What book should we read for FoC book club #1? (More info in thread)

See initial discussion here. All are welcome to join! Feel free to add books to the poll and vote for as many as you'd like. I added a couple to get us started. Once we choose a book we can settle on a time to meet. I used the free version of Slack's poll app, which has some restrictions: 100 response limit per month, can’t send in thread (only channel), can’t edit a poll, etc. Let's see how it goes, and later we can consider switching to another polling app or simply a message with emoji reactions. These are the poll settings I chose: • Make responses anonymous:

No

• Allow others to add options:

Yes

• Select one option / Select many options / Rank options:

Select many options

• Show results of the poll:

In real-time to everyone

• Mentions and reminders:

No

• Order results by most votes:

No

• Close poll automatically:

No

I'd welcome any suggestions on poll settings or other housekeeping items. Excited to read together!

Just posting resources - http://worrydream.com/refs/Papert%20-%20Mindstorms%201st%20ed.pdf

Can others see the

Add option

button on the poll? Just want to make sure I'm not the only one who can nominate!

Yeah I can see it. :)

This piece by Prof. A.J.Ko might be of interest for those planning to read mindstorms https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/mindstorms-what-did-papert-argue-and-what-does-it-mean-for-learning-and-education-c8324b58aca4

I assume we are splitting off based on vote, but starting with what the majority chose, correct?

That's what I was thinking^ (i.e. we all read the top voted book). Then we could automatically roll runner-up books into the poll for the next meeting. Open to other structures, though!

I thought that was the plan too, I’ll admit that while I am interested in end user programming, I am not interested in education and can’t really see myself ploughing through mindstorms

@Stephen De Gabrielle haha, to be fair a lot of Mindstorms is about play. Overall though, it’s much more focused on learning than programming.

Looks like A Small Matter of Programming will be the first book. Before I post a poll for day/time — does anyone have suggestions on accommodating such a wide range of time zones? (Maybe someone with experience working for a global remote company?) Based on time zones in Slack profiles, we have: • UTC-8: Jasmine, Justin • UTC-7: Ivan • UTC-5: Ben, Jos, Pete, Jacob, Naveen, Jimmy • UTC+0: Stephen, Alex • UTC+1: Mariano, Jack • UTC+5: Prabhanshu • UTC+11: Mattia

There is no good way to accommodate that range of timezones The best I can suggest is 16:00 utc. - 8am for utc-8, 9pm for utc+5, but is 3am for utc+11

Wow, what an amazingly time-zone distributed set of folks.

I’m just going to jump right in and start a thread for ch1 it is only 11 pages

I’m open to async sharing my thoughts- i kinda prefer over audio - i have a tendency to walk and talk my ideas out.

~10 page units are really encouraging / approachable

Yes but I forgot to include the preface and introduction 🤣

This is my first time seeing this book! I’m only five pages into the Introduction and already full of thoughts! I’m also very aware of the bias’ i’m bringing to the pages regarding my personal beliefs about why the problem exists and what could improve it.