By JEANNINE NOTA-MASSE

Happy New Year to all and welcome back to school! I hope you all enjoyed the winter break and youre ready to take on the next portion of the school year here in Cranston.

We are now in the final stretch of the first semester for our high school students. We are into the second trimester for our elementary school students and nearing the end of the second quarter for our middle school students. Its hard to believe that so much of the school year is already behind us! February will mark the halfway point of the school year.

These next few months ahead, like those before them, are a crucial part of our students educational journeys. Every single day, every single instructional minute, counts.

In the spring we will begin taking our standardized tests. Our secondary students will be taking the SAT, ACT and AP (Advanced Placement) tests, our younger students will be taking RICAS and several of our grade levels will be taking the NGSA science assessments. Many of our high school students have already taken the PSAT tests and some may take them again.

Those types of standardized tests are just one assessment tool that we use when examining our student data to measure what our students have mastered and where we need to place extra effort in our instructional methods going forward. They assess what our students have learned during their instructional time in class from their designated teachers, while at school. Although those types of tests are well known and many look to them as an indicator of student and district achievement, our students are being assessed daily when they are present in class.

Educators look to see who understands a concept which has just been taught by a show of hands, an answer written on a white board, an exit ticket or even by a small group or one-on-one discussion with the teacher. These assessments are given in addition to more formal tests and quizzes. Teachers use this feedback to adjust instruction and pacing.

These types of anecdotal assessments cant be done when a student is not in class, and the more a student misses, the harder it is for them to catch up. If a teacher sees that a student or group of students needs extra help with a concept, they can re-teach that concept or provide resources and activities for reinforcement. Those who are not present in class every day miss all of those opportunities.

Unfortunately, chronic absenteeism is a problem in our schools here in Cranston and nationwide. During the winter months, we often see spikes in rates of absenteeism. Sometimes this is due to bad weather, sometimes its due to student or teacher illness, or sometimes its even due to the illness of a family member responsible for getting students to school. Other times, its due to the decision to pull students out of school for several days for a family vacation during non-designated school breaks.

I cannot stress to you enough the importance of everyone being at school every day when they are well, every day that school is in session.

Its a common misconception that absences do not impact students at the elementary level, or that doing work while on vacation is the same as being present for instruction in a classroom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Absenteeism impacts every student at every grade level. Nothing can take the place of being in the classroom for instruction and authentic classroom learning activities, and nothing can replace the physical presence of a classroom teacher being present to facilitate the learning.

In fact, recent data shows that children who miss too much school in kindergarten are less likely to read well by the third grade. By middle school, absenteeism can predict who will graduate from high school. Absences, even if they are excused, can add up to academic trouble. This is as true in kindergarten as it is in high school. Additionally, although our district does have a policy for excusing absences see the student handbook found on our district website for details our state does not excuse absences. Our Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) accountability ratings depend greatly on everyone, both our educators and our students, being in school when it is in session. When looking at our schools accountability (our star ratings), know that chronic absenteeism plays an important part in determining how RIDE has arrived at our school and district scores.

I encourage you to have a backup plan in place to get your students to school if there is a cancellation or delay due to weather or in case of your own illness. Work with your students to help them understand the extreme importance of being in school each and every day to participate in the instructional activities and assessments taking place there. Let them know that you too, value the importance of this time on learning by keeping your familys vacations in line with our district calendar.

As parents and families ourselves, we can appreciate the budgetary or scheduling issues that traveling during a school vacation week may cause, but we value the extreme impact of time on learning from the teacher in the classroom even more.

Family memories last a lifetime, and so does ones education. Lets all work together as educators, students, and families to be sure that our students have both.

Jeannine Nota-Masse is superintendent of Cranston Public Schools.

Excerpt from:
Attendance is vital to educational succcess - Cranston Herald

Online Higher Education Market Analysis 2019-2024

With the slowdown in world economic growth, the Online Higher Education industry has also suffered a certain impact, but still maintained a relatively optimistic growth, the past four years, Online Higher Education market size to maintain the average annual growth rate of 6.24% from 226 million $ in 2014 to 271 million $ in 2019, our analysts believe that in the next few years, Online Higher Education market size will be further expanded, we expect that by 2024, The market size of the Online Higher Education will reach 353 million $.

Online Higher Education market 2024 gives a noteworthy review of Online Higher Education, giving a meaning of the present market circumstance, giving exact market information from the readers point of view, and getting bits of knowledge. It contains comprehensive significant focuses that altogether influence the development of the market at a worldwide level. The report is made after a pin-point Market look into and top to bottom examination of the industry advancement in various segments that requires right investigation, innovation based thoughts, and its legitimacy.

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This Research gives the plan to focus on your targeted clients seeing, needs and requests. The Online Higher Education business is getting progressively unique and innovative, with increasingly number of private players selecting the business.

In addition, the report discusses Online Higher Education business strategies, sales and market channels, market volume and buyers information, demand and supply ratio across the globe. The report segments the worldwide Online Higher Education based on the type of product, end users, and regions. It describes the performance of an individual segment in Online Higher Education growth.

Market Key Players: American Public Education, Apollo Education Group, Capella Education Company, Grand Canyon Education, Bridgepoint Education, Career Education Corporation, Adtalem Global Education, Graham Holdings Company, ITT Educational Services, Lincoln Educational Services, Strayer Education, Universal Technical Institute, Education Management Corporation, National American Universities Holdings

Types can be classified into: Degree courses, Non-degree courses,

Applications can be classified into: Commerce and management, STEM, Arts

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In the end, the primary and foremost goal of this Online Higher Education report is to aid the user check out the market about its definition, distribution, market capability, trends and the obstacles that the market is facing. We have done a knowledgeable and insightful study while developing the research document. Thus it offers a deep frame of reference of Online Higher Education market.

