ethics – Page 21 – dangermouse.net

The ethics of magic

Today I wrote the material for the next week of online ethics classes, on the topic of magic! I’m using several examples of things from the Harry Potter stories, and posing questions like:

Would it really be okay for children to use hexes to affect other kids, even if no serious harm was done?
Harry uses one of the Unforgivable Curses in his fight against Voldemort and his followers. Is that okay or should he be punished for it?
Is the Killing curse (Avada Kedavra) any worse than shooting someone with a gun, or is it similar?
Why would a small group of people who could do magic want to hide from everyone else?
What could happen if the rest of the world found out about wizards and magic?
Can you think of any legitimate, ethical uses for Polyjuice potion?

I’ve just run the class with three groups of kids this evening, and so far every student has been familiar with Harry Potter, so that’s good. I have enough explanation that if any student isn’t familiar with Harry Potter, they’ll still be able to get enough context to answer the questions.

That’s about half the class. The other half discusses how real world historical societies who believed in magic made laws regarding the use of magic, and if those laws would make sense in a world where magic is real.

In other news, Sydney had two consecutive days with no rain, yesterday and today! This is the first time this has happened in over a month. But it won’t last… we’re predicted to have another 100mm or more of rain over the next four days.

And today I decided to extend my usual 2.5k run to 5k. I haven’t done a 5k since just before Christmas. It felt tough, but I did my second best time over that distance, despite doing it on the street route with hills, rather than around a flat oval. So yeah, maybe my fitness level is still improving, which is nice.

New content today:

Speaking of misbehaviour…

I had my first serious behavioural issue with students in one of my online classes today. After almost a year of teaching online, the students have generally been incredibly well behaved. But today I had three who started goading each other in the Zoom text chat. I told them multiple times to stop it, but it continued, and eventually I had to disable the text chat when they started calling each other stupid.

It was very unpleasant at the time and not having had to deal with anything like this before it made me a bit flustered. After the class I wrote messages to all the parents. Two of them have replied so far, very apologetically, and saying they had had a serious talk with their child. SO hopefully it won’t happen again. But next time if anything seems to be bubbling up, I’ll just close the chat earlier, now that Ive had this experience.

It was rather upsetting, and dealing with it took up much of my morning. I went for my usual run to clear my head and get into a better mood.

This evening was week 4 of the Data Engineering course, and this time we went for about 2.5 hours instead of the 2 hours of the previous three weeks. The class is scheduled from 6-9pm. but the lecturer feels the students get a bit tired after 2 hours, so doesn’t want to fill up the full 3 hours.

But at least tonight the trains were kinder. We caught a train as soon as we arrived at the station near the university, and it went straight through to both our stations ( I assume it continued on to the lecturer’s station as promised). So I got home a lot quicker than last week.

New content today:

Face to face ethics, week 4

The busy days never seem to end…

This morning was the 4th week fo face-to-face ethics teaching at the local school. Out of the class of what is now 21 students on the roll, about 6 or 7 of the students I have yet to see, them having been absent every week now for four weeks. And some other students who were present last week were away too. Oh, and also the regular classroom teacher was away, with a substitute covering for him.

I can only assume COVID is running through the school. It’s a little scary, but I’m wearing an N95 mask the whole time I’m on the school grounds and am fully vaxed, so I guess I just take my chances.

It was a good discussion today. This class is really a delight compared to the classes I had in the last couple fo years before COVID interrupted the lessons last year. It’s full of good kids who make sensible contributions to the discussion, and nobody really misbehaves or interrupts. Hopefully it’ll stay that way as the no-shows start trickling back in.

New content today:

Back to the office

For my wife, not me. She’s been working from home for months because of COVId, and then her work decided to renovate the office while everyone was away. That renovation is now done, and they’re inviting people back into the office, so she went in today at lunchtime to check it out.

I took Scully out for a walk and to get some fish & chips for lunch. It was a beautiful early autumn day, partly cloudy, with some blue sky and fluffy white cumulus clouds, and a pleasant temperature. I took the food to my usual eating spot, overlooking the harbour from high up on the hill. The harbour water is still very brown from all the rain runoff, but it’s still a great view from there.

This morning I wrote my next ethics class, on the topic of property. I’ve had the first class already, earlier this evening. We start with the question of who owns the moon. The kids generally agreed nobody owns it (as I expected). Then I suggest what if Elon Musk sent robotic miners there using SpaceX rockets, and they dug up some minerals, would Musk own them? The kids split 50/50 on this question. Then I asked what if the robots brought them back to Earth and Musk made Tesla cars with the moon minerals. Would he own those cars and be able to sell them? And they all said yes. So then I asked why does he now own something that nobody owned before?

It was an interesting introduction to the subject. Then we go on to other forms of property, including the concept of copyright for things like songs. Interestingly some kids thought the concept of “owning” a song was ridiculous, but they also said that if someone writes a song, then other artists should have to pay them if they want to record it and sell that recording. I think this will be a very interesting topic for the coming week.

