Category Archives: Home School

You can

By david.humphrey | Published: March 22, 2012
Dad, I don’t think I want to learn this song for piano this week. How come? Well, it’s scary.  Look at the picture.  Look at the words. Why don’t you change it? I can do that?  I’m allowed? Get your pencil crayons out and change it So I can change the picture and the words? You can. … Dad! Look at this awesome song [...]
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Required Reading

By david.humphrey | Published: March 17, 2012
I refuse to assign text books for my courses, which is likely something I should discuss at some point–the cost, the unethical practices of the industry producing them, the issues of copyright, but most importantly, the fact that they can’t possibly keep up with how fast and frequently I need to alter my heading as [...]
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“Dad, tell them we made a game!”

By david.humphrey | Published: February 22, 2012
We made a game, the girls and me.  It happened like this.  On Saturday I saw that the Mojang gang were spending their weekend creating a new game and live streaming the event.  As I opened the video stream my oldest daughter walked into the room and asked what I was watching.  When I told [...]
Also posted in Idea Factory, family | Comments closed

One needs models: on being dad

By david.humphrey | Published: January 30, 2012
I saw this first when Corban tweeted it (every cool music thing I hear comes from him first), but since then it’s come at me from all kinds of people.  I love this, and I also love being a dad.
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A Harvest Table

By david.humphrey | Published: January 28, 2012
For many years, my wife and I have wanted to get a harvest table.  Between cooking, eating, and home school we spend a lot of time as a family around a table.  Philosophically as well as practically, the central organizing role of a well-made table is important to the functioning of our family. There are literally [...]
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Elderberry Pie

By david.humphrey | Published: October 10, 2011
My youngest daughter wanted to make “Property Pie.”  That is, a pie containing all the different fruit that grows wild on our property and in our woods; this includes wild raspberries, apples, wild strawberries, and elderberries.  Obviously getting all of these ripe at the same time is impossible, but making pie out of any particular [...]
Also posted in Food, family | Comments closed

Popcorn.js and Khan Academy

By david.humphrey | Published: May 3, 2011
Last week Mozilla’s Bobby Richter and I spent some time building a demo of what’s possible with Popcorn.js’s new YouTube support.  Steven Weerdenburg has been working with me at Seneca’s Centre for Development of Open Technology over the winter, and among other projects, he wrote a bunch of player plugins.  In Popcorn.js, a player plugin [...]
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Painting with Tape

By david.humphrey | Published: April 9, 2011
Today the girls and I spent some time experimenting with a painting technique that uses tape.  Earlier in the week I had been linked to this amazing documentary about young, contemporary artists in Brazil.  The girls were fascinated by some of the things these artists did, “How is this art, Dad?” and it allowed us [...]
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Chinese Cherry Blossoms

By david.humphrey | Published: January 24, 2011
Our girls are taking piano lessons, and really enjoying it, in no small part because their teacher is so good.  Her approach, which favours understanding over memorization and a reasonable learning pace over a standards approach, means that they are much more willing to experiment beyond the sheet music they’ve learned.  I wasn’t taught this [...]
Also posted in Digital Swag, family | Comments closed

“As many of you know, one of my hobbies is catching cheaters”

By david.humphrey | Published: November 22, 2010
There’s a few posts making their way around the web relating to students cheating.  The first is a fantastic account by a guy who writes papers professional for students.  I mailed it to a few academic friends when I first read it.  I only needed one word to explain it: fantastic. I’ve written toward a master’s [...]
Also posted in Mozilla Education, Teaching Open Source | Comments closed