Author: robert lewis

  • Successfully skirted COVID. Prepare to tack.

    we didn’t have much of a game online
    when COVID hit.

    Welcome HireNYC Cycle 10!

    Roll over Cycle 10 on the top menu, and click on the Zoom link. Everything else you need to know is below the line

    When COVID hit, it hit us hard. All of us here, today, know staring at a screen for hours day after day won’t get the job done. The apprenticeship tradition, online, cannot be sustained. When we left our classrooms deux Marches ago, it didn’t sink in that we still not back. By May, it was “sink or swim,” and we never had time to look back. We set sail, did not join the Edmund Fitzgerald, tread the bails of worker education. The ubercrawl drydocked many upgrades, but never wavered from its lodestars:

    • student privacy
    • individualized learning
    • crew jobs
    • open evaluations
    the ubercrawl has set sail many times since.

    For the rest of that mind-numbing year, we played defense, first catching up on deliverables suspended while we sheltered in place, watching stacked pine boxes next to the East River. Then, finding a way back to my flow.


    Every day for the next two weeks, 2 ½ hours of your life will survey trades math. The protocol, evolved from a raft two Mays ago, to the ubercrawl you just walked the plank onto, will always be the same:

    • I model a “mini lesson” for 10-15 minutes.
    • You join a shanty crew, together uploading a KwikKwiz™ report. While shantied, I will avail myself of your crew, upon request.
    • Then a well warranted Break, during which I will gather Kwik/zs, and report back to the ubercrawl.
      NOTE: deadlines will be adamantly enforced.
    • The format will always be the same: Kwik/z, Homework, Midterm, Final.

    So let’s taisez vous, and calculate carbon footprints.

  • Moving Right Along

    10/20: Units Worksheets uploaded

    Today we will look at Blueprint Calculations and Units Conversions. Very straightforward.

    Click on ‘Grades’ on the Top Menu to see your results.

    If you have a question about your midterm, please post it in Typos.

  • Weekend Warriors!

    noon Saturday: downloading homeworks.

    Sunday morning: click on the grades link to see your homework scores. If you think I made a mistake, we can fix that tomorrow.

  • Welcome BCP 143-22!

    Update 10/12: Here are the results for the boiler breakout problems, and an answer key. We will do the Feet & Inches module today.

    answer key

    Today we will go over

    • what you can access on this LMS
    • how you will be graded in the course
    • the mechanics of our Zoom classroom
    • and the content for today’s class
      • carbon footprints
      • feet & inches calculations
      • missing side calculations

    As a warmup question about carbon footprints, what is the following website all about? (clik on the image)

    And if you have time, here’s another link to click on.

    Finally, here is the list of links I used to generate the carbon footprint tables we will use for today’s carbon footprint calculations.

  • … s.o.s. … ubercrawl already under heavy weather

    Updated update! 9/29: Click on ‘final grades’ to see what you got right/wrong. Ms. Kim has your course scores. Any questions for me, I’ll be looking at the ‘typos’. But not now! The ubercrawl will be docked the rest of the week. Radar will be back up next Monday.

    Update 9/28: (hopefully) all scores from day 1 to date are updated.

    Update noon 9/27: The blueprint, percent, units and carbon footprint homeworks have been assessed and uploaded to the grades page. Tomorrow I will update everything prior to the midterm.

    Update noon 9/24: All links are clean, reference materials on the side menu, carbon footprint and answer forms are all up. All typos so far have been answered.

    The ubercrawl backend broke before class tonight: my SQL database was flagged for excessive content, so had to reup my contract. Just for you guys! lol

    • typos will be our communications mode until the final
    • friday i will upload the units form and set of carbon footprint worksheets
    • i will endeavour to rerun all of the down/uploads this weekend and reassess

    and fix the links!

    nuf sed!

    stay toond!

  • Nail Penetration and Screw Holes

    only touchups needed

    Last class, we wandered the maze, and calculated the missing sides and perimeters for five shapes (LCTs). Some groups got them all right, everyone got most of them right.

    Even though adding feet and inches is easy on its own, juggling the sides of irregular shapes makes those calculations more difficult. The same is true about today’s lesson: adding/subtracting fractions to figure out how far a penny sized nail will go through the wall, or which drill bit you will need for making a countersink hole.

    3 Pieces of the Puzzle

    If you felt frustrated with last week’s green math problems, your feelings probably didn’t stem from the math itself, which was nothing more than punching in three numbers, the times and equal buttons on your calculator. More likely, the problem was finding the right numbers to punch. Not knowing how to find them in an online environment invariably leads to a lot of mouse clicking. How to “quit the clik,” and quickly find the right numbers?

    The vocabulary of green math, like organic chemistry the U-factors, heat capacities, spec sheets is like trying to find the right number on a piece of paper written in a foreign language. But that’s exactly what trades math is, no textbook, feet on a worksite, hand on your toolbox, trying to use what’s under your helmet to figure out answers to questions barked at you by your foreperson, while the din of construction vibrates your very bones. Overcoming your frustrations, finding the right numbers, that alone will justify your journey’d six-figured salary. Trades math = career security, for you and your family. Trades math is real.