New content today:

A bit less storm than expected, so far

After yesterday’s apocalyptic rainfall predictions, today turned out less wet than expected. Although that seems to be because the low pressure system causing all this rainfall is moving south a bit slower than expected so it’s just taking a bit longer to get here. The morning wasn’t too bad – a few heavy showers, light rain, and even a break or two. The really heavy rain has waited until late this evening, and is now expected to extend well into tomorrow. Some parts of Sydney have had around 150 mm today, and we’re expecting another 150 mm tomorrow, followed by smaller amounts (around 30 mm) every day for the next week.

This morning I had my second face-to-face ethics class of the year at the school. Some of the students away with COVID last week were back, but there were still half a dozen or so kids absent. But I had another 4 kids who said they thought they should be in ethics, but weren’t on the class roll, so I added their names. That brings the class up to about 20 kids, which is near the maximum size of 22. We started the first topic, which is about “a fair society”. And the kids were really good! They got into the discussion, and were giving good, thoughtful answers, and they were all behaving well, raising hands to talk and not interrupting or talking while others were speaking. It’s early days yet, but I think this may be the best behaved class I’ve had in my 6 years of teaching these classes.

Back home, I worked on some comics – I needed to make a Darths & Droids strip, and a few Irregular Webcomic! strips for this week. I didn’t do a full batch of the latter – that will wait until next week.

And this evening I had three online ethics lessons in a row, on the new topic of humour. I posed the question if it’s okay for people in difficult or tragic circumstances to joke about their situation as a coping mechanism. One kid said he’s seeing a lot of that now, since he’s in Romania, near the Ukraine border, and there are a lot of refugees passing through his town. And they’re all making jokes about their situation. I knew this kid was in Romania, but I didn’t know what city he was in, and had no idea he was near the Ukraine border. Last year for a few classes I had a kid who was actually in Ukraine. It was several months ago and I haven’t heard anything from them since, but I hope they’re okay.

New content today:

Super busy week: Wednesday

First cab off the rank today was travelling to the public school for my first face-to-face ethics class of the year. I got to the school and checked in, using the QR code and New South Wales Government app. This is similar to how we’ve been checking in to public places like shops for the past year and a bit, but I was surprised to find that checking in here opened a new page I hadn’t seen before, specific to schools. I had to answer additional questions about if I was feeling well, and if I was wearing a mask, and what the purpose of my visit was, and so on.

I got my class roll, and found I had been assigned 17 students. I ran into one of the other ethics teachers, and she told me that a lot of the Year 6 kids were away… following the Year 6 camp last week, apparently several have tested positive for COVID and were isolating at home. When I got to my assigned classroom, I found the teacher was away as well, replaced by a casual substitute.

I ended up with only 7 kids turning up – and 3 of those weren’t even on the roll! They said their parents wanted them to do ethics, but they got their forms in late. So 13 kids were away sick. It was actually a bit scary realising that so many of the kids in the school were sick, and here I was teaching a class of the ones who had come in today. I had to wear a face mask, but the kids didn’t. Honestly, I’m feeling a bit in two minds about continuing to volunteer to do this, while COVID is still circulating in the child population.

The other thing was I forgot to print out the lesson plan! So I had to run the introductory lesson from memory.

Back home, I squeezed in my daily run and stretching exercises, making a new loaf of sourdough, eating lunch, and having a shower before the ISO standards meeting began at 2pm. It was a full technical session day, discussing standards related to autofocus, depth sensing, and image file formats. That led almost right up to my first online ethics class at 6pm, but I had some time before that began to start making quiche for dinner. My wife had to finish that off while I was doing my class, and then I quickly ate a slice between classes 1 and 2, and then a second slice between classes 2 and 3. I finished at 9pm… and could finally wind down and relax a bit before bed.

New content today:

Super busy week: Tuesday

This morning I got up and took Scully out, then had breakfast, and then went for my run. I tried to get it in early before the rain closed in, because the forecast was for a lot of rain today. I managed to get that done. The sky was dark and thundery for several hours before the rain finally arrived around lunch time.

Then the rain pounded down most of the afternoon, very heavy at times with loud rumbles of thunder, interspersed with medium rain. It’s still quite heavy now, late in the evening.

From 2pm I had the ISO Photography standards meeting, held online. One of the first agenda items was to move the first technical session from late today to early Thursday, so we ended up doing only administrative things today.

Before the ISO meeting started, I had to complete work on the new ethics class for this week, since I’ve now moved classed from Thursday evenings to Tuesdays, to give me time to attend the university for the Data Engineering course on Thursdays. But this means I have a day less in between to write up the new topic (I was often doing it on Wednesday mornings). And since the first ethics class was hard up against the end of the ISO meeting, I had to get it completed before 2pm. (Although as it turned out I had a spare hour because of the agenda change, but I didn’t know that in advance.)

