Impenetrable
I’m calming down now after a Fanta and a couple of mandazi. But I just took Stege IV for a Unix lab: the one where they log in and enther their passwords and type ls and other exciting things. They took notes, they typed commands. They even answered some simple questions, all the signs that the lesson was going according to plan (my plan)….
But somewhere near the end I asked a question, a simple question (given the subject), about how the things we had been looking at interact with one another. (GEEK ALERT specifically: since ls is the program to show information about files, I got them to do ls -l /etc/ls which means they are using the ls command to look at information about the file that contains th program which is executed by the ls command, and I asked them to say what they thought /bin/ls was.)
We sat there for half an hour while I asked each of them in turn leading questions that gave part of that curcular story, then asked any of them to make a sentense in English that summarised what we’d learned. Nuffin! Not a dicky bird. I kept smiling… but it was tough. Exhausted!
Drew Says:
Eeeeeeep!
Have a long distance Electronic **Hug**
Drew
(ps. I completely dont understand the geeky bit, and I thought I scored a 4 on the geek question in the Kerwin Test for swing dancers.)
June 1st, 2004 at 2:19 amdee zed Says:
hello lovely man,
Am a bit behind with your news due to intermittetn internet access, but have just had the chance to catch up with your last few weeks. So some of my commenst are a bit behind the times - please think of them as retrocomments.
First of all, I’d like to say well done and that it sounds like you’re doing a smashing job. If I think of what I’ve liked in a teacher (both as an adult and as a child)then I think you would score pretty high. Knowledge of your subject - I actually have no way of assessing this as I mostly don’t follow the geeky stuff, but other people seem to so I’ll take that as a good sign. The second essential requirement is enthusiasm, not so much for the subject (although that helps) but for wanting to see others develop understanding, for being thrilled when they do and disappointed when they don’t, and for being willing to keep trying again. That desn’t mean for a moment that it has to be all the time because that’s not human,of course there will be and should be times when you just go aaaaarrrrrgggggh-you-lot-have-no-interest-and-there’s-no-point-and-I’d-rather-be-drunkorwhatever, but you always seem to come back with renewed(maybe ‘continuing’ is better?) enthusiasm again. Next, is a willingness to try different things and different methods and not just accept the standard ways - I can see that this is something that not all of your students would necessarily agree with, and some would probably want things more how they’re used to, and this is also where some of the cultural differences come in. But, I remember some of the things that I did at school, and heartily disliked at the time and thought a bit stupid etc etc being some of the things that have stuck with me the best - for example a science lesson very much on the lines of your avocado thing. More importantly, a willingness to use and experim,ent with different methods means that some will hit and some will miss for the class as a whole (not necessarily the same hits and misses for each individual student) so at the end it seems to me you end up with a better chance of people getting something over the long term. Had an interesting chat with my brothwer recently about learning styles and what each of us finds best/easiest/worst/etc. - despite having grown up in the same circumstances, what we learn from was almost opposite - so a style that suited him would leave me partly excluded and vice versa. Therefore best you can aim for is something that suits some of the students and enables them to learn some things some of the time. (sorry for the bad misquoting of whoever it was).
And while we’re on the subject, I’d just like to say:
Hi Lydia - I remember sitting in a restaurant (blah balh blah or the gate?) with mark telling me about this friend, whose name I had forgotten until a recent entry and then I managed to put too and to together (to make a small dance skirt) who did the virus thing and the egg thing, and me going wow! cool! brilliant! and words to that effect.
Next of all (I lost count),I’ve been there with the rat in the kitchen thing. I think I probably started with slightly more confidence (misplaced as it turned out) and exactly the same racing heart and ohmygodarealliverat! Anyway, with poker in hand I chased the rat through our kitchen which I slowly destroyed piece by piece, every time I missed with the poker. I then tried the whole stamping thing with even less success - so am very impressed that you succeeded, and so I may call you Lightning from time to time.
Otherwise, everything here’s pretty much the same as usual - half-naked hips moving up and down up and down displaying our private parts moving around - yup, just the same. And it’s nice, I like it of course, but sometimes I can’t help thinking there’s something missing, that maybe we’re supposed to do more with our lives, and hips, than upndown upndown …. can’t think what it could be … but something that could add a sense of meaning (or if not, I’d settle for a sense of rhythm) to our existence …..
Suggestions gratefully received.
Beautiful photos… I may have missed something in a previous entry, but do baboons tear up tents very often? and with people in?
D
June 1st, 2004 at 9:53 pmx