How about asking your study group come up with assignments they find interesting and then split them into sub assignments that you help them solve during the 30 minute slots each week.
As part of the splitting you could find labs and demos that they could try on their own between the sessions. If they are working with something they are interested in they will probably pay better attention. Doing general demos is interesting as such but if they already interested in trying something it might be better to get them to do something they can relate to directly. Ask each person to think of a task and then you can solve them all or just parts of them. 2010/1/5 Bill Harris <[email protected]>: > I'm starting a J Study Group this Friday morning in my department of > analysts, and I'm looking for tips on ways to make programming in J both > interesting and understandable rapidly. We've agreed to dedicate 30 > minutes once a week to "guided exploration"; I hope that at least some of > the group will decide to learn more on their own because they find J > worthwhile in their work. > > In the past, I've advised people to start with the Primer. Now there are > also useful labs, and there's Learning J (there's the great JfC, too, but > I think that's a bit much for this group at the start). I'm curious if > any of you have any suggestions on what has worked well to get people into > J quickly in ways that make it stick. > > I'm thinking I'll say a couple of words and then point them to a lab or > the Primer or LJ and set them loose, answering questions that may come up > and asking them questions to encourage their experimentation. > > Do any of you have suggestions? Do you have experience teaching this > stuff somewhere that might be useful to me in planning what we do? Are > there NYCJUG experiences worth considering? Feel free to be as explicit > as "Start with the Primer through Checkpoint A (or whatever) and then do > the "A Taste of J 1 and 2" labs, followed by ...." I'm hoping to stay > with the Primer, LJ, or labs instead of creating something on my own. I > know there are many other good sources of information on various people's > Web sites, too. > > I conjecture that one of the hangups for newcomers is getting data into > and out of J. It's easy to teach the avg fork, but people don't want to > type in the data they need to have to make use of various verbs -- they > want to read a spreadsheet or database (or text file or HTML table > perhaps). > > To that end, I'm considering doing two things, and I'm curious in your > feedback. For one, I'm thinking of deploying JOD on a shared drive, so > that we can put J words there that all might find useful. (I presume that > works; I've never used it because I used Linux in my own business.) > > Second, I'm thinking of including a few typical verbs to read a > spreadsheet using tara or taraxml and grab the data. Yes, one can use > tara directly, but it might make life easier for newcomers to have a verb > that will read a worksheet, extract a rectangular numeric section between > two cells, and convert that to an array (or to extract a partial row or > column of string data and put it into a different J array). > > Any thoughts on that? I want to keep it simple, but JOD seemed like a > useful way to go. > > Thanks, > > Bill > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Björn Helgason, Verkfræðingur Fornustekkum II 781 Hornafirði Po Box 127,801 Selfoss , t-póst: [email protected] gsm: +3546985532 sími: +3544781286 http://groups.google.com/group/J-Programming Tæknikunnátta höndlar hið flókna, sköpunargáfa er meistari einfaldleikans góður kennari getur stigið á tær án þess að glansinn fari af skónum /|_ .-----------------------------------. ,' .\ / | Með léttri lund verður | ,--' _,' | Dagurinn í dag | / / | Enn betri en gærdagurinn | ( -. | `-----------------------------------' | ) | (\_ _/) (`-. '--.) (='.'=) ♖♘♗♕♔♙ `. )----' (")_(") ☃☠ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