For dinner I made pizza, and topped it with pumpkin and some of the bunya nuts that we’re working our way through.

They’re not crunchy like walnuts, which is what I usually use, but added a nice subtle flavour and a different texture.

And finally, in about 10 minutes, I have the second ethics class of the evening. The topic is genetic engineering, which I think will be a good one. The first class went well, and I think the kids enjoyed it a bit more than the patriotism topic.

New content today:

New ethics: Patriotism

Actually I had two new ethics things today. In my online classes I started a new topic, on patriotism. I wrote the lesson today, and then ran it three times in a row this evening. I need to add some more material, as I ran out in two of the classes. Some topics seem to generate lots of discussion and rambling answers from the kids, while others… don’t. This seems to be one of the latter sort. I’ll have to spend some time tomorrow morning adding a few more questions.

But first thing this morning I travelled over to the public school where I’ve been teaching ethics face to face with students since 2017. 2021 was a write-off, given COVID restrictions and school closures, but this year we are kicking off a new year of ethics lessons, hopefully to cover the full year as normal. Today we had a meeting from 08:15 with the new deputy principal of the school, so she could go through various admin details with us before we started – this meeting was with all of the ethics and scripture teachers (which teach simultaneously, depending on parental preferences).

Previously, we’d never had anything like this. We just showed up on our first day and bumbled around to find out which classes we had and where the rooms were, and there was no briefing on school discipline or anything. But this new deputy principal was super organised. She showed us the roll folders, and said there’d be info sheets on any students with special needs, and she gave us a step-by-step plan for dealing with any students who might misbehave in class, indicating a warning followed by sending the student to her office. This was all way more organised than anything I’ve seen at this school in the past five years. So that’s good!

As it turned out, the other years all had their first ethics class following this meeting, but the year 6 class that I’ve been assigned were away on a school camp, so I actually start teaching next week. I looked through the roll and it looks like I have 17 students, though the number may change before next week as parents shuffle their kids around. According to the rules I need to wear a surgical quality mask while on the school grounds, including during the lesson, for COVID protection reasons. So it’ll be interesting giving a whole lesson that way. Let’s see how it goes next week.

New content today:

Groupthink in ethics classes

In my current ethics topic of Tourism, I’ve been asking classes of kids the question: Is it okay for locals to have restaurants charging high prices in tourist areas (compared to low prices elsewhere, where tourists seldom go)?

In most classes the kids have been pretty negative, saying that’s scammy and unfair. But tonight I had a class where all four of the kids thought it was fine, in fact it was smart business.

I followed up with: Would it be okay for a shop to charge locals a low price for a bottle of water, but when a tourist comes in they say the price is much higher? One kid thought that was not right, but three of them thought it was perfectly fine, especially if the locals were relatively poor and the tourists wealthy.

This shows the phenomenon I’ve noticed where the kids in a given class tend to follow one another in their opinions, rather than going out on a limb and disagreeing. I do get kids within a class disagreeing sometimes, but other times there’s a surprising run of agreement on what I feel is an atypical response. I don’t really have anything else to say about this, other than it’s interesting.

I also taught the second lesson in my current 6-week course on creative thinking. The student I have for that is keen and I think will get a lot out of the course, because he’s paying attention and doing the exercises with gusto.

In between I made some more Darths & Droids strips to get a buffer up and running again. And for dinner tonight I cooked calzones, with pumpkin/ricotta/feta filling.

I should mention a new project my wife is working on. She’s been making bangles, to go with the dog bandanas that she’s been selling. She’s using leftover scraps of fabric from the bandanas and wrapping them around wooden bangles using decoupage glue and varnish. They take a few weeks to make as the glue and varnish need time to cure, but she’s almost got a batch ready to start selling. We’re going to do some glamour photography to show them off soon, so she can add them to her Etsy shop. I’ll share some photos when we get that done.

New content today:

Ethics of tourism

Today was a busy day with my online ethics stuff. I had to write the new lesson for this week, on the topic of the ethics of tourism. Then I had two extension follow-up classes with students on last week’s topic of artificial intelligence, followed by three iterations of the new class.

In between, I managed to do some work on the university data engineering course. Mostly going through slides prepared by the lecturer and providing feedback on those.

Speaking of tourism, Australia closed its borders to non-citizens on 20 March, 2020, due to COVID. The Government recently announced that from 21 February Australia will once again allow tourists to enter the country. 703 days, almost two years the ban has been in place. Life has been very different here without tourists, since I live in the most heavily visited city in the country. In one sense it’s been nice – you can walk around tourist sites like the Opera House and The Rocks without the usual crowds of foreigners. In another sense it’s been eerie, since some parts of the city that are usually bustling are virtually dead.

I saw a suggestion in a Sydney discussion group that now is a good time for us residents to go visit tourist areas, before they start filling up with tourists again. Honestly, that sounds really appealing. Maybe in the next week or so I’ll take a trip into the city and walk around the Opera House, while I can before the crowds return.

New content today: