Talia Ringer on Nostr: Yesterday I taught again for the first time since the funeral. My slides had a number ...
Yesterday I taught again for the first time since the funeral. My slides had a number of mistakes in them, since I threw them together while I was not 100% there. I felt really bad about this.
I was talking to my boyfriend this morning though, and he put it into perspective. I explained that I had type errors on my slides, and that functions I wrote on my slides just didn't type check at all. And he asked, "and you caught them?" I said, "no, the students did." He said, "that's great, they were paying attention!"
So I explained more. I had a slide presenting \(\mathtt{fold\_left} \) for the first time, and then later I had a function that called \(\mathtt{fold\_left} \). But the order of arguments was inconsistent. So one student asked, "which slide is correct?"
And I said, "oh, you're right, there is a mistake here. Let's find out which one is right." And I pulled up the OCaml REPL on my command line. I checked the type of \(\mathtt{fold\_left} \). It was the same as my slide introducing it. "This slide is correct, so let's figure out how to fix the other slide." Then we worked out how to fix the function call on the slide together.
"That's great. You made it a teachable moment!"
I was talking to my boyfriend this morning though, and he put it into perspective. I explained that I had type errors on my slides, and that functions I wrote on my slides just didn't type check at all. And he asked, "and you caught them?" I said, "no, the students did." He said, "that's great, they were paying attention!"
So I explained more. I had a slide presenting \(\mathtt{fold\_left} \) for the first time, and then later I had a function that called \(\mathtt{fold\_left} \). But the order of arguments was inconsistent. So one student asked, "which slide is correct?"
And I said, "oh, you're right, there is a mistake here. Let's find out which one is right." And I pulled up the OCaml REPL on my command line. I checked the type of \(\mathtt{fold\_left} \). It was the same as my slide introducing it. "This slide is correct, so let's figure out how to fix the other slide." Then we worked out how to fix the function call on the slide together.
"That's great. You made it a teachable moment!"