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Key Players in the Online Higher Education Market Including: American Public Education, Apollo Education Group, Capella Education Company, Grand...

Welcome back to the Online Learning Minute at Marketscale. Today were focusing on the final step in the ADDIE process, the Evaluation phase. Once the course has run, we can begin evaluating how the course has performed and provide feedback on how the course can be improved in future iterations.

There are two parts of evaluation that happen throughout the ADDIE process, being summative and formative. While we evaluate the design of the course at each stage, we perform formative evaluations. At this stage, were using summative evaluation to examine assessment performance and user-feedback to determine if weve met all our goals we set in the analysis phase. We also use this stage to identify other opportunities for learning and for recommending changes for a continuous improvement.

As we conclude this series on the ADDIE process, I want to emphasize that this process is cyclical via continuous improvement and any opportunities we identify in the evaluation phase, we can bring back to the analysis phase. That was your Online Learning Minute at Marketscale. Tune in next episode where we talk about what makes a good Online Learning Video.

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The Online Learning Minute: The Fifth Step in the 'ADDIE' Process - Evaluation - MarketScale

Online Higher Education Market report evaluates the growth rate and the industry value based on market dynamics, growth inducing factors. The complete knowledge is based on latest news, opportunities and trends. The report contains a comprehensive industry analysis and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.

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In this report, we analyze the Online Higher Education industry from two aspects. One part is about its production and the other part is about its consumption. In terms of its production, we analyze the production, revenue, gross margin of its main manufacturers and the unit price that they offer in different regions from 2014 to 2020. In terms of its consumption, we analyze the consumption volume, consumption value, sale price, import and export in different regions from 2014 to 2020. We also make a prediction of its production and consumption in coming 2020-2024.

At the same time, we classify different Online Higher Education based on their definitions. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. What is more, the Online Higher Education industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.

Competitive Analysis

The analysis plans adopted by businesses operating in the Online Higher Education market. As a portion of this research, the authors have examined all business approaches of leading players, including affiliations contracts, mergers, and acquisitions market presence, along with Online Higher Education expansion and clients can get conscious of the specifications of key-players. Additionally, they will have the ability to explore current trends and their competitions

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No of Pages: 118

Major Players in Online Higher Education market are:,Citrix Systems, Inc.,SAP SE,Pearson,Microsoft,McGraw-Hill Education,Tata Interactive Systems,Oracle,Adobe Systems Inc.,Apollo Education Group, Inc.,Cisco,Blackboard Inc.

Objective of Studies:

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The latest trends, product portfolio, demographics, geographical segmentation, and regulatory framework of the Global Online Higher Education Market have also been included in the study.

Most important types of Online Higher Education products covered in this report are: Degree Non-degree courses

Most widely used downstream fields of Online Higher Education market covered in this report are: Commerce and management STEM Arts Others

The report can answer the following questions:

Table of Contents

1 Study Coverage

2 Executive Summary

3 Market Size by Manufacturers

4 Online Higher Education Production by Regions

5 Online Higher Education Consumption by Regions

6 Market Size by Type

7 Market Size by Application

8 Manufacturers Profiles

9 Production Forecasts

10 Consumption Forecast

11 Upstream, Industry Chain and Downstream Customers Analysis

12 Opportunities & Challenges, Threat and Affecting Factors

13 Key Findings

14 Appendix

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Online Higher Education Market 2020 New Innovations Trends, Research, Global Share and Growth Factor till 2020 - Expert Recorder

Published: 1/7/2020 2:41:30 PM

Modified: 1/7/2020 2:40:57 PM

An unusual bill that would allow an online college based in Nashua called Signum University to grant degrees, many for majors that are heavy on fantasy literature such as Lord of the Rings, will go before the N.H. House of Representatives this week.

The online-only school was founded eight years ago by a former professor, Corey Olsen, who had garnered a large online following from his podcast about J.R.R. Tolkiens work. He based Signum University (the name is from the Latin word for a sign or a portent) in New Hampshire because he had moved to Hollis.

Signum offers masters-level classes on some very focused topics, with an emphasis on fantasy and science fiction as well as Medieval works, a few old European languages, and philology, which is the study of how language develops.

It offers a dozen classes about or related to Tolkien as well as courses in such things as literary antecedents to Harry Potter and literary successors to Sherlock Holmes, Beowulf, Germanic philology, and Medieval Scandinavian languages.

Old Norse is selling like hotcakes people love Old Norse, Corey Olsen told the Monitor last year. I think its safe to say we are the only place where our German philology program is growing.

Getting degree-granting approval from New Hampshire would allow the school to seek accreditation from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. That would make its courses far more valuable since they could be used for academic credit at other schools and, just as importantly, let students get federal student loans.

Back in October, however, the House Education Committee recommended by a 10-8 vote that the full House reject the bill not because they dont like stories about hobbits but because the applicants nonprofit status is inconsistent with the objection to accept federal student financial aid, especially if the applicant expands the program to offer undergraduate degrees in the future.

Read more:
House to consider whether online college with a 'Lord of the Rings' emphasis can grant degrees - Concord Monitor

This comprehensive K-12 Online Education Market research report includes a brief on these trends that can help the businesses operating in the industry to understand the market and strategize for their business expansion accordingly. The research report analyzes the market size, industry share, growth, key segments, CAGR and key drivers.

New vendors in the market are facing tough competition from established international vendors as they struggle with technological innovations, reliability and quality issues. The report will answer questions about the current market developments and the scope of competition, opportunity cost and more.

