On Tuesday October 31 2006 15:20, Ohad Lutzky wrote: > On 10/31/06, Shlomo Touboul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How do I get out of this list? > > How parade-rainy of you :) (Alon? Answer?) > > > From: Eli Billauer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > If I want to be optimistic, I would hope that Haifux is being reborn. > > Let's hope that the club is starting over, with infancy problems, as > > generation II, with hopefully a new, fresh and enthusiastic group of > > people. > > Those I can arrange for - infancy problems are quite easy to generate, > no doubt, but I'm also talking about the people. Many CS undergrads > had some interest in Haifux for a long time, but felt alienated by the > high level of the lectures, and the low undergrad attendance. I > believe those two can be fixed by > > A. 'Dumbing down' the lectures. That sounds awful, doesn't it? But I'm > talking about encouraging additional entry-level lectures. I can put > my money (=time) where my mouth is, and give those myself, and I have > some more people in mind which I'll be talking to about them giving > lectures.
Terrible idea indeed, dumbing down the lectures. How about working more closely with the audience instead? Take a volunteer(s) that does not have a clue what are you going to talk about to do the preface to the lecture, not more than A4 with all the basic information summary, wikipedia articles for concepts, links to fill you in if you're unfamiliar with terms, etc. I bet most of the people that come to the lecture are doing that independently (I do, for the interesting ones I come to), so why not make it a collaborate effort? The lecturer will not have to deal with a fairly impossible task of trying to bring everyone to the same starting level in 5-10 minutes, and most people skim a printed page much more efficiently than listening for 10 minutes anyway. I am aware of the fact that a vast majority of our lecturers write the slides the night before the lecture itself, but all the research can be done weeks in advance only with a plan draft of the lecture. RECORDINGS! I would like to bring it up again. Ok, so video is to bulky to manage and too expensive to produce. But audio can be easily produced (who doesn't own an "mp3 player" nowadays?) and can be very distributed fairly easily for these who can't attend the lecture, and these who like to replay it again after two weeks to refresh the memory. > B. Working with the CS undergrad courses. This semester I mentioned my > VIM lecture to a Matam TA, who mentioned it to Kimchi, who mentioned > it to his class... and Taub 3 instantly became packed. Unfortunately, > I didn't know that was going to happen, so the lecture was quite a bit > too-high level. Still, almost everybody stayed for the full two hours, > and several came for more lectures. "There is no university other than Technion, and no other building than Taub" Based on statistically incorrect representation of people I know personally, if you heard about Haifux, it was hearsay (=me), not an announcement of some kind. I can safely say that 95% of computer users have no connection to or idea about computer science whatsoever. Out of remaining 5%, how many are studying at the Technion and "live" at Taub? You do the math. Not only a chef can use a set of Mr.Faceless' "famous" chef's knives, that's why they are advertised where everyone see it, not on your local chefs' conventions. -- Sincerely Yours, Michael Vasiliev "...this does not mean that some of us should not want, in a rather dispassionate sort of way, to put a bullet through csh's head." Larry Wall in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
