making the best of it

Making the best of things that might seem like a pain

Have you been asked to present your work for the University Open Day ? 

 Is your reaction: 

Open day... groan.............

 

to make the most of Open Day for YOURSELF:

1. - come to open day and exhibit your project, jazz it up.
2. - take photos of yourself surrounded by eager young innocent Engineering students of the future...
3. - keep proof your having participated.

 

add photos of yourself and proof from 2. 3. above to your CV and show to future employers at interviews.

 

Goes down REALLY WELL !!!

 

Optional extra: follow the advice on:

 

http://haikoteaching.blogspot.com/2009/11/public-profile-idea-is-simple-students.html

 

and add your Open Day material to the site.

 

NB: instead of Open Day you can substitute any number of similar events.... be creative...

 

cheers

 

Heiko

 

 

improving your English HOW TO

how do I improve my English ?

Simple: Do two things: 

First:   Take your writing or your speaking: 

identify the ONE key error that you make most of the time. 

Then fix that. Concentrate on it until you have mastered it. Just that ONE thing. 

It may be something simple like: 

• confusing "is" with "was" 
• confusing "a" with "the"
• putting "the" in front of people's names e.g. "The Peter"
• mixing up plural and singlar e.g.   "He took two apple.... "
• whatever it is that is YOUR MOST common error.
 

 

The most common mistake is the pink half of the pie chart. If you fix that your HALF of all your mistakes are gone.

Second:   Read.

When I say read I don't mean read something so you get better at writing, don't read in the way you do training at a Gym or take medicine. Read what you ENJOY in English.
Read romance, fiction, thriller, detective novels .... it does not matter what you read, but only ONE thing matters: you ENJOY it, really truly enjoy the book.

That is all you need to do. Enjoyment is the best way to learn, anything.

Remember it does NOT matter what you read, (in English) as long as you LIKE it.
Enjoy it.

Question: My problem is I am only interested about the story. I never notice the phrase use, vocab and grammar bla bla bla.

I like reading but I don't know how reading can make better writing?

Answer: It does. It is not obvious HOW that happens. You don't have to take conscious note of the grammar, it just seeps into you, you get it through exposure and repetition... the same reason businesses spend millions, billions of dollars on advertising: it works, not consciously but it works somehow.

So: Reading makes you better at writing.
Not fast, and not in an obvious way.
But you will find that all good writers are great readers.



************************************
for TEACHERS:
I used to correct my students English, they would sometimes look at it but usually just say "oh nice, thanks" and file it away.

So from my students I leart to something different:
- I highlight the word, or space between words where the correction is required. but I don't correct it.
I ask the student to correct it herself.

public profile: The idea is simple: Students, Postgrads, academics, professionals

The idea is simple:
Document what you do, keep a public profile of your activities. A realistic profile, not advertising hype.  I would recommend Google sites as a great starting point, (instead of a blog). http://sites.google.com

For Undergrad students: this is useful for when they go for job interviews:
"What have you done other than get good marks in all the standard subjects ?"
"Well Sir/M'am, if you care to look at www.mystudentwork.com you'll see my final year project, my third year powersupply design. On my blog site at www.studentsFavHobby.blogspot.com  you'll see what I do in my spare time."

Now it's important that this site is NOT thrown together in a huge mess in a week or so. It is important that it has grown over years. That it is genuine.

If you've been asked to help out Open-Day at your University, why not make the best of it and see it as an opportunity ? http://haikoteaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/making-best-of-it.html

My favourite grumpy old man has just taken this idea a few order or magnitude further:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/11/05.html
----------- I quote from his blog:  ------------

This is a talent market. Developers are not even remotely interchangeable. Therefore, recruiting should work like Hollywood, not like union hiring halls of the last century.

In a union hiring hall, downtrodden workers line up like cogs, hoping to make it to the front of the line in time to get a few bucks for dinner.

In Hollywood, studios who need talent browse through portfolios, find two or three possible candidates, and make them great offers. And then they all try to outdo each other providing plush work environments and great benefits.

