I agree with both Tim and Trevor... (It's nice to be reminded why I love this community!)
On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 11:44 PM, Timothy Rice <[email protected]> wrote: > Sure. Context, anecdotes, tips and tricks, a survey of the possible > applications: definitely all good for teaching. > > But, assuming the lessons aren't compulsory (i.e. anything beyond junior > high), it's not all on the teacher. The student needs to bring some things > to the classroom too: responsibility, initiative, curiosity, goals for what > they want to get out of the lessons. > > When someone asks "why not use dropbox" it tells me something's missing. > They shouldn't be in the classroom if they seriously don't think they're > going to get anything out of it. > > ~ Tim > > > On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 08:23:56PM -0700, W. Trevor King wrote: >> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 12:11:34PM +1000, Timothy Rice wrote: >> > I'm not a fan of trying to "sell" why someone should learn >> > something. >> >> This is not a black and white decision. Some theatrics and >> motivational pitching are certainly useful in sharing our enthusiasm >> for these topics. There are certainly some folks that you won't reach >> with a quick sketch of how these tools fit into our workflow, and >> that's just the way it is. But if you just dive into the nuts and >> bolts without at least sketching out the big picture, learners won't >> have a framework to hook the new ideas onto and it will just be a >> jumbled data dump. So I'm in favor of opening up with a “we're >> learning the shell now, because (a) it lets you automate all that >> tediously repetitive analysis and (b) it lets you easily integrate >> awesome tools like Git, your text editor, LaTeX, other folks' analysis >> tools, …” with a little teaser example from your own experience or the >> goostat example from shell-novice. >> >> Of course, with too large an intro demo this becomes a lecture, so >> it's important to get through the “look at the cool things you can do >> in the shell!” phase quickly and move on to “ok, lets actually show >> you how to do this yourself”. >> >> Cheers, >> Trevor >> >> -- >> This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org). >> For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