About K-12 Online Education Market

Online Learning is a flexible instructional delivery system that encompasses any kind of learning that takes place via the Internet. Online learning gives educators an opportunity to reach students who may not be able to enroll in a traditional classroom course and supports students who need to work on their own schedule and at their own pace.

This report studies the K-12 Online Education market status and outlook of Global and major regions, from angles of players, countries, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top players in global market, and splits the K-12 Online Education market by product type and applications/end industries.

Market Summary:

The K-12 Online Education market is a comprehensive report which offers a meticulous overview of the market share, size, trends, demand, product analysis, application analysis, regional outlook, competitive strategies, forecasts, and strategies impacting the K-12 Online Education Industry. The report includes a detailed analysis of the market competitive landscape, with the help of detailed business profiles, SWOT analysis, project feasibility analysis, and several other details about the key companies operating in the market.

This report studies the K-12 Online Education market status and outlook of Global and major regions, from angles of players, countries, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top players in global market, and splits the K-12 Online Education market by product type and applications/end industries.

K-12 Online Education in its database, which provides an expert and in-depth analysis of key business trends and future market development prospects, key drivers and restraints, profiles of major market players, segmentation and forecasting. A K-12 Online Education Market provides an extensive view of size; trends and shape have been developed in this report to identify factors that will exhibit a significant impact in boosting the sales of K-12 Online Education Market in the near future.

Company Coverage (Sales Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Main Products, etc.):

Ambow Education, CDEL, New Oriental Education and Technology, TAL, Vedantu, iTutorGroup, EF Education First, Chegg, Knewton, Tokyo Academics.

Scope and Segmentation of the Report

The segment analysis is one of the significant sections of this report. Our expert analyst has categorized the market into product type, application/end-user, and geography. All the segments are analyzed based on their market share, growth rate, and growth potential. In the geographical classification, the report highlights the regional markets having high growth potential. This thorough evaluation of the segments would help the players to focus on revenue-generating areas of the Vertical Farming market.

This report studies the K-12 Online Education market status and outlook of Global and major regions, from angles of players, countries, product types and end industries; this report analyzes the top players in global market, and splits the K-12 Online Education market by product type and applications/end industries.

Regional Analysis

Our analysts are experts in covering all types of geographical markets from developing to mature ones. You can expect a comprehensive research analysis of key regional and country-level markets such as Europe, North America, South America, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. With accurate statistical patterns and regional classification, our domain experts provide you one of the most detailed and easily understandable regional analyses of the K-12 Online Education market.

Competitive Landscape:

The research report also studied the key players operating in the K-12 Online Education market. It has evaluated and explained the research & development stages of these companies, their financial performances, and their expansion plans for the coming years. Moreover, the research report also includes the list of planned initiatives that clearly explain the accomplishments of the companies in the recent past.

Research Methodology

The research methodology of the market is based on both primary as well as secondary research data sources. It compels different factors affecting the K-12 Online Education industry such as historical data and market trends, different policies of the government, market environment, market risk factors, market restraints, technological advancements, forthcoming innovations, and obstacles in the industry.

The content of the study subjects includes a total of 8 chapters:

continue

Moreover, the research report assessed market key features, consisting of revenue, capacity utilization rate, price, gross, growth rate, consumption, production, export, supply, cost, market size & share, industry demand, export & import analysis, and CAGR.

K-12 Online Education Market Key players influencing the market are profiled in the study along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. The report also focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, products and services offered financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.

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K-12 Online Education Industry in 2020: Annual Market Overview with Ambow Education, CDEL, New Oriental Education and Technology, TAL, Vedantu,...

Transparency Market Research (TMR) has published a new report on the medical education market for the period of 20192027. According to the report, the globalmedical education marketwas valued at nearly US$ 31 Bn in 2018, and is projected to expand at a CAGR of more than 4% from 2019 to 2027. Rise in the number of medical schools and increase in cost of medical education are the major factors expected to drive the global medical education market from 2019 to 2027.

Increase in Number of Medical Schools to Drive the Medical Education Market

Want to know the obstructions to your companys growth in future? Request a PDF sample here

Asia Pacific Medical Education Market to Expand at a Rapid Pace

To Obtain All-Inclusive Information On Forecast Analysis Of Global Market, Request A PDF Brochure Here.

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, and Siemens Healthineers to Lead the Global Medical Education Market

The report provides the profiles of leading players operating in the global medical education market. These include Gundersen Health System, GE Healthcare Institute, American College of Radiology, Healthcare Training Institute, New Jersey, Olympus America, TACT Academy for clinical training, Zimmer Biomet Institute, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Apollo Hospitals, CAE Healthcare, and Siemens Healthineers.

I am Sheila Shipman and I have over 16 years experience in the financial services industry giving me a vast understanding of how news affects the financial markets.

I am an active day trader spending the majority of my time analyzing earnings reports and watching commodities and derivatives. I have a Masters Degree in Economics from Westminster University with previous roles counting Investment Banking.

Read more from the original source:
Medical Education Market is Driven by Increase in Preference for Online Education - Voice of Reports

Changing careers isn't easy. I have a lot of respect for people who can learn a completely new discipline later in life and become a professional in that field. When I tried to become a professional programmer, I had several advantages going in. It still wasn't enough.

Programming isn't a least-resistance path to a more secure, better-paying, work-life balanced job. It's a difficult occupation that not everyone is wellsuited for. If it were easy, everyone could do itand then it wouldn't be as valuable.

That's not to say basic programming is hard. It's an exciting rush for just about anyone who completes a few free programming lessons online. That experience might lead you to believe that with just a little extra instruction, in the form of a three-to-six-month coding bootcamp, you canbecome a professional developer. But that's rarely the right approachor mindset.