Here’s how Stack Overflow Careers will work. Instead of job seekers browsing through job listings, the employers will browse through the CVs of experienced developers.

Instead of deciding you hate your job and going out to find a better one, you’ll just keep your CV on file at Stack Overflow and you’ll get contacted by employers.

Instead of submitting a resume, you’ll fill out a CV, which links back to your Stack Overflow account, so that you can demonstrate your reputation in the community and show us all how smart you really are. To a hiring manager, the fact that you took the time to help a fellow programmer with a detailed answer in some obscure corner of programming knowledge, and demonstrated mastery, is a lot more relevant than the Latin Club you joined in school.

------------ end of quote --------------

Students who are "with it" will understand this.


For academics and professionals:

The same applies.
The inspiration for this came from seeing a well known figure in Engineering Education Richard Felder, put his wisdom and ideas publicly online:
http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/

It was Felder who gave me the key idea to build up my own profile on the web. I realized that any employer's site was subject to that employer and if you move on most of the material gets binned.
Hence the idea of making it accessible to all. Hence THIS blog you are reading now.

For Researchers, PhD students, academics.

Another excellent example is collaborative publications such as is exemplified in the ChinaBeat blog:
http://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/
A group of academics get together around a topic and contribute to it.

Search Engine Journal is another collaborative effort, worth checking out www.searchenginejournal.com

A student of mine who has set up his own sitesites.google.com/site/troyboswellengineering

As a student: Making the best of things such as Open Day http://haikoteaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/making-best-of-it.html

---o(O)o---

Replies and correspondence from the above blog

Dear   K...
..... having your own profile is probably a good way to say: look this is my public stuff.

The other secret with these blogs thinggies is: you ONLY put out what you are comfortable putting out.

In the early days of blogging people did a psychological vomit on blogs... revealing things most private and perhaps best left that way.
Those days are long since gone.

Now if you have a site like Felder's  and people will quote you from it, see what you have been doing, invite you to talk about stuff. They will see what your emphasis and interest is. Do we want to invite this person to that conference ? Is she suitable to talk about XYZ ? etc...

Focus your blog on a topic: ie. Laos, or Lao health or ..... whatever.
I have different blogs for different aspects, some for travel others for teaching, and others for just whatever whimsical ideas pop into my brain.

For me as an academic: I use blogs to say to students.

See this link ? Read it.

Then talk to me again.

or to point people who ask about things over and over again to ONE clear answer.

For you as a PG research student: it is your public research profile.
it is your shingle.
You can have another blog for consultancies, etc... add to it as things come up.


Making the best of things http://haikoteaching.blogspot.com/2010/07/making-best-of-it.html

Technically: setting up a blog and using it is about as hard as setting up web based email and using it. I use Blogger by Google because it is easy to use, and they make it with a conscious emphasis on simple to use. E.g. lots of little things they have actually thought about and made them easier to do.

Recently I've moved to  Google sites as a great starting point, (instead of a blog). http://sites.google.com

Best to keep one site on one topic, start a new site if you want to start a new topic such as sport, etc...

what to drop and what to keep: You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

JUGGLING or TRADEOFFS of Engineering.

Sometimes we all spend 90% of their effort on a part of the program that only earns <5% of rewards/marks.
If you find that one aspect of the requirements takes too much time and sabotages your entire program (close to zero marks), then it may be worthwhile considering a simpler version that works and gets you more realistic marks. This is a tradeoff situation and only YOU can decide the level at which you are comfortable.

You will need to juggle the need for thoroughly meeting ALL specifications
with the need to keep your code simple enough to confidently reproduce it in the
lab test.
 


In programming a number of possible paths exist towards a solution.
Your challenge consists of meeting the requirements within a given time limit, within your ability to remember, understand and confidently reproduce, test and debug your code. 


With unlimited time and resources your program would look very different from the one you will submit for the lab test.

