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Featured Teacher: John Snyder
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John Snyder is a computer science teacher at the Advanced Technologies
Academy, a high-tech magnet senior high school in Las Vegas, Nevada.
His teaching specialties include website development and game
programming. He has taught in North Dakota and Kansas, as well as in
Nevada, at the junior high, senior high, and university levels.
John Snyder's Approach to Teaching
The key, I think, to innovation is that it absolutely must be centered
around advantage to the student. It does no good to think up novel
and/or entertaining approaches to classroom lessons if the new approach
does nothing to improve the educational process.
Innovation can become an addiction. When I was asked to teach an
online Computer Apps course, I created a game equivalent: same
instructional objectives, same output, more fun for me (building it)
and more fun for the students (taking it). The engagement factor was
considerably higher than in previous courses, as you might imagine from
viewing the first draft.
Other efforts to engage student thinking include Psychic Stella, which introduces a unit on periodicity, the tendency of things to repeat themselves on a regular basis. Fudgsicles of Doom is an introduction to a unit on logical analysis.
It is my job to make myself obsolete by the end of the course. If they are still coming to me with questions, I have not done them justice, no matter how entertaining or unusual my course might have been.
Since my first astonished encounter with a microcomputer in 1980,
fascination with computers has grown to become a world-wide phenomenon.
In many cases the interest is constructive, but as we can see in the
Estonian attacks, in many cases a dark side has emerged. In Estonia
there would seem to be a concerted effort, spawned perhaps from a sense
of revenge, to disrupt the legitimate efforts of a government to
provide access for its citizens. What is even more sinister, however,
is the steadily growing number of rogue internet "hackers" to spread
gratuitous mayhem for their own amusement.
Some mask their actions behind claims of unselfish efforts to expose weaknesses in a given system. Back in the '90's, someone changed my class home page as a "warning" that our security was insufficient. The hacker carefully preserved the old home page, and it was easy enough to change it back, but I had the feeling at the time that it was done out of a quest to show off his or her ability. They had done the mischief simply to show that they could.
It is these power seekers that the advocates of various causes recruit to further their ends. I suspect they don't try to convince them of the legitimacy of the cause, but simply appeal to their apparently underfed egos.
This perception drives my collaborative classroom atmosphere. We feed each other's drive for a reputation for programming prowess, perhaps avoiding the need to engage in destructive demonstrations to feed the recognition demon. In the final analysis, I try to give my students the ability to assess each situation for an appropriate response, the tools to respond as needed, and the pride to do so with excellence.
Bio:
I grew up in Las Vegas.
Well, actually I didn't even live here until I was in my early thirties, but I think I finally matured here. I lived in Kansas until my early twenties, spent nine years in North Dakota, and then moved west where I could be warm. A lot of my pre-80's life was spent in various forms of recreation, with little or no thought toward cultivating an expertise in my teaching career.
In 1980 I encountered a personal computer my Dad had purchased,
and knew what I wanted to build my future around. A few years later, I
also met the beautiful lady who was to become my wife, and had many of
the same thoughts. Somewhere in there, I got to thinking much more
seriously about life and about teaching and innovation.
I teach Website Design & Construction II, and Multimedia I and II. The latter has evolved essentially into Game Programming in Flash. It is a fortunate person who is blessed by being hired to teach his hobby to eager students, and I am one of those fortunate individuals.
I also maintain an active involvement in my profession. I have been the newsletter editor for the National State Teachers of the Year since the mid 90's, with a single year off in the middle somewhere. I maintain the print version as well as the online version. I am also the national coordinator for the Milken Educator Network. I develop websites commercially (gratis for fellow teachers), and maintain my wife's real estate site, creating virtual online tours for her clients' properties. I also write grant proposals for my school and for nonprofit organizations. For instance, I put together the applications that caused our school to be named a No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon School by the US Department of Education in 2003 and the School of Distinction for Technology Excellence by Intel in 2004.
Along the way, outside recognition has been gratifying. It started in 1988 with an award for innovative teaching from Business Week magazine. The following year, I was named Nevada Teacher of the Year, and the year after that, I was identified as a Tandy Technology Scholar. In 1992, I was named a Milken National Educator, and was inducted into our school District's Excellence in Education Hall of Fame. I was awarded Christa McAuliffe Fellowships in 1994 and in 1998. In 2003, I was recognized by the Dolly Parton Foundation with the Chasing Rainbows Award. Most recently I was the first teacher in Nevada to be inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame.
Accusations of being a workaholic come from people who misunderstand the nature of my activity. Better to wear out than to rust out, I figure. An idle mind is the devil's workshop. And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.
Tags: Computer Science, Cyber Attacks, Episode 101, Estonia, Hacking, Internet, Season 1, World War 2.0
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