As the old adage says those who can do. Those who can't teach. Sometimes this is too often the case in University's including the UK.
Seriously though the quality of teaching does have a big part to play. I would hazard a guess at how many of these lectures have programmed in commercial environments. That having been said I also think students need to be taught to learn for themselves. Programming takes time and contact time with equipment. How many students have access to a computer from a young age for any significant period of time? This will change with time but is another reason why the second hand computer ban last year was so heinous in my mind. Google I know from conversations I have had with their staff would love to have more student enter the competition from Africa and E.A. Does this take more work from them or us. I'd say both. Tim, I love the fact your spending time mentoring students at Mak in OSS programming and this should be highly commended. I think this is exactly one of the reason we hosted the Google+Python event last month. We need to keep doing this a community, pushing our universities. I for one have been promising Michael to sit down and offer him ideas on how we can improve the curriculum at Makerere, I think making sure each class has entrants in to the GsoC and other projects would be one. We also clearly need to engage students before University, what's the best way for us to do this? Talk to ministries about changes to the curriculum, having a better engagement with students? Are programming tenants being taught at O-Level and A-Level? We also now have the iHive which is available to students/anyone working on programming projects. Can this be utilized more? After school clubs? > And you think the kind of lecturer who uses "Teach yourself C in > 21 days" has a chance in hell of motivating students? Its a start, if this is all he/she uses then clearly it's not enough. As a quick start into the principles of programming it's fine. Simon Vass Technical Manager E-Tech Uganda Ltd http://www.etech.ug Tel: +256 (0) 312260620 or (0) 312260621 email: [email protected] skype: e-techservicedesk ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mwirima Byaruhanga" <[email protected]> To: "Linux Users Group Uganda" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, 11 September, 2010 4:11:40 PM Subject: Re: [LUG] Google summer of code Paul Bagyenda wrote thus on 9/11/10 11:00 AM: > And you think the kind of lecturer who uses "Teach yourself C in > 21 days" has a chance in hell of motivating students? Yes and yes. One does not necessarily have to be the guru on a subject to motivate/lead at it. Unrelated but somewhat similar, what did John Sculley know about computers when he (sort of) rescued apple ;) ? _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. --------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ LUG mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/lug LUG is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/ All Archives can be found at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. ---------------------------------------
