Devon McCormick wrote: > Harvey - > > I agree with much of what you say here - it is a recurring topic in NYCJUG > meetings. But, > not Powerpoint - FOR THE LOVE OF GOD - NOT POWERPOINT!
LOL. Years ago suffered a compelling, lovely, 45 min powerpoint sales presentation followed by the sales team unable to answer any questions. (limits on # chars in user name/bits of OS/max memory in the computer...). One of the few talks I walked out of was a research student PP presentation which was full of gimmicks (croaking frogs) but little content. Afterward I told him what I thought. His next public presentation was packed with partial differential equations, that he was frantically scribbling on a napkin being projected onto a screen -- a much better talk. I have since heard some world class talks given in PP. So perhaps it isn't the medium, so much as the care of the author in communicating with his/her audience. [This is my main point but focused on J; see my last inserts below] > > Sorry about that - I really don't like Powerpoint - it dumbs things down to > the level of "nearly comatose". I just abandoned doing the slides for my > talk in it and am just using a slideshow program to display .JPGs. Virtually every public talk I've given in recent years is based on a J script. I can intersperse dynamic computations with displaying images and movies and by preparing a script, be sure I say what i wanted to say. J labs are slightly more fleshed out versions of these. I find the labs very helpful for learning corners of J as needed. > > Maybe the labs have a taint of old-fashionedness about them but they allow > interaction with the J environment, which is crucial. The demos have the > nice feature of showing you the script being run and allowing you to modify > and re-run it. > > The basic problem is that it still requires you to work to learn and there > is no getting around that. My hope is that we might at some point achieve a > critical mass of cool demos that people will find the motivation to make the > effort. Agreed. I have been averaging 30min/day of computer based learning of Italian for the past year. I am not yet able to converse except in baby talk. Last week, for the first time, I interupted 2 native speakers and said an Italian sentence that they understood and energetically responded with something that might translate like "wonderful Italian, I always forget there are blond italians". Why do programmers expect to learn a language in a day? a week? a month? Contrast: I could and did learn enough Italian in weeks to say "pleased to meet you", "thank you" "good bye" etc. We should and can expect J learners to do useful things right away. But that is different from learning the language. > > Regards, > > Devon > > On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 12:08 AM, PackRat <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Raul Miller wrote: >>> I think a better approach, for gathering information about new user >>> issues, would involve observing lots of new users and asking them >>> questions, when they encounter difficulties. >> As an elementary school teacher many years ago and as a relatively new >> J user, I agree with you, Raul. >> >> Frankly, what bothered me most when I first encountered J (and still >> does) is that the whole shebang is far too disorganized and "geeky" to >> attract a popular following. New users simply MUST be able to find >> information easily--in today's J environment, this is virtually >> impossible. Education is difficult in the best circumstances. Learning J presents huge hurtles for introductory material since the audience is ridiculously diverse. Elementary and middle school children. Some. College students, ..., PhDs, business users, researchers... application developers... No one size fits all can be expected to work. We probably can/should do a better job of helping new users find an introduction that suits them. But the J primer is a pretty solid intro for college educated business users. JfC deeper and well suited to researchers. FVJ3 suited to my visualization students. The self contained paper labs I use in linear classes works fine for those students. (But it takes much effort and refinement for me to tell just enough J so that students can learn some math without being distracted by the J). There is lots more help than I dare attempt summarize. > >> (The >> labs should be Powerpoint presentations or something, or some J coding >> that produces a similar effect.) Or is there a subconscious desire NOT >> to attract more people but to keep J "elite"? I applaud and encourage those who have a target audience to write introductory materials for them. By a target audience I mean both "who do you want to teach" and "what do you want them to learn". You do not need to teach the entire language before saying something useful. Ciao, Cliff -- Clifford A. Reiter Mathematics Department, Lafayette College Easton, PA 18042 USA, 610-330-5277 http://www.lafayette.edu/~reiterc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
