and the skills to translate from English, then your help will be invaluable to make sure that the precise message reaches your people. People learning how to deal with this virus is the much-needed step to defeat this world threat. So help out.
If you’d like to play your part in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic by helping Alison give people access to the information necessary to keep themselves and their loved ones safe, please get in touch.
Technical interviews offer potential employers a way to see how you think on your feet, and to make sure that your skills stack up against your resume. But if you’ve never had a technical interview before, we know just how nerve racking it can be — especially when it’s the last stage in your journey to landing the job you’ve dreamed of.
“Technical interviews can be stressful, but the skills you need to pass them are ones that you’ll use throughout your career,” Alisha tells us. Our objective is to help set you up for success — both in your interview and in your career as a software developer.
What is a technical interview?
Before we share tips on how to prepare for a technical interview, we thought we’d share a quick rundown of what a technical interview is in the first place. The technical interview is one component of the overall interview process, which can include a combination of phone screens, in-person interviews, take-home or in-person assignments and more.
While every company is different, the technical interview usually involves a question where you’ll be asked to implement a specific function or program. The interviewer will usually explain the problem, let you ask questions about intended behavior, and then it’s up to you to implement a solution! Some interviews will happen with real code in a code editor, and some will have you write code out by hand on a whiteboard.
Your technical interview may include anything from debugging existing code, building a small project, adding a feature to an existing code base, or talking about the design and architecture for a technical problem. If you can, ask your main contact at the company if they can provide information about what to expect before you head in for an interview.
Technical interview preparation tips
These technical interview preparation tips were compiled by our Curriculum Developers, Ian and Alisha, based on their work on Pass the Technical Interview with JavaScript — and their own experience with technical interviews.
Practice
“The best way to prep for a technical interview is to practice,” says Ian. “Try solving practice technical interview questions and problems, studying up on your language of choice, or even practicing in person with a friend.”
Simply spending time building your own projects is also a great way to prepare for technical interviews. Working on personal projects gives you the opportunity to think through your approach and problem-solve on your own — the very skills that technical interviews are designed to test.
Know your language
Most technical interviewers will let you complete your in-person or remote technical interview in the language of your choosing. If you’ve landed a technical interview, chances are that you already know at least one programming language really well at this point, so stick with the language you’re most comfortable with!
“You might need to know how a particular built-in method works in order to analyze the runtime complexity of your answer, or you might be able to use a novel language feature to make your solution more optimized or more idiomatic and readable,” Ian says. “Knowing your language like the back of your hand will help you concentrate on the problem itself rather than thinking about syntax.”
Ask questions
Alisha and Ian stress the importance of asking questions during your technical interview. “Ask any question that comes to your mind! It’s much easier to get rid of any ambiguity before you start coding than when you’re halfway through implementing a solution that might be built on false assumptions!”
Clarify the problem up front and gather as much information as you need to execute on it effectively. Here are some things to consider asking:
Ask about any edge cases.
Make sure you understand how the program should behave given certain inputs.
Ask whether you need to build in error handling.
Repeat the problem back to the interviewer so they can set you on the right track if you got anything wrong.
Think about your approach
Just as asking questions is important to ensure you completely understand the task at hand, taking time to think about your approach is important. “In a technical interview,” says Ian, “one of the biggest pitfalls is to jump in and start coding right away.”
“At the beginning of your technical interview session, take the time to think through different approaches to the problem. Talk through those approaches out loud. Don’t worry about saying things that seem obvious or unimportant — it could be that you missed an edge case, and talking through the problem out loud will help you catch it!”
Get to a solution, then optimize
“The most important thing in an interview is to show the interviewer that you can think through a problem,” says Ian. “Work to get there first, and then go back and clean up your code. It can be very tempting to jump to fancy techniques, but many if not most interview problems can be solved using basic language features. Sometimes the best way to start out is with the humble `for` loop!”
“After you’ve got a basic working solution, now it’s time to handle edge cases and optimizations. Chances are, your interviewer will appreciate that you first got something that worked and then continued to spruce it up. As you optimize, talk about what you’re doing and how it improves your program. If you know how to analyze the Big O runtime of your solutions and figure out ways to improve it, now’s the time to show that off.”
Talk, talk, talk
Last but not least, Ian and Alisha recommend talking — a lot. “The more you can talk, the more your interviewer will understand your thinking.” Understanding how you think and how you approach problems is, in large part, why the technical interview exists. So talking through your process is big.
“If you get stuck while solving a problem, don’t clam up. Talk through your issue. The more you can talk, the more your interviewer will understand your thinking, and hearing yourself out loud may even cause you to reconsider your approach.” As an added benefit of talking, some interviewers will offer tips or a helping hand along the way — and many will be more willing to do this if you’re already having a lively dialogue.
We know that talking out loud while coding is not the most natural thing for many programmers. If it feels awkward or uncomfortable to you, that’s totally normal. Try practicing with a friend to get more comfortable with it.
Learn more in Pass the Technical Interview with JavaScript
The tips in this article are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to prepping for your technical interview. Pass the Technical Interview with JavaScript offers a deep dive into technical interview preparation.
This Skill Path is meant for developers who are familiar and experienced with a programming language (preferably JavaScript), and are looking for their first full-time position as a software developer. We won’t teach you the basics of JavaScript in this course. Rather, we’ll teach you how to apply it to classic computer science problems to set you up for success in your technical interviews.
We hope the course helps you learn a new way of thinking that’ll set you up to land the job you’ve been dreaming of!
We know that kids notice race, and pretending to be color blind just does not work. We all have implicit biases, even if we don’t want them and are not explicitly biased. However, it is difficult for adults to talk about race issues, and teaching our kids about them can seem even more daunting. So, for this week’s digest, we have a roundup of resources aimed at helping parents, or teachers, talk to kids about race.
Before talking to your kids, it might be helpful to read on what it means to be an Ally, and how to handle some of the situations we encounter regularly. The author explains their reasons for creating the guide best:
