COVID-19...Preparation, or hysteria?

[Tree Magnet]

2 hours ago, CBaron said:

 

Ugh, I find that terribly sad.  8-10 yr old boys should be talking about other things....NOT F'n politics!  

-CJB

On one hand, I agree that 8-10 yr old boys shouldn't be talking politics.  On the other hand, they are engaged and paying attention and that gives me hope.

[Sluggo]

I can’t imagine the challenges of  having school aged kids right now. Are you sending them back  to class in the Fall? 

[ATXZJ]

That and theyre bored and haven't discovered girls yet

 

We have a junior who already been made aware she's not going back in the fall.

Edited July 9, 2020 by ATXZJ

[Tree Magnet]

5 minutes ago, Sluggo said:

I can’t imagine the challenges of  having school aged kids right now. Are you sending them back  to class in the Fall? 

I asked my three school age kids if they wanted to go back to school or stay home and do the online thing.  All three (8th, 10th, 12th grade) said they wanted to go back to school.  That doesn't mean that we're sending them back into a room with a bunch of other mouth breathers but they're opinion counts.  Staying healthy and covid free is important but so is learning.  If we can't make the online thing at home work, we start to run out of options.

[CBaron]

23 minutes ago, Tree Magnet said:

On one hand, I agree that 8-10 yr old boys shouldn't be talking politics.  On the other hand, they are engaged and paying attention and that gives me hope.

At 8-10 they need to be playing in ditches, throwing rocks at cars and dropping black cats into the mailbox of the neighborhood scrooge (all things I did by 10 yrs old).  I appreciate the sentiment with them being 'engaged and paying attention' but with that comes a heaviness and loss of innocence that is way too premature.  They'll have an (adult) lifetime ahead of them to be frustrated and cynical.  It doesn't need to start at 8....

Later,
CJB

[AntonioGG]

10 minutes ago, CBaron said:

 I appreciate the sentiment with them being 'engaged and paying attention' but with that comes a heaviness and loss of innocence that is way too premature.  They'll have an (adult) lifetime ahead of them to be frustrated and cynical.  It doesn't need to start at 8....

I appreciate your sentiment and maybe 10 years ago I would have agreed.  But having adopted 2 black kids, I can tell you it's pretty much impossible that they are not going to be forced to be engaged in some manner even at an early age.  When some kid in their middle school feels OK to throw out the N-word at my youngest, they start to ask a lot of questions, and I'm not going to lie to them about how I feel about things and what they can do to help change things.  Generations of kids around the world of all races (including mine) didn't or don't have the luxury of that innocence like you and I had as kids.

[AustinBike]

Yeah, the world is really different than when we grew up.

[Cafeend]

I can’t imagine the challenges of  having school aged kids right now. Are you sending them back  to class in the Fall? 

I have a 8th grader and the other is going into 11th. I cant imagine the challenge either. What these kids are experiencing in society now and are about to experience is beyond me. I can honestly look them in the eye and tell I dont know and we will get through it together.

 

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[Tree Magnet]

At 8-10 they need to be playing in ditches, throwing rocks at cars and dropping black cats into the mailbox of the neighborhood scrooge (all things I did by 10 yrs old).  I appreciate the sentiment with them being 'engaged and paying attention' but with that comes a heaviness and loss of innocence that is way too premature.  They'll have an (adult) lifetime ahead of them to be frustrated and cynical.  It doesn't need to start at 8....
Later,
CJB

I hear you Cody but look at the reality of their world. Adults fight about wearing masks. The president conducts politics via twitter and tantrums. Police officers kill people on camera. The single most influential figure in global environmental issues is a Swedish teenager. It’s F’d up. Our generation is failing them and they need leaders. They don’t all have the option of not growing up too fast. It sucks but at least they are involved and not oblivious.


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[ATXZJ]

State of Texas surveyed parents on their intent to send kids back to school. It's currently about 50/50

[AustinBike]

10 hours ago, ATXZJ said:

State of Texas surveyed parents on their intent to send kids back to school. It's currently about 50/50

Talked to a friend in Illinois. They are basically doing a dual mode - online and in-person. About half will be on-site where students stay in the same room all day and teachers rotate so there are fewer people in motion. The other half will be online. Basically they are leaving it to the parents to decide which mode.

Where it will all fall apart is that if you try to do a dual mode, you'll essentially double your costs. And, as soon as there are outbreaks in the school, they'll end up sending everyone home anyway. It's a mess. I am expecting property taxes to go up substantially in the upcoming years as we try to battle this thing.

[Shinerider]

10 hours ago, ATXZJ said:

State of Texas surveyed parents on their intent to send kids back to school. It's currently about 50/50

I certainly am.  I have a HS graduate heading to college (so far, they haven't changed anything, but I expect that to change soon due to recent outbreaks in TX), and one a Junior in HS.  Not sure what we are going to do.  The high schooler actually prefers the online, as he can go at his own pace and doesn't have to sit thru an entire day of courses, when the true teaching is only ~3 hours total for all classes.  Really puts into perspective how much time is wasted with teachers trying to reign in kids, walking between classes, going to recess, going on breaks, eating lunch. 

[AustinBike]

That is a pretty mature outlook for your son. Good to hear.

[taco_junkie]

I had one miss half of her kindergarten and the other missed half of 3rd grade. I felt like it wasn't such a big loss that they wouldn't be able to recover. Maybe their skills with scissors and glue sticks wont be as good. I know school, even Kindergarten is a lot more than that but I felt like they have time to overcome whatever they missed.

Kind of glad it happened at the age it did for us. I don't know how the older kids are dealing with it all. What happened to seniors headed to college? I can't imagine missing out on something like algebra or a whole history class.

It's probably easier to keep my kids indoors too. They don't really question it. Trying to trap social media connected teenagers in a house? F that. My kids don't have cell phones and their world simply shrunk. They have each other and us. They play together better now than ever. Any bullshit about limiting screen time is out the window at this point. I bought them a Nintendo Switch and I built them a RetroPi. They can play every old Atari and Nintendo game ever made and the older one saw some of that process. So she knows how to pirate ROMs now. Every now and then I try to push a David Attenborough show on them.

[AntonioGG]

2 hours ago, AustinBike said:

Where it will all fall apart is that if you try to do a dual mode, you'll essentially double your costs. And, as soon as there are outbreaks in the school, they'll end up sending everyone home anyway. It's a mess. I am expecting property taxes to go up substantially in the upcoming years as we try to battle this thing.

I actually think we are on the cusp of a teaching revolution for the reason Shinerider hints at:

2 hours ago, Shinerider said:

The high schooler actually prefers the online, as he can go at his own pace and doesn't have to sit thru an entire day of courses, when the true teaching is only ~3 hours total for all classes.  Really puts into perspective how much time is wasted with teachers trying to reign in kids, walking between classes, going to recess, going on breaks, eating lunch. 

Not to mention incredible amounts of busy work.  My youngest has accommodations due to severe ADHD.  He's also incredibly smart.  This just means he gets bored if not challenged and if he can learn the concept by doing 10 problems instead of 30 of the same problems, that is OK.  We have been relying on KhanAcademy.org for teaching them. In fact, I've been using it myself to refresh my statistics, stochastics and random processes.  I've started donating to them because they're invaluable to us.  

It should be said that many people cannot handle self-paced.  One of the EE weedout classes at UT was Digital Logic, about half the people dropped the class and moved onto computer science when in the last few weeks, they couldn't complete the required 21 lessons.  However, a lot of kids thrive at self-paced.  Teachers can focus on the kids that do well in the classroom setting and are not so good at self-paced, or work to keep kids moving when they're doing "self-paced" work.  

The other frustrating thing about school is they learn off of textbooks that are at best out-of-date, and at wose innacurate, and they learn the same shit from elementary through high-school.

[AntonioGG]

1 hour ago, taco_junkie said:

I had one miss half of her kindergarten and the other missed half of 3rd grade. I felt like it wasn't such a big loss that they wouldn't be able to recover. Maybe their skills with scissors and glue sticks wont be as good. I know school, even Kindergarten is a lot more than that but I felt like they have time to overcome whatever they missed.

Kind of glad it happened at the age it did for us. I don't know how the older kids are dealing with it all. What happened to seniors headed to college? I can't imagine missing out on something like algebra or a whole history class.

It's probably easier to keep my kids indoors too. They don't really question it. Trying to trap social media connected teenagers in a house? F that. My kids don't have cell phones and their world simply shrunk. They have each other and us. They play together better now than ever. Any bullshit about limiting screen time is out the window at this point. I bought them a Nintendo Switch and I built them a RetroPi. They can play every old Atari and Nintendo game ever made and the older one saw some of that process. So she knows how to pirate ROMs now. Every now and then I try to push a David Attenborough show on them.

I had to look up RetroPie.  This may make a great learning project for them and with some motivation for them.  Thanks!

We bought an xbox 1 in March and it's been a mixed result.  My oldest appreciates it and follows the rules.  My youngest seems to not handle it well.  Wants to play too long, wants to play FPS games which also put him in a terrible mood when he's done.

We did get them used iPhones (we tried with an Android but it was impossible to do parental controls on it, but very easy with the iPhone) but they're basically locked down. They can text, call, and facetime their friends.  I also got a Spotify family subscription so they can also listen to music.  We've also installed and allow DuoLingo.  They are both learning Spanish and they love using that app and are actually learning from it.  Other than that, we don't allow social media at all and we are enforcing screen time limits.

