Challenge and motivate by mixing in the fun factor. Some universities have quite some interesting projects involving students in real world scenarios to bring their skills to a totally new level and that with fun stuff. Ugandans are crazy about football (the fun factor), mix it with IT and electro engineering and you might create the Ugandan RoboCub (http://www.robocup.org/). There is already plenty material in the net. Last month a major software developer for robotics and AI has released their core technology to the open source community, http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/sbwire-53847.htm If it is lacking on "Hardware" in the beginning most robot platforms come with a simulator, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-robotools/ Last but not least, there is even open source hardware, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_robotics
I watched an interesting docu some years ago how kids (7 years + !!) were involved in programming with some sort of LEGO robots, with a simplified interface though. That is just one idea. Rocco On 11/09/2010 3:15 PM, J.Mwebaze wrote: > Most of our students do not have the interest to study heard - most > of them are there to get papers! I have seen > students complaining about lecturers who involve them a lot and teach > hard core stuff.. i for one - i was supervising students and they > requested to change supervision, because i asked for a rather simple > python implementation.. So even those good and interested students > miss out! > > We need to tackle to problem right away from secondary and every > primary! Students are rather interested in passing than leaning! > > > > On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Emmanuel Mulo > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > I believe like many that the problem lies with the instruction. I > can give you a concrete example. For an entire semester at uni, > the longest assignment we got for the so called Programming > methodology course involved writing 20 lines of C code and mostly > with scanf's and printf's for that matter. I am sure the > situation is much improved now but if that was the quality of the > instruction, you couldn't expect such an instructor to challenge > his/her students to contribute to OSS projects. > > > > > On 11/09/2010 10:11, Tim Schofield wrote: > > I agree here. I am currently mentoring some Makarere students > on an > open source project, and they do lack some very basic skills. > > Tim > > > On 11 September 2010 01:18, Wilson Abigaba<[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Peter C. > Ndikuwera<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > Can you estimate how many students were at the event? > Surely if students > were involved in OSS development they'd have > encountered the GSoC? > > > I did submit an application when I was a student (4 years > ago) but it > wasn't selected to take part...it could be the case for > many of the > students given the fact they haven't been exposed to these > kinds of > projects/code etc. > > Another simple example, how many students do *serious* > programming > projects/courses at University? For BIT/Computer Science, > MUK, I think > the number is less than 15 per year. I for one haven't > seen a final > year project written in C or C++ or any at least any > object oriented > programming/scripting language. To me, this explains how our > programming skills are still wanting. We still need to > sharpen our > skills before we can even contribute to such (FOSS) > projects and > graduate to be selected for GSoC. > > Regards, > Wilson > _______________________________________________ > LUG mailing list > [email protected] <mailto:[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] <mailto:[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. > --------------------------------------- > > > > > -- > += Johnson > -------------------------------------- > Mob UG: +070 1 735800 / 0392 948 368 > http://www.astro.rug.nl/~jmwebaze <http://www.astro.rug.nl/%7Ejmwebaze> > skype: mwebazej > > > _______________________________________________ > 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. ---------------------------------------
