This last message conveys very well my point of view on the side discussion.
Marianne's message too, as in “It's nice to be reminded why I love this
community!”
For Raniere's suggestion, I think it can actually make sense as an
initial motivational boost and could be worth trying.
Maybe, it's not a full lesson about find (neither only a demo) but a
tiny-teasing-lesson that we could put at the beginning (then resume with
the rest).
Cheers,
Rémi
On 29/05/2015 08:15, Inigo Aldazabal Mensa wrote:
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
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