I completely agree with Juan. People does use text processors, spreadsheets and Dropbox and Co., and is natural for them to wonder why they should replace them and learn yet another tool. Being researchers, questioning things is the natural way to be, and not just silently swallowing what we throw at them.
They should know that they are here to learn what we teach them and that this will be for good, otherwise they would be here, but doing it without wondering at all what the pros and cons, or just the essential difference against what they already know are... I think that this is expecting too much. Perhaps some of them immediately catch the difference it, but others may not, and we should be ready for it. Not having participated in any SCW yes (this will be solved in a few weeks :-), I have given a couple of introductory git talks to people really interested in the subject, and the Dropbox question always arised, and I think that we should be ready to give a 30 sec., basic answer to this. We use git instead of dropbox, don't we? so, why? Which is the essential difference? I'm sure this kind of comments always arises, if not in class, in the breaks and in post-workshop conversations. You should know more than you teach, and knowing the tools available, at least knowing that they exist and the rough differences between them, I believe is part of it. I do not use Word except for administrative paperwok, but I know when and why I should use LaTeX. Iñigo On Fri, 29 May 2015 14:22:01 +1000 Timothy Rice <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 08:55:03PM -0700, Juan Nunez-Iglesias wrote: > > I couldn't disagree more, and this point of view certainly strays > > far from my interpretation of what we learned in teacher training. > > If you're accusing me of being a heretic, I've been called worse > things ;-) > > > > I think a *core audience* of SWC is researchers who know "real" > > software engineers use git, but don't know why. They are motivated > > by their curiosity, and they could certainly benefit from git and > > other things we teach. > > Right, *could* benefit, but that largely depends on them. I'm always > willing to help someone who *wants* to learn. I go above and beyond > the call of duty to help anyone who is curious and motivated. > > > > If the instructor answers such a question with "maybe you shouldn't > > be in this class", well, at best we can expect to hear about it in a > > "demotivational story" a couple of years down the line when they do > > their teacher training. > > I don't think I would word it that way to the student ;-) > > > > It is part of our responsibility as teachers to show them why git > > solves a different problem than Dropbox and why it's useful. > > Giving such a comparison requires a knowledge of both tools. When > teaching a tool, it is our responsibility to know that one tool. It's > not our responsibility to know anything whatsoever about dropbox or > anything else. > > I don't need to know about Windows to teach bash, I don't need to know > Excel to teach R, and I don't need to know Word to teach LaTeX - even > though a beginner might think all these comparisons are natural to > make. > > If they're happy using something other than what I'm teaching, they > should go and continue using it to their heart's content. They'll > come back when they realise there are things they want to do but > can't do with their current workflow. > > When teaching, say, Git, it should be enough to say "these are thing > things you can use Git for, and now I'm going to teach you those > things". I don't think it's reasonable that a lesson should become a > competition between Git and Dropbox. As Lao Tse said, "when you do > not compete, who can compete with you?" > > > ~ Tim > > _______________________________________________ > 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