There are vast numbers of free and low-cost resources available to teach yourself programming online. Educating yourself and building a portfolio without a degree in computer science is absolutely doable, professional developers say.

But before you jump into a bootcamp that will separate you from your hard-earned money, there are several caveats you need to consider. That's the focus for the initial sections of this article.

Theres also a lot of noise around the question"How do I become a coder?"This article removes a lot of the bad, time-wasting advice and will make you more aware of what challenges await you if you're trying to become a professional programmer.

Instead of another list of things to do, you'll learn what not to do, which is equallyimportant.

[ Get up to speed on quality-driven development withTechBeacon's new guide. Plus: Download the World Quality Report 2019-20 forlessons fromleading organizations. ]

TechBeacon has previously conducted a review of coding bootcamps, gathering details about24 programs. The findings showed that 17 of 24 programs claimed that 90% or more of their students got full-time programming jobs or freelancing positions within sixto12 months of graduation. But those numbers can be misleading.

Most of these 90%+ job placement claims are largely unaudited. HackReactor, Turing School, and Lighthouse Labs are among the few that report student outcomes.

Course Report, a site that hosts reviews and resources for coding bootcamps, has conducted student surveys (with over 1,000respondents from many reputable, in-person bootcamps) for the past three years forits annual Alumni Outcomes & Demographics Study.

The 2014 report claims that no more than 75% of graduates of coding bootcamps gained employment as developers after graduation. In 2015 that number dropped to 66%. For 2016 it jumped back up to 73%. By the 2018 reportthe number had hit 78%.

Not all bootcamp attendees are starting from scratch. Some aren't there to get a developer job, and some students are already professional developers who are just trying to acquire new skills. While the study doesn't say who went from "zero to developer," the surveys do cast doubt on many programs'90% job placement claims.

[ Get up to speed with TechBeacon'sGuide to Software Test Automation. Plus: Get theBuyers Guide for Selecting Software Test Automation Tools ]

It's not hard to find a litany of bad bootcamp experiences online. You can find plenty of positive reviews as well, on sites such as Course Report, but people considering bootcamps may not hear as much about negative experiences.

Graduates cite several reasons for this. For example, they may not want to devalue something on which they spent so much time and money, or they don't want to get into a confrontation with the bootcamp provider after posting a negative review.

Many of the negative reviews that do get posted are criticisms of individual instructors. Basel Farag, an iOS developer with experience as a bootcamp mentor, admits that finding good teachers is hard. "You don't get paid much, so you have to really love doing it," he said. Although several schools have highly qualified, well-paid teachers, many bootcamps fill teaching assistant and mentor positions with less-experienced developers, he said.

The practice of bootcamps hiring their own graduates as mentors immediately after graduation is widespread, Faragsaid. Not only does that help to fill a shortage of teaching assistants, but it's also an easy way for bootcamps to improve job placement stats. "It's a very common practice," he said.

It's nothing new, and it's not restricted to bootcamps. "We see law schools doing this all the time."

Another concern is that, when working with inexperienced teachers who don't have a lot of time to spare, there is always a danger that your bootcamp experience could resemble this anonymous reviewer's story:

"A few of our teachers hadnt even been in tech longer than two years. Their teaching skills lacked and they got increasingly frustrated when students didnt understand the material."

Because of their lower pay, mentors need to take on additional students (if they're paid by the number of students they mentor, as they were in the bootcamp I attended) or work at a second job. This can cause some of the mentors to make themselves less available to students, or to provide low-quality feedback, as some online reviews claim.

Bootcamp students who come into programs as beginners are not prepared for a development job when they graduate.

It's possible that you might qualify for a junior developer or internship position after graduating from one of the more rigorous bootcamps, Farag said, "but it's going to be very hard to stand out from the increasing number of bootcamp graduatesand thousands of computer science graduates. You can't truly become a developer in threetosix months."

The problem comes when companies interview graduates and find that their programming skills arent fundamentally sound. Even though developer interviews have problems of their own, Farag saidthat a technical interviewer will eventually find out if you can't implement evensome of the most basic algorithms.

Many coding bootcamps don't spend much time on algorithms. And many courses focus on learning tools rather than onprogramming. Ken Mazaika, co-founder and CTO of the Firehose Project, an online coding bootcamp, also sees this trend.

"The good coding bootcamps out there will cover CS topics around algorithms and data structures, but 9 out of 10 coding bootcamps won't cover these topics at all because these topics can be difficult to teach."

Mazaika's view of the industry is particularly jaded, as the title of his 2015 post makes clear: "The Dirty Little Secrets About The Worst Coding Bootcamps Out There: 9 out of 10 programs are outright scams."

Many of the top coding bootcamps teach frameworks, such as Ruby on Rails, that favor convention over configuration. That is, students learn the usage conventions for a specific tool, but not the fundamentals of how web development actually works across tools and technologies.

These frameworks give students just enough knowledge to start building simple web apps. After getting a handful of projects under their belts, many graduates believe they are ready to enter the job market. Unfortunately, they still lack a solid foundation.

It's surprisingly hard to stand out in today's junior developer job market because, according to the Coding Bootcamp Market Sizing Report, low-skilled developers continue to flood into the job market. According to the2019 report, the number of bootcamp graduates has gone from 15,400+ to 23,000+ in the past year.

With so many new coding bootcamps, and so many bootcamp grads hitting the job market over the past couple of years, "finding a job as a junior software engineer in the Bay Area is not as easy as it once was," saidMarcel Degas, a senior software engineer at Autodesk and a General Assembly bootcamp graduate.

A few years ago, bootcamps took off when entrepreneurs sawa shortage of developersas an opportunity. They thought they could close the gap by creating coding bootcamp businesses that could train anybody in basic development skills. But professional developers, even junior ones, need experience in many different aspects of programming to be effective software engineering professionals.