Speaking of scissors and glue sticks, one thing my wife did early on with our kids is to get a drawer cabinet and filled it with craft materials.  My youngest especially is very driven when he gets in his head he wants to make something:  pipe cleaners, foam shapes, paper mache, popsicle sticks, clay, paint, scissors, glue, etc.  He made himself a Kylo Ren full helmet out of paper mache.

[taco_junkie]

59 minutes ago, AntonioGG said:

One of the EE weedout classes at UT was Digital Logic, about half the people dropped the class and moved onto computer science

And when they get to OOP or assembly language half of them will drop to something else. At least that's how it was 25 years ago.

52 minutes ago, AntonioGG said:

They are both learning Spanish and they love using that app and are actually learning from it.

My oldest is doing Spanish too! I had a 45 day streak going for French about a month ago. Once that broke I stopped though 😞

53 minutes ago, AntonioGG said:

My youngest especially is very driven when he gets in his head he wants to make something:  pipe cleaners, foam shapes, paper mache, popsicle sticks, clay, paint, scissors, glue, etc.  He made himself a Kylo Ren full helmet out of paper mache.

If you have HBO check out the show Craftopia. It's a totally wholesome crafting competition reality show for kids. We have so many crafting hobbies in the house from cooking to leather working. The kids loved it.

[ATXZJ]

The upcoming online fall curriculum will not be like the patchwork system put into place during the lockdown. What they're working on will be pretty interesting, particularly for rural areas. 

My youngest is going into her junior year in HS. She was at a low performing AISD school as a freshman, and was accepted to a magnet school for her sophomore year and it was kicking her butt. First time in her scholastic experience. The lockdown allowed her to take a bit of a mulligan in the chemistry class she was struggling in and she just made it through online.  Our oldest is going into her sophomore year at txtech and was also struggling with chemistry when the lockdown hit. She returned home and finished out the class online with ACC and passed. So for us  the online classes were positive and we were lucky enough to have children old enough to manage their own time and education.

I cannot imagine managing young kids through this.

 

Edited July 10, 2020 by ATXZJ

[notyal]

2 hours ago, taco_junkie said:

I had one miss half of her kindergarten and the other missed half of 3rd grade. I felt like it wasn't such a big loss that they wouldn't be able to recover. Maybe their skills with scissors and glue sticks wont be as good. I know school, even Kindergarten is a lot more than that but I felt like they have time to overcome whatever they missed.

Kind of glad it happened at the age it did for us. I don't know how the older kids are dealing with it all. What happened to seniors headed to college? I can't imagine missing out on something like algebra or a whole history class.

It's probably easier to keep my kids indoors too. They don't really question it. Trying to trap social media connected teenagers in a house? F that. My kids don't have cell phones and their world simply shrunk. They have each other and us. They play together better now than ever. Any bullshit about limiting screen time is out the window at this point. I bought them a Nintendo Switch and I built them a RetroPi. They can play every old Atari and Nintendo game ever made and the older one saw some of that process. So she knows how to pirate ROMs now. Every now and then I try to push a David Attenborough show on them.

Exact same ages here. We also have their younger boy cousin right down the street who they spend most days with as well. My older daughter plays really well with her little brother and even younger cousin, but she is feeling the lack of social interaction with friends her own age. I'm more worried about the social impact if she doesn't return to school. She's plenty book smart, but she has always had trouble coming out of her shell socially. With my boy child, I'm mostly worried about the lack of structure. 

My wife has a full time job treating medically fragile children. Not something that can be a work from home situation. That would leave it to me to entertain, feed, and make sure they are keeping up with school work during the day all while trying to work from home and post silly shit on a MTB forum. 

[AustinBike]

3 hours ago, AntonioGG said:

We've also installed and allow DuoLingo.  They are both learning Spanish and they love using that app and are actually learning from it.  

I have been re-learning German via Duolingo. I like it a lot. I am amazed at how much is coming back to me and I am glad that I had a grounding in the actual language first. I was also doing Spanish for a while but I keep gravitating back to German. My wife has gotten real far in French. As we all get older, learning new languages is a good way to keep the mind sharp.

[quixoft]

19 hours ago, Sluggo said:

I can’t imagine the challenges of  having school aged kids right now. Are you sending them back  to class in the Fall? 

TLDR. Kids are safe, over 55 should take precautions.

