50 posts since 2013
I’ve relaunched SF Edits, the bot that watches for edits to Wikipedia articles on politically important topics in San Francisco. Originally, I’d launched it on Twitter, but now it’s on Bluesky and Mastodon. Here’s how it works: The code was originally forked from @congressedits. That account was shut down by Twitter in 2018. I’ve always… Continue reading SF Edits Relaunched
Jeg besøkte nylig Norge og Danmark for første gang, og spillet ble til i forkant av reisen. Jeg ville lære mer om norsk geografi og lage noe nordmenn kanskje synes er gøy. Hva er Fjordle? Fjordle er et daglig puslespill der spillerne gjenkjenner norske fjorder ut fra konturene deres. Hver dag kommer en ny fjordsilhuett.… Continue reading Fjordle: Et daglig geografispill for Norges 1467 fjorder
I’ve finished 1919, the first part of M. The Son of the Century. Scurati does an amazing job of showing how Mussolini was able to turn Italians’ discontent into authoritarianism. I wanted to share some background information that could be helpful for non-Italians who are reading the book. Who was Mussolini? Benito isn’t an Italian… Continue reading M. The Son of the Century: 1919
I’m building tools for people navigating the US immigration system—both visitors/international students and the folks who help them (think immigration lawyers and international student advisors). Right now I’m focused on making currency conversion easier and building data products around immigration processes. So far I’ve been looking at visa wait times, currency trends, and similar patterns… Continue reading Tell me what’s painful in US immigration
I’ve started a book club about fascism with some friends. Our first book is “M: Son of the Century”, an Italian novel about Mussolini’s rise to power. I’m reading in Italian, but I also have an English translation for when it gets tough. I’m a little over 100 pages into it, and so far, it’s… Continue reading What’s old is new. A fascism book club.
My team at Candid just launched our datasets on Snowflake Marketplace. This is a big step for us — it’s the first time we’ve made our nonprofit data available through a marketplace platform. If you’re not familiar with Candid, we’re essentially Dun & Bradstreet for the philanthropic sector. We collect data from government sources, direct… Continue reading Data marketplace launch
I just received my CELI B2 certification in Italian! For those unfamiliar, CELI (Certificato di Conoscenza della Lingua Italiana) is an official Italian language certification recognized internationally. The levels correspond to the CEFR, and B2 is what you need to enroll in an Italian university. From zero to fluent I started learning Italian in college… Continue reading Italian Certification: Level B2
I’ve started learning Blender, the 3d art software.
I’ve started a podcast with a friend. We’ve been chatting for a few months about our mutual interest in games. I’ve been a huge fan of the game dev community for a long time. I’ve always found people who make games to be an amazing mix of creative and technical. We’re starting off by learning… Continue reading Absolute Beginners
Last year I started working at OpenTable and quickly discovered that we get a lot of unsolicited sales emails. I’m guessing people just figure out our standard email format, then look up all employees on LinkedIn. If you work for a well-known company, you’ve probably seen these before. The subject is something like “Checking in… Continue reading How to mute an email address in Gmail
Edit 2025: I’ve shut down this Twitter/X account, along with everything else I had on that site. I’m working on a new bot on Bluesky. A few months ago, I forked and launched a Twitter bot. The original bot that I forked from was called @congressedits and was developed by Ed Summers. Congress edits was… Continue reading @FriscoEdits
My first Google sheets add-on is published! To be totally honest, I made it mainly to see what was involved. I really like the work that Andrew Stillman has been doing with New Visions for Public Schools, including Doctopus and formMule, and I wanted to see if I could do similar things for higher ed or international… Continue reading First add-on published
I attended (but didn’t participate in) another Startup Weekend this week. This one was focused on immigration. I didn’t really have time to work on this – already had previous commitments. I just stopped by on Friday and Sunday to catch the pitches. To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed. Most
I don’t know why I wasn’t using this app before – it’s awesome! I heard about it through a friend who is developing his own language-learning app. Here it is on the Play store and iTunes. If you’ve read this blog
I’ve been away for a while because things have been pretty busy at Educents. We recently finished our seed round and we’ve been growing really quickly. It’s been an awesome experience being part of a successful startup that is focused on trying new things. As account manager, I’ve been talking to new partners every week and… Continue reading Cool things I’m thinking about
I’m working for a great edtech company and looking for recommendations on educational products we can promote!