While it's unclear whether coding bootcamps significantly helped alleviate the developer shortage in the job market, hiring managers aren't as impressed by bootcamps as they once were, saidTed Whang, a developer at Pike13 and a 2014 coding bootcamp graduate.

"You dropped everything in your life and dedicated three months straight to learning how to code? 'Thats amazing!' You wont hear those kind words of praise anymore, except maybe from your mother," he said. Some developers even worry that a stigma is attached to bootcamp graduates, marking them as sloppy coders.

Anyone can learn programming. Not everyone can gain enough coding expertise to be a good software engineer.

When the learn-to-code movement arrived in 2012, the don't-learn-to-code movement followed soon afterward. This blogging backlash by Jeff Atwood, "Uncle Bob" Martin, and others might have seemed mean-spirited and egotistical, but some complaints about the programming profession raised legitimate concerns.

John Kurkowski, a user experience (UX) engineer at CrowdStrike, said programming isn't an inviting field because even the most mature technologies have been roughly cobbled together over the years, and developers often spend much of their time hacking together libraries that were never meant to be used together. Maybe in 10years, he said, developers will have tools and platforms that work more elegantly and are easier to work with.

AndMike Hadlow, a freelance C# developer with more than 20 years of software development experience, points out that software development is harder than people think. It's one of the few highly skilled occupations that require no professional certification (although some believe it should), and it might just be the only highly skilled job where other workers in the industry give copious amounts of their free time and energy to help train people off the street (and still, there's a huge mentoring gap).

That free entry is both good and bad, because, as Martin, author of the Clean Code Handbook, points out, the industry usually doesn't benefit from hoards of novices, but needs carefully trained individuals. He compares good developer training to a flight school, adding that not many bootcamps are that intense, nor require as many hours of training.

Despite these voices of caution, some foresee a blue-collar coding revolution on the horizon, and others predictably have scoffed at this idea in the same way that the learn-to-code movement was criticized.

There are many valid arguments on both sides, butAtwood, the co-founder of StackOverflow, perhaps sums it up best:

While I love that programming is an egalitarian field where degrees and certifications are irrelevant in the face of experience, you still gotta put in your ten thousand hours like the rest of us.

You've felt that first sip of power that programming gives you. You finish your first program, then all of the syntax starts to make sense after you build a few more, and perhaps complete a course on Codecademy or Coursera. At that moment, you think: "I could do this for a living."

But at this stage of the game, you still have no idea what you're doing. You haven't stayed up until 2 am three nights in a row trying to fix a bug or solve a problem. You haven't had to spend the rest of your day sorting out version control issues and getting stuck going down multiple rabbit holes. You haven't had your app stop working, even though you're sure that you didn't change anything.

You need an extreme level of commitment and patience to work all the way up to an entry-level developer position, and exponentially more for the rest of your career. "It wasand isthat persistence that allows me to stay in this field," saidFarag.

Going in, bootcamp students may not realize that computer science is actually a low-success educational field. And there's plenty of evidence showing that even college-level computer science programs don't have stellar graduation rates. Between 30% and 60%of first-year students in university computer science departments fail their first programming course. So why would anyone expect bootcamps to be significantly more successful?

What's more, developers who get computer science degrees say that they are largely self-taught, according to the 2016 Stack Overflow Developer Survey. Even computer science departments can't keep up with the rate of change in the industry. Developers can never stop learning.

Need any more discouragement? A 2008 survey of nearly 900 developers on Stack Overflow revealed that, if your interest in programming didn't start between the ages of 8 and 18, your chances of being motivated enough to become a developer are low.

Its still possible to become a programmer at any age, but as you can see from the second bar chart (in red), mostdevelopers in this Stack Overflow survey said they started before age 20. The number of developers who started after that age was very low. Source: How old are you, and how old were you when you started coding?, Stack Overflow.

It's still possible to become a programmer in your early twenties, of course; it's just a lot harder when most of your time is spent working to support yourself.

From these stats, you can see that bad practices aren't the only reason coding bootcamps are failing to take many people from zero to developer in just a few months. Programming is fundamentally hard, and people who are considering these bootcamps should be honest with themselves as to their level of commitment to programming. Software engineering is not an easy way to get rich quick.

If you really want to find out if software development is the right career path for you, ask yourself these questions:

If you can say yes to all of the above, then you should be able to surmount the obstacles to becoming a developer with or without the help of a bootcamp. You also won't fall flat, as many students do after attending a bootcamp, because the class was the only thing pushing you to keep working.

There are plenty of people out there who have nothing but good things to say about their bootcamp experiences, and some landed jobs a few months after completion. But with a little extra time and more awareness of the resources at their disposal, those people probably could have succeeded without investing thousands of dollars in a bootcamp.

Documentation for all of the open-source tools, languages, and frameworks that bootcamps teach are available online. There are countless free online tutorials on just about any development technology that bootcamps will teach you.

All you need to do is pick a technology and run a Google search. The learning path may not be as streamlined as a bootcamp, but everything you need is out there for free. You just need to get good at looking for up-to-date resources, which some bootcamps will have trouble providing on a consistent basis. Nothing is more up to date than the new resources the coding community and open-source maintainers provide online.

Many people start their coding journey because they want a better career with better pay, but your motivation won't hold out if youcode just whatever some class or tutorial tells you to code. It's okay if you dont know what you want to code at first,when you're in the initial exploratory phase of discovering if you enjoy the basics. You need some time to learn what's possible and generate ideas for exciting projects.