My grandson is 4 and he's back in his day care. Kids are pretty much unaffected by COVID. There have been 30 total COVID deaths to kids under 15 since Feb 4th. That's 30 deaths under the age of 15 from COVID over the past five months.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex

For reference in the 2017-2018 flu season, there were an estimated 643 deaths of kids under the age of 17(sorry, ages didn't line up exactly) due to the flu. Considering the flu season is about five months, it's comparable. So the flu causes 21 times more deaths in school age children over similar five month time periods.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm#table1


Now if you're worried about your kids spreading it to the high risk over 55 crowd(~93% of COVID deaths in the US), that's one thing and a completely different topic. But again, this thing is only really bad for older folks above 55(and really it's 65 and up) so don't worry about your kids being affected. For your kids, worry more about the regular old flu. 

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863

Our average death age from COVID in the US is a bit younger than European countries but I'm willing to bet that is 100% due to most Americans living unhealthy lifestyle. e.g. obesity and all the co-morbidities that come along with it. Americans are fat. That is 100% fact. I have friends that are four inches shorter than me yet weigh 30lbs more and consider themselves in shape. It's not muscle either, think dad bod. I don't consider myself in shape currently at 6'2" 190lbs. My normal is 185 but I've put on a few lbs since busting my ankle a few weeks ago.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/06/24/when-covid-19-deaths-are-analysed-by-age-america-is-an-outlier

 

Edited July 10, 2020 by quixoft

[quixoft]

4 hours ago, AntonioGG said:

 One of the EE weedout classes at UT was Digital Logic, about half the people dropped the class and moved onto computer science when in the last few weeks, they couldn't complete the required 21 lessons.  

3 hours ago, taco_junkie said:

And when they get to OOP or assembly language half of them will drop to something else. At least that's how it was 25 years ago.

I took EE 316(digital logic) and one other EE course I can't remember for my science sequence for my Computer Science BS at UT. I loved that class. If I hadn't done CS I'd have done EE but I preferred the software theory side of things.

Downing was by far my favorite CS prof at Texas. Had him for three different classes. 307 was the weedout course in the late 90s. It was in Haskell and it was all recursion, I loved it! Now I think it's in Java. 315 was data structures with Downing and probably somewhat of a weedout course too. 

My best move was taking Number Theory(for my math elective) and Cryptography(for a CS elective) in the same semester. They were pretty much the exact same course. Aced them both!

Edited July 10, 2020 by quixoft

[GFisher]

42 minutes ago, AustinBike said:

I have been re-learning German via Duolingo. I like it a lot. I am amazed at how much is coming back to me and I am glad that I had a grounding in the actual language first. I was also doing Spanish for a while but I keep gravitating back to German. My wife has gotten real far in French. As we all get older, learning new languages is a good way to keep the mind sharp.

Me too. I was born in Germany when my dad was stationed there and I took it High School. Currently on a 344 day streak in Duolingo. The GF is taking French. We had planned to travel to Europe this summer, visiting at least Germany and France and catching part of the TdF while we were there, but, well, you know the rest of the story...

[AntonioGG]

2 hours ago, GFisher said:

We had planned to travel to Europe this summer, visiting at least Germany and France and catching part of the TdF while we were there, but, well, you know the rest of the story...

I got to watch Lawson ride by one morning.  He rode through a lot on his way to Lime Creek Rd.  He's now in Spain but I kept wanting to sit on a lawn chair and cheer him on, maybe ask for one of my EF Tackx bottles autographed before then.  My brother asked me if I saw him again if I'd run uncomfortably close to him up the street to make him feel like he was racing LOL!

[AntonioGG]

5 hours ago, taco_junkie said:

And when they get to OOP or assembly language half of them will drop to something else. At least that's how it was 25 years ago.

My oldest is doing Spanish too! I had a 45 day streak going for French about a month ago. Once that broke I stopped though 😞

If you have HBO check out the show Craftopia. It's a totally wholesome crafting competition reality show for kids. We have so many crafting hobbies in the house from cooking to leather working. The kids loved it.

Yes, EE319 68k assembly programming with Lloyd Dreher (he was rumored to have quadruplet daughters and had gone onto the Johnny Carson show with them...but you know schools and rumors) was a horrible weedout class.  My dad was a medical school teacher and he says a proper teacher aims for an average passing grade.  If your class average is <50 then YOU (the professor) are doing something wrong.  I remember the first mid-term.  We spent something like 5 weeks learning Motorola's 68k processor structure and such, and we just spent 2 days on opcodes.  The test was 100% all opcodes.  I think I got a 19/100 on that test.  The average was something like 35 and it was only that high b/c a handful of folks already knew 68k assembly.  It was brutal.

I got through that class and EE312 (Pascal) and went the way of Signals & Systems, strictly HW, doing RF & Microwave HW design as my first job.

We do have HBO so I'll check for Craftopia for sure!  Thanks!