Under the bridge. Isfahan. Where men gather to spontaneously sing. #Iran pic.twitter.com/SYUjoTeWhG — Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) November 2, 2014 Many thanks to the Persian acquaintance who tipped me off to the latest episode of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown show. This was his first
One of the biggest issues with Google Apps Script (GAS) is that it doesn’t have any real version control system. Last month I started using GitHub (through this course on Udacity) and was disappointed to discover that there is no way to directly integrate Git with GAS projects. If you’ve never used Git, it’s an… Continue reading Tuesday Tip: Using Git with Google Apps Script
Big news: I’m starting a new job this Tuesday. I’ll be joining Educents, an edtech startup in Oakland. Educents is sort of like Groupon for educators, with deals on the materials that teachers and administrators use regularly, at wholesale prices. This is a great move for me, and
Earlier this week, the New York Times published an interesting piece by Jeffrey Selingo on the current state of MOOCs (“Demystifying the MOOC“). It’s an easy read, and it hits on something that I’ve been thinking myself and hearing from people working in a variety of MOOC organizations around the Bay Area. When MOOCs (massive… Continue reading Where MOOCs are now
A few weeks ago, I noticed that EdSurge doesn’t have an international section on the Edtech Index (their listing of edtech-related products in various categories), even though they do post a lot about international education. @finnismundi most of the tools in the Index can be used around the world! What kind of tools would go in… Continue reading What is international edtech?
In a sign of how prominent concerns about student privacy have become, the New York Times Opinion section this week featured a collection of viewpoints on the topic from people working in the field (“Protecting Student Privacy in Online Learning“). The most interesting (I think) perspective is from Tyler Bosmeny, co-founder of Clever. I like Clever. They… Continue reading Clever Responds on Student Privacy
This week I attended a panel discussion of the Internet of Things at a design firm in San Francisco. If you haven’t heard of it, the concept refers to the so-called third wave of the internet. The first wave was a mechanism for distributing information, the second was the growth of social media and peer-to-peer… Continue reading The internet of things (and of student data)
Quick note on further encounters with machine translations of non-European languages. I discovered yesterday that the Wiktionary Android app can search for Persian words typed in Latin letters. Obviously, it’s also possible to switch to a Persian keyboard, but it’s easier to quickly type in a word that I’ve heard in my regular alphabet. There’s… Continue reading Good translations (Wiktionary) and Bad (Google Translate)
What’s the best way to reduce college costs? Joseph Cryan, who represents New Jersey’s 20th legislative district in the State Assembly, has proposed a bill to freeze tuition and fees for all state residents for nine semesters after their first enrollment. I found out about the bill, A2807, through Inside Higher Ed and was a little surprised… Continue reading Tuition freezes in New Jersey
As I mentioned yesterday, I had a great experience at Startup Weekend EDU in Oakland. Today, I’d like to share my thoughts on how to make the most of SWEDU and what I admired about the winners, mySidekick. Pitch your idea. Yes, you. Startup Weekend always begins
#FirstRunnerUp tonight, @uBoundCo making it easy to to college! pic.twitter.com/CkCJHpDbD2 — SWEDU Oakland (@SWEDUOak) September 15, 2014 Great news: my idea, UBound, won second place at Startup Weekend EDU! We also took first place of the votes of other participants. Startup Weekend is a 54-hour business plan competition. Participants show up on a Friday, give… Continue reading UBound wins 2nd place at Startup Weekend EDU
Thanks again to Asi Burak, co-creator of the PeaceMaker Game and director of Games for Change, who responded to my recent post on in-person and gamified conflict resolution. @finnismundi @SeedsofPeace @GamesforPeace cool but why “unproven”? there is some great literature around it. — Asi Burak (@aburak) September 3, 2014 Asi shared with me research that has been done using… Continue reading More playing to fight conflict
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve recently restarted studying Persian, a language that I wanted to learn years ago but have let slide. There aren’t a lot of online resources for learning Persian, so I often find that I’m working with examples that are either introductory or a little above my (very basic) level.