Obviously, you'll want to try creating things that grow your knowledge even if those projects don't produce an end product that sparks joy. But treat those assignments as steppingstones toward building more intriguing projects so that you maintain your motivation in those instances as well.

Build something that would improve your life. Something that you wish existed. Something related to your current job or areas of interest. Want to build a game? Figure out how to build one. Enjoy music? Try to build a Spotify feature you always wanted. Do you like to follow certain topics online? Build a web scraper. Wish you could automate some tedious tasks at your job? Watch "Automate the Boring Stuff with Python."

It doesn't matter what it is; just code things that you want so badly that you'll keep grinding through bugs and maybe even learn to love the countless hours of research. Doing otherwise is a reversal of priorities. As a student of programming, you should take some advice from someone who wasn't an amazing programmer, but he was an amazing experience designer: "Start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology."

For your personal coding projects, the customer is you. Figure out what you want to create and then research which languages and tools would be good options for making that thing.

If youve spent a bunch of time reading"What Programming Language Should I Learn?"articles, you're already doing this wrong.

If you decide to start learning just whatever language or framework is currently in vogue or those that are more common in developer job postings, then you're not really learning programming. Programming is learning to solve problems using the right tools for the job. If you just learn one framework, you're only learning one way of thinking about problem solving.

I mentioned previously that bootcamp graduates are often done a disservice when programs teach them one framework, trapping them in that framework's conventions. You don't want to be tied down to one way of thinking. Try learning several languages and tools and you'll learn more about the core concepts behind programming rather than focusing on onlyone piece of the picture.

In the same spirit of not overthinking the language or tools you use, you also shouldn't overthink the projects you decide to build.

One of my favorite stories about building skills comes from the book Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. To summarize: There are two groups in a ceramics class. One group has to create a piece every day and submit their best work at the end of the class. The other group is allowed to work on a single piece for the entire length of the class to produce a masterpiece.

When the class was finished, the best work consistently came from the group who had completed pieces every day.When learning programming, the same principle is true. You learn better and faster when you code and finish small projects frequently.

It's still good to work on passion projects that are specifically relevant to you, as mentioned earlier, but it's not good to spend more than a few hours deciding your next project or researching the perfect next step.

It's fine to work on something weird or fun for temporary amusement, as long as it's something that works. Jennifer Dewalt, the founder of Zube, showed that there are 180 different things you can code in a single day. With each new project, she added to her portfolio and gained new skills.

You don't have to be completely random with your project choices, either. It's good to try a wide variety of projects so that you expand your ability to handle many different programming scenarios. Just don't overthink it. Stop researching and theorizing, and start writing software.

Writing lots of applications is important because that process will help you quickly discover if the satisfaction you get from completing a variety of projects will sustain a long-term interest in coding. Eventually, you'll finish some of your passion projects, and when that happens, will you want to continue coding to feel that satisfaction again? Will you still have the curiosity to learn more? Will you be able to find new passion projects?

Personally, I was more than happy to code for two hours, five nights a week, within the framework of a course syllabus. But when that course was done, it was hard to keep motivating myself to write code every day,as many bloggers now recommend.

I thought by the end of my course I would be close to getting a programming job and then I could start growing my skills in my day-to-day work rather than in my free time on nights and weekends. Maybe the best question aspiring professional coders can ask themselves is"Do I enjoy coding enough that I don't mind spending 20 hours of my free time per week doing it?"

If you find that your motivation is lasting after several months, I don't think you need to to take the "write code every day"advice literally. Sure, you need to practice often, as you would when learningasport or musical instrument, but coding every day is unnecessary. People need breaks. People need to take long vacation periods and unplug. This prevents burnout.

You could argue that coding every day might even be detrimental to your ability to code. The brain needs time to rest and process difficult problems in the background while you sleep, relax, and work on other things. Taking a day off is actually good for that problem-solving process.

And if you lose motivation and fall off track on your programming goals, then perhaps its a sign that coding isn't the right path for you. Taking breaks from coding will help you step back and see if you want to return to coding in a few days, putting that motivation to test.

This can be one of the hardest things on this list to do, but it's also the most important. Coding in isolation or with only a mentor online is only going to take you so far. You need some kind of partner or mentor that you can meet with on occasion for two main reasons:

Having a friend or a mentor who encourages you to keep up with their pace is the best motivation for a self-taught coder. Without that social connection, it's very easy to let your progress fall by the wayside, because no one will notice.

Experience in coding on projects with others is another key component to your path toward becoming a professional. In most jobs, you'll be working with others, so this experience will help you learn how to navigate those interactions and learn from them.

Working in isolation makes it difficult to solve hard problems when there's no one to help introduce you to new ideas. Other humans are sometimes more helpful than Google.

I'd recommend that you keep trying several strategies to find a partner in coding:

I'd even suggest you go to the extreme of taking time off from coding to spend more time on searching for a coding partner or mentor. That's how important it is.

If you do decide to enroll in a coding bootcamp, consider programs where you can meet with classmates locally first. Then try to make long-term friends and coding partners out of those classmates. This is still possible with an online bootcamp, but it takes a lot more effort and discipline. You should pick only online bootcamps that have you work on projects with other classmates.

After the bootcamp, you should get some classmates to commit to video conference meetings and pair programming sessions every week to work on projects until you all find jobs. You can even help each other with your job searches.

There are manyfree online resources to help you become a programmer without needing to join a bootcamp, but that also means there's a lot of noise to sift through. It's not hard to find hundreds of articles that are simply lists of learn-to-code sites. But your goal is not to spend weeks reading;you need to spend most of your time in your code editor, writing code, and using resources mainly for reference.

Go back to the first piece of advice in this article: Find something to code. The resources you choose should match the thing youve decided to build, not the other way around. Your main resource should always be Google and the documentation for the language, framework, or library you're currently working with.

