I listened to the latest episode of Kristen Stephen-Martinez's CS Ed Podcast. The episode focused on Professor Emeritus, William G. Griswold, of UCSD's practice of requiring students meet with him outside of class early during the semester. These meetings weren't about class material but rather to foster a better connection and to increase student engagement. Good episode. Take a listen. The class in question was an upper division software engineering class - mostly majors but a significant percent of non-majors.

Today is Labor Day. That means that tomorrow NYC public school teachers return to work. I mean, not me - I'm still happily retired but still I have many friends going back. Kids come back on Thursday. Of course, I don't doubt that I'll have a "going back to school" dream tonight. I'm not going to make any predictions here but there are a couple of big tech related elephants in the room that will be interesting to keep tabs on over the course of the school year.

We basically finished up our trip in Pesaro, a resort town on the Adriatic Sea. Well, there plus one final day in Rome before our flight home. Why Pesaro? Seaside resorts aren't usually our speed. Well, Pesaro is the birthplace of composer Gioachino Rossini and hosts an annual Rossini festival. Now, I like Opera but I wouldn't travel across an ocean to see some Rossini so how did we end up there?