The New York Times Upshot section is at it again with an analysis of economic diversity at top colleges in the United States. They’ve created something they call the College Access Index to measure how successful elite institutions are at enrolling students from different economic backgrounds (“Top Colleges That Enroll Rich, Middle Class and Poor“). Reading it makes… Continue reading We’re number 1! (Well, kind of)
I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback in the last week on things I’ve posted here. Many thanks to Asi Burak for sharing research on PeaceMaker and feedback on what I wrote about in-person and gamified conflict resolution. I’m looking forward to digging into the research this week. For any other readers, if you have suggestions… Continue reading On international understanding
Last night I went to the Castro Theatre to see a Q & A with Sal Khan of the Khan Academy. I’d never been to that theater before, so the venue alone was kind of a treat. It’s a huge, classic place that looks like it hasn’t been altered much from when it opened in… Continue reading The Path of Khan
Last night I went to an Edtech Network event here in San Francisco. I got to learn a lot about cool things happening in the Bay Area (such as TechShop and a new after-school STEAM program for the 8-14 age range). I also had the opportunity to chat with an entrepreneur who’s developing a new language-learning tool,… Continue reading What I want from a language-learning tool
Last week’s Sunday New York Times has a piece on whether Palestinian and Israeli teenagers’ views of each other improve when they have positive experiences together (“Peace Through Friendship” by Juliana Schroeder and Jane Risen). It’s an intriguing hypothesis, but does it work in reality? For four years, we studied Seeds of Peace, a program that every year brings together several… Continue reading Playing together to fight conflict
Earlier this year, Google unveiled add-ons. Previously, developers could use Google Apps Script (GAS) to create custom functions or tools, then publish them to script gallery. Other users could then read a short description if the script and install it in their own files. It worked fine, but it was clearly something Google hadn’t put… Continue reading Tuesday tip: Google add-ons
I’m liking Cappy Hill, the current president of Vassar, more and more. She wasn’t there when I was a student. Now, on top of the news this week, she’s penned an opinion piece in the Washington Post on “How to increase socioeconomic diversity in college.” To increase the socioeconomic diversity of the student body, especially… Continue reading Cappy Hill Op Ed on Increasing Socioeconomic Diversity
It turns out that most top colleges are not doing a very good job of enrolling poor students (“Generation Later, Poor Are Still Rare at Elite Colleges”). Unfortunately, this comes comes to no surprise to someone who has close connections to several top American institutions. Still, there are some bright points. The article in the Times relies on a paper… Continue reading Poor kids at rich colleges
This week’s tip is a follow-up to last week’s post on working with ranges in Google Apps Script (GAS). Just like ranges, you need to be careful that you are working with the correct object if you’re dealing with sheets in GAS. If you’re used to Excel and VBA, GAS vocabulary is slightly different. In Excel, the… Continue reading Tuesday tip: Spreadsheets and sheets in Google Apps Script
Here in New York (my home until Saturday), our new mayor has made universal prekindergarten classes a political priority. Winning pre-K burned some of de Blasio’s leverage with other leaders in Albany and New York. Now that it’s been approved, we’re getting into tricky situations with the schools that want to participate. Religious organizations want to… Continue reading Meanwhile, across the pond…
Great follow-up to yesterday’s post. Dylan of the Learning Equality Foundation confirmed on Twitter that they’re planning on doing randomized control trials (RCTs) on the KA Lite program. Rigorous testing is sorely needed in the edtech world. It’s understandable that private companies don’t seek it out as much (since they need to please clients and institutions),… Continue reading Who will test the testers?
This week I learned (via Tony Wan at Edsurge) that Khan Academy lessons are now being offered offline. The program is called “KA Lite” and is run by the Foundation for Learning Equality. The idea is that users, or teachers, around the world will be able to download lessons with translations in their local language,… Continue reading Somebody’s making the web go world-wide
This week I was disappointed (and simultaneously a little relieved) to read that my home state of Oregon may ditch their innovative to plan for zero-tuition colleges. Relieved because, let’s face it, it would be a rocky and difficult task to implement over several generations. Oregon has been at the forefront of a lot of cool ideas… Continue reading The debt is too damn high
Maybe this will be a regular thing. Next week will be my last at NYU, so I’ve had lots of opportunities to explain the things I do. As I do, I’m seeing colleagues that I’m training running into some of the same questions I’ve had in the past about Google Apps Script and the various… Continue reading Tuesday tip: Ranges as objects in Google Apps Script
Not sure if this will be a regular thing, so I don’t know if this qualifies as a Tuesday Tip, but it’s Tuesday, and I’ve been finding out things about Gmail lately. Specifically, at NYU I’ve made an email ticketing system using Google Apps Script and have discovered what is kind of an annoying quirk… Continue reading Tuesday Tip? (Or, How Gmail is annoying)
This is old news (well, from last week), but I didn’t see it while I was in San Francisco for interviews. Chegg, the company that made its name buying and selling textbooks, is offloading the actual warehousing and shipping of books to the Ingram Content Group. I suppose it make sense, but I’ve still been… Continue reading Chegg ditches books (or at least, sending them)
Nick Kristof has a great piece this week in the Times about poverty and empathy in America (Is a Hard Life Inherited?). I’m probably a little biased toward Kristof’s writing because he is, like me, from Oregon, but I do think that he does an excellent job of bringing attention to overlooked social and economic… Continue reading An Oregonian Gets It
My recent job search has been interesting. I’m moving from working in a tech/data position in higher ed (at NYU) and hunting in edtech. It’s been awesome so far – I’m getting great reception in the Bay Area, and it seems like there is a great new edtech company every day. But I feel like… Continue reading Edtech gaps
I’ve recently given notice at my job (to move to the Bay Area), and the process of wrapping up in New York has given me the chance to reflect on a lot of skills I’ve learned in the past few years. One thing that’s been really amazing is learning how to code, which has changed… Continue reading Learning to Code in 2014
I made this a long time ago, but it completely slipped my mind to post it until recently. This workbook is an Excel version I made for my office at NYU of the online work authorization calculator that I posted earlier. The idea is the same: enter a student’s previous work authorization to see how much… Continue reading Excel F-1 Work Authorization Calculator