[CTJUG Forum] Re: Fwd: CT JUG: Bring on the Students...

[Michael Wiles]

On the subject of students joining:   Do you want to grow the membership?   Encourage students to join, and not on a separate forum. They will join in undergrad, gain significantly from it and when they have learnt a little more, you will get a faithful user group member who is eager to give back to the community and help answer the questions of the new students.   I think that in a group, it is best if you have a wide spread of abilities. The super-guru people will answer the questions that require super-guru understanding. The guru (not super) will answer questions that require guru understanding and so on down to the simple questions.   You’ll probably find that the students will start answering each other’s questions. Those who’ve been through Tech or Uni will I think agree that you get a very wide range of abilities at Uni. Some of the guys you’ll find to be fairly sharp.   I would not have asked the “Hello World” questions. I would have made sure that I did my best to find the answer first before posting. If a question is something like “how do I write hello world…” it will either not be answered in which case the person will stop asking the questions or the response will be “try google”.   If you really want to, you could consider limiting it to students that have at least done a java course but I don’t even think that is necessary.   I think having some students of java programming could bring a nice flavour to the group. Who has ever done a maze algorithm for example to learn recursion, since Uni? I enjoyed the little puzzles we were set at Uni, they were fun and made programming fun.   To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the questions that are asked by the students stump some of the old hands.   From: CTJUG-Forum@googlegroups.com [mailto:CTJUG-Forum@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Fritz Meissner Sent: 05 May 2006 11:50 AM To: CTJUG-Forum@googlegroups.com Subject: [CTJUG Forum] Re: Fwd: CT JUG   Hi Heinz, That's a good plan; the only question is, would knowledgeable users stick around in the student forums to answer questions? Also, at least at UCT there are already forums for all the courses, with tutors that are paid to answer questions from the students. I guess any JUG student forum would have to be pitched a fair amount above the HelloWorld entry-level programmer to avoid duplication of effort. Fritz On 5/5/06, Dr Heinz M. Kabutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Fritz,   I also did not know that you weren't allowed to join :)  That's the first time I heard of it.  What we should do though is have a separate forum for pupils and students.   And we should then also have more entry-level talks as well.  For example: How do I code HelloWorld?   Heinz -----Original Message----- From: CTJUG-Forum@googlegroups.com [mailto:CTJUG-Forum@googlegroups.com]On Behalf Of Fritz Meissner Sent: 05 May 2006 11:23 To: CTJUG-Forum@googlegroups.com Subject: [CTJUG Forum] Re: Fwd: CT JUG Hi Andre, I sure am glad that I never heard that university students shouldn't join ;-). I attended my first JUG meeting at the end of matric, I think.. I didn't understand much of that meeting, but I'm glad I stayed on the list - it's become more and more useful as I progressed through university. I guess the list is not really for people who are learning to program for the first time, but it seems to be helpful to the people learning Java for the first time with questions like, "I can do this in language X; how do I do it in Java?" Fritz On 5/5/06, Andre Henney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi there Frommonitoring the emails, my quesion is, do we need people to subscribe to the JUG. We can increase the number of users substantially if we allow University students to join. Alas why I have not asked most of our CS students to join is for fearof them  hammering the JUG with unnecessary questions. However we have a good supply of postgrad student that would not mind joining. Andre Andre' Henney Technical Officer Computer Science Department University of the Western Cape [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cs.uwc.ac.za/~AHenney (W) 021-9593010/3066 >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/04/06 04:57PM >>> Hi, Jeff Mutonho wrote: >There is a decent number of java developers in CT.It's really >complicated to figure out why membership numbers  are low. > Do we actually have membership numbers, or are you counting subsribers to the mailing list. >There are >people who do java because it pays the rent ,etc , others never make >the time , others find the topics(speakers) boring,etc.What we're >trying to do is to make the JUG more vibrant and alive , grow it , >create a presence , etc > > I remember some packed (no more room) meeting at Magmatec around 3-4 years ago. What were we doing right then? I remember CD give-aways and good food and drink. Lisa -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 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