If you still want some helpful starter resources, or courses to follow along with before you figure out whichprojects you want to build, these are probably the best resources you could start with:

Codecademy: If you've hardly written any code before, this is the place to go and see if you enjoy how it feels to solve coding puzzles. It's not going to teach you how to assemble custom applications, but it's good for learning the syntax of different languages and computer science concepts.

The Learn Programming subreddit: The common questions a beginning coder asks are already answered in the resources section on this subreddit's homepage. Do some searching for even more helpful starter information.

FreeCodeCamp: This site and its instructional videos are widely regarded as the best free content for teaching yourself to code web applications, frequently topping learn-to-code site lists. It also has forums where beginners can help each other on their journey.

Free online university courses: FreeCodeCamp also has another killer feature, which is that it updates this convenient list of links to hundreds of massive open online courses (MOOCs) on programming every month. These are great when you need to learn programming and computer science fundamentals through some purpose-built projects. For learning computer science concepts, introductory courses at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford have beenwell received.

"Teaching Yourself to Code to Become an Employable ProgrammerWhat to Learn, Where to Learn, and More": Although this is essentiallya "how to learn to code"type of article, it's probably the most comprehensive, well-articulated one you can find. True, the author is trying to promote his own bootcamp, but if you want a good look at the progression of a typical self-taught programmer and you need an additional resource list to read in your free time (after you've done some coding first), then it's a good one-stop shop for this topic.

Just those five resources are already more than enough to bog you down in plenty of reading, so make sure you're doing as much coding as you are reading when exploring these.

The resource list above is not meant to be a prerequisite reading list, but something to use to start coding. If you find yourself falling down rabbit holes of tutorials and resources instead of keeping momentum on your coding projects, you may lose motivation when these rabbit holes cause your progress to slow down.

One of the biggest challenges for programmers throughout their careersbut especially asbeginnersis getting unstuck. Resource saturation and rabbit holes are an obstacle to that goal, so your first stop anytime you're stuck should be to look at the docs for the language, framework, or library you're working in. Then search foryour problem or error message. If the problem is conceptual, then try to articulate that in an onlinesearch.

If you've been stuck on the problem after 30 minutes of troubleshooting and research, then its time to try posting a question on StackOverflow or in a forum like r/learnprogramming, Codenewbie, or FreeCodeCamp's forums. If you can afford it, check out Codementor if you need serious one-on-one help getting unstuck or for some learning advice.

Most of your learning should be driven by trying to get various lines of code to run and work properly in your project, not by reading through some list of top resources or tutorials. Get good at Googling.

Many coding advice resources tell you to try reading great code to learn how to write great code. This is true to an extent, but it's simply a bad idea for beginners learning Ruby on Rails to try reading the Ruby on Rails source code in their spare time. It's going to make absolutely no sense and waste your time. It would be as daunting for you as it would be forLittle League baseball players to compare themselves to a professional in the Major Leagues.

A better option is to take simple templates for certain frameworks that you're already familiar with and trying to modify those to learn how they work. At one time I was building a blog on the Jekyll static site generator. I found out that there were blog templates, and I used one of those rather than building a blog from scratch. It helped me understand a lot more about how the system worked and how the template worked.

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Bootcamps won't make you a coder: Here's what will - TechBeacon

LAS VEGAS - Exoskeletons to give wearers super-human strength and games to playfully teach children software skills for coding -- such innovations were on display at the Consumer Electronics Show this week.

Mechanical muscle A Guardian XO exoskeleton made in a collaboration between Sarcos Robotics and Delta Air Lines let CES goers easily lift a 50-pound (22.7 kilo) suitcase with one hand with "technology fit for a superhero."

The battery-powered body suit carries its own weight and "handles the heavy lifting" for wearers, according to Delta. Workers wearing the suit may be able to lift up to 200 pounds (90.7 kilos) for as long as eight hours straight without strain or effort, according to Delta, which planned to have baggage handlers test the exoskeleton.

Meanwhile, Panasonic touted its own "support robot" exoskeletons that will be used by support crews to tote weights and other heavy equipment for competitors at the coming Paralympics in Tokyo.

Playing at code My Creativity Box showed off a "Mochi" game that playfully takes children's eyes off screens while teaching them software coding skills.

Mochi kits let children create a robotic ride for a plush toy bear and command it according to stories in a book.

Subject themes include shapes, colors, animals and numbers.

"My three-year-old daughter and I came up with the idea," said Creativity Box technology chief Mihran Vardanyan.

"It's a screenless experience, so kids are not getting addicted to screens, plus they learn about coding and other useful subjects."

'Frozen' software smarts Aspiring software savants of any age were invited to "enter the magic coding kingdom" with an online learning scheme created in partnership with Disney.

The Disney Codeillusion program freshly launched in the US uses an array of popular Disney film characters to make learning how to write computer code more entertaining.

"For example, with 'Frozen' you can learn how to create Elsa's snow magic," Life is Tech USA chief executive Satoshi Miyagawa said while demonstrating the teaching tool.

"For 'Zootopia,' you create a website to recruit new police officers."

The online courses were created with school age children in mind, but partner Life is Tech caught on that lots of adults are interested in code and want a fun way to learn the skills.

"We wanted to build a bridge from kids coding to adult coding, and keep learners motivated," Miyagawa said of the program, which is priced at $1,900.

Sound of the future Oscar winning composer Giorgio Moroder debuted a piece created in a collaboration with FPT Industrial to serve as a sound for silent vehicles, such as electric cars, that are replacing noisy combustion engines.

"And now you know the engine is working," Moroder exclaimed after a crowd heard his auto-engine composition for the first time.

