Various presentations by Lawrence Lessig.

What are the common mistakes people make in trying to read mathematics?  How can these mistakes be corrected?

Jason Gorman presents how developers can learn TDD to the point of transforming the knowledge acquired into habits by exercising a number of practices over a period of 4-6 months followed by evaluation done by fellow co-workers.

"Steven Strogatz, an award-winning professor, takes readers from the basics to the baffling in a 15-part series on mathematics. Beginning with a column on why numbers are helpful, he goes on to investigate topics including negative numbers, calculus and group theory, finishing with the mysteries of infinity."

This paper presents a brief history of the early development of the Unix operating system. It concentrates on the evolution of the file system, the process-control mechanism, and the idea of pipelined commands. Some attention is paid to social conditions during the development of the system.

All of elementary and high school mathematics is building up toward calculus. In this brief video, Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin proposes replacing this pinnacle of pre-secondary math education with statistics, which he suggest would be much more relevant and useful in the daily lives of most people.

"All teachers of programming find that their results display a 'double hump'. It is as if there are two populations: those who can, and those who cannot, each with its own independent bell curve. [...] We have a test which picks out the population that can program, before the course begins."

"Everyone should know how to use a computer, but not everyone needs to be a programmer. But it's still a little disturbing that the act of programming seems literally unteachable to a sizable subset of incoming computer science students." Jeff Atwood discusses a research paper which identifies some very simple tests which identify those who are likely to be able to learn to program effectively.

The Nifty Assignments session at the annual SIGCSE meeting is all about gathering and distributing great assignment ideas and their materials.

Dave Thomas (of the Productive Programmers) talks about the stages between novice and expert, and points out that a person at one stage has needs very different forms of guidance and management than someone at a different stage.

"Science teaches facts, not values, the story goes. [....] But this is balderdash. Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth. That endeavor, which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view. These are the unabashedly pragmatic working principles that guide the buzzing, testing, poking, probing, argumentative, gossiping, gadgety, joking, dreaming and tendentious cloud of activity [...] that is slowly and thoroughly penetrating every nook and cranny of the world. Nobody appeared in a cloud of smoke and taught scientists these virtues. This behavior simply evolved because it worked."

A guided set of puzzles most of which need some python programming to solve.

"Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems. The motivation for starting Project Euler, and its continuation, is to provide a platform for the inquiring mind to delve into unfamiliar areas and learn new concepts in a fun and recreational context. The intended audience include students for whom the basic curriculum is not feeding their hunger to learn, adults whose background was not primarily mathematics but had an interest in things mathematical, and professionals who want to keep their problem solving and mathematics on the edge."

This web site gives an excellent overview of the origin of life from the earliest pre-RNA world through the construction of the first proto-cells.

Pointers to classes offered by Mark Jason Dominus, as well as a collection of freely available slide decks.

A very interesting page that that shows visually how different algorithms move data around to get it into sorted order. No flash required.

"This site aims to be both a library of educational materials using Python to teach computer programming, and a virtual meeting place for teachers and students engaged in learning and teaching using Python."

A good discussion of the most common sorts of bicycle-car collisions, and what cyclists can do to avoid them.

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively.

Quick easy-to-run tests are a powerful learning experience, says Chris Okasaki. Not only, or perhaps not even primarily, to learn about testing, but to learn about the content being tested.

This website is a "digital archive of primary sources on copyright".

The home page for MIT's OpenCourseWare, which provides open access to all course materials used at MIT including lecture nodes, videos, labs, etc.

"Technology is beginning to assail the underlying concepts of our educational system. ... [P]aying dues and embracing proxies for quality may give way having the ability to know what kids really know."

Steve Yegge writes some tips specifically about how to get hired at Google, but they also apply to many high-tech companies.

"The point and purpose of a CS education is this: to teach you how to learn the real world skills you need."

Most programming jobs are in fact "vocational jobs", similar to an accounts receivable clerk, a dental technician, a land surveyor, or a draftsman. None of these require a university degree.

"It’s like if you walked into a painting class, told everyone that learning to paint was too hard, and then [...] told them that photography was the same thing as painting, only a lot easier to do."

"Computer Science education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. [...] We examine briefly the set of programming skills that should be part of every software professional’s repertoire."

Twelve guidelines for giving a good academic lectures. Most of them, I think, are applicable to any form of technical speaking.