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From exoskeletons to education at the Consumer Electronics Show - ABS-CBN News

A recent three-year drop in the number of people enrolled in Arkansas teacher preparation programs appears to have bottomed out, and the number is on the upswing, preliminary data from the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education show.

The number of enrollees in the state's teacher preparation programs for 2018-19 was 4,443.

That is almost 400 more enrollees than the 4,062 enrolled in the 2017-18 year and 854 more than the 3,589 teacher candidates enrolled in 2016-17, according to the state data. The most recent total, however, falls short of the 5,258 program enrollees in 2013-14.

The teacher preparation enrollment data will be included in the state's next annual Educator Preparation Program Report that is released by the state agency in early summer.

Ivy Pfeffer, the state division's deputy commissioner, attributed the higher counts to "really careful focus and attention" in recent years on recruiting individuals to the teaching profession and retaining current teachers.

"Kindergarten through 12th-grade education is the single largest employer in Arkansas with more than 71,000 employees, when you look at certified and classified staff," Pfeffer said.

"As far as the workforce, it is larger than state government and any industry. You think about the impact that the education workforce has in terms of our state, that's why it is really exciting to be able to start seeing the data moving back to the direction of increasing. We hit the bottom in terms of those enrollments. I think there is a renewed interest, a renewed excitement and a renewed importance on teaching as a profession."

[GRADE POINT ARKANSAS: Sign up for the Democrat-Gazette's new education newsletter arkansasonline.com/emails/gpa]

The 2018-19 annual teacher preparation program totals include participants in traditional educator preparation programs -- college and university-degree programs -- and alternative routes to teaching credentials. That includes the Arkansas Professional Pathway to Educator Licensure, or APPEL, that enables a person who has a degree in a field other than education to work as a teacher while meeting requirements to obtain a standard state teaching license.

The enrollment in nontraditional teacher licensure programs is actually showing the steeper and more consistent gains, with 1,860 enrollees in 2018-19, up from 1,425 just the year before.

The traditional programs totaled 2,588 enrollees in 2018-19, down from 2,637 the previous year but up from 2,315 in 2016-17. Overall, traditional program enrollment in 2018-19 remained below the 3,555 count in 2013-14.

Efforts to expand the pool of people preparing to teach include promoting teaching as a profession to middle and high school students through Orientation to Teaching courses or a Teacher Cadet program, Pfeffer said.

As many as 1,800 students in some 100 of the state's 300 high schools are currently in such programs, said Sharlee Crowson, a program adviser in the state agency's teacher recruitment and retention unit.

Crowson and other state education leaders want to see those numbers grow and programs expanded to the point that students graduate from high school with credentials that qualify them to be paraprofessionals or teacher assistants, which could be a source of income and experience as they go through a college degree program to be a teacher.

In addition to building up the pool of people in teacher preparation programs, the state has worked to improve the retention of its teacher force, which already exceeds national averages. For example, Arkansas has a 92% retention rate after one year of work in the classroom, 75% after five years and about 56% after 10 years, Pfeffer said.

Nationally, those percentages are 90% after a year, 60% after five years and less than 90% after 10 years, she said.

Retention efforts include expanding experienced educators' mentoring of new teachers through the state's 15 education service cooperatives. Each of the cooperatives also employs a teacher recruitment and retention specialist who provides guidance on licensure and employment issues, and on high school programming, to cooperatives' member districts.

Another effort is Gov. Asa Hutchinson's and the General Assembly's legislation to increase the minimum starting salaries for bachelor- and master-degreed teachers. The starting salary for a beginning teacher must be at least $36,000 by 2022-23, as a result of the new law.

Also, the state has recently modified its licensure system to include "lead" teacher and "master" teacher certifications for those who have at least three years of teaching experience and want to do more while still teaching.

"We kept hearing, over and over, that teachers wanted to find ways to lead from the classroom without leaving the classroom," said Joan Luneau, program coordinator in the state's educator preparation unit. "This is a way they can provide leadership without giving up the classroom."

Districts are still exploring ways to provide compensation to those lead and master teachers, Pfeffer said. State education leaders are planning in the coming weeks to roll out some options and pilot programs to support efforts by districts to alter the traditional teacher salary schedules that are built around teacher education levels and years of teaching experience.

Also in regard to licensure, the state pays for the test fees for teachers who agree to add to their licenses a certification to teach a subject in which there is a shortage of teachers. Teacher shortage areas, announced every year, have typically been special education, math and science, among others. One of those -- library/media -- has recently been removed from the list as the result of awarding "ancillary" state licenses. Those licenses qualify people to work in schools if they have master's degrees in the fields but do not have education degrees.

Still other efforts by state education leaders to meet goals to recruit teachers and encourage longevity include a recently completed Teach Arkansas lecture series directed at teachers around the state, and a campaign to appeal to people to return to work if they have left teaching or otherwise allowed their licenses to expire.

The state-set goals include:

Increase the number of candidates entering Arkansas educator preparation programs by 20% in five years.

Increase the number of beginning teachers in Arkansas public schools by 10% in five years.

Decrease the Arkansas teacher attrition rate by 15% in five years.

Increase the number of teachers reentering the teaching profession in Arkansas by 5% in five years.

Increase the number of minority-group teachers in public schools by 25% in five years.

Pfeffer said she believes the state can eventually eliminate teacher shortages by operating more strategically.

"To realize our goal of having equitable access -- where every student has an effective teacher every day -- we have to create that talent pipeline," she said. "That takes in recruiting to the profession, getting them through high-quality programs, providing support as they enter the profession and giving them opportunities that make them want to stay."

Metro on 01/05/2020

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More people taking teacher prep courses - Arkansas Online