 Making such choices is difficult, but part of the educational process,
not only at this University but also in the University of life in which we are all enrolled... .
 


These tradeoff choices litter the highway (or jungle) of life.... at every stage.

Having said all that here is simple HINT - you don't have to take it - it is simply a SUGGESTION:  

Keep you code simple.

Is the error check for commas in input such as: 4,123.5

really worth it ? It is if you can do it elegantly and simply,

It is not if it takes up 90% of your code.

Learning is a social activity.

Programming is a kind of "social sport" it is a team sport.

Talk to other students, work with friends, ask around, use the internet to gain the skills you need.

Yes, testing WILL be on an individual basis, to make sure you actually HAVE learned the required skills.

It is a neccessary part of our University courses. Why ? Because when we don't test your INDIVIDUAL skills then we get the "Passenger effect" and that is not a good thing.

More on the "Passenger effect" in a future email, I think it's not too hard to figure out.

And even though we ostensibly teach: How to control Hardware with Software i.e. Engineering Software and programming, (using C++), we are really also teaching:

• - how to juggle different demands
• - tradeoffs (i.e. should I bother with the error check for commas in input such as: 4,123.5 ?? can I live with the loss in marks ? )
• - getting ALL of 'it' working, not just a bits of 'it'.

Of course for those who  are keen to do more research on this question outside narrow Engineering: see/google: Ivan Illich and the 'hidden curriculum' :-) for a really eye opening ideas.

The same idea as I've expounded at length above has been put much more succinctly by Kenny Rogers as:

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

Know when to walk away, know when to run

You never count your money, when you're sittin' at the table.

There'll be time enough for countin', when the dealin's done.

- The  Gambler - Kenny Rogers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gambler_%28song%29

 Students often ask me about the Comma in input strings question, so below is a simple, no guarantees piece of code:

#include
#include

#include
#include
#include
#include // leave this one in please, it is required !
#define TEMPSIZE 80 // assume input in always less than this number, professional code SHOULD really do error check to make sure this is the case...

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{

   if (argc == 2) {

        cout << "\n before removing commas: argv[1] is: " << argv[1];
        char temp[TEMPSIZE]; // assume input in always less than this number, professional code SHOULD really do error check to make sure this is the case...
        int inputstrlen = strlen(argv[1]);
        int tempIndex=0;
        for (int i=0;i < inputstrlen; i++) {
            if (argv[1][i]==',') { // found the comma, don't copy it to temp, ie. do nothing.
                // do nothing here, make it clear by using comments such as this.
                cout << "\nfound comma\n";  // handy debug comment, leave it IN for use later on.
                cout << "\n i " << i << "   tempIndes " << tempIndex;
            }
            else { // copy the input string to temp
                cout << "\n In else: i " << i << "   tempIndes " << tempIndex;
                temp[tempIndex]=argv[1][i];
                tempIndex++;
            }
        }

        temp[tempIndex]='\0'; // huh?? what's this for ? what happens if you don't do it ? (Answer: Bad things happen)

        cout << "\n AFTER removing commas: argv[1] has been moved to string temp and is: \n" << temp <<"\n\n\n\n";
        system("pause");
        return(0) ;
    }
    else {
        cout << " This program requires ONE and ONLY ONE command line parameter\n\n";
        system("pause");
        return(0) ;
}
return 0;
}

too much talk, - let's just do it ! - ( Theory VS Practice )

Five people sit around a table: 

"Let's play this board game called 'Barricade'.

These are the rules: 

Throw the dice and the person with highest number starts. 

you walk the number you got on the dice. 

If you land on another player's piece they go back home. 

But below this line you are not allowed to throw people.

If you hit a barricade you can take it but only if you land on it, otherwise it's a block." 

"You mean if you land on a barricade you take it?" 

"Yes, that right." 

"What do you do with the barricade ?" 

"Plonk it in front of another person." 

"Anyone ?" 

"Yep, anyone, except under this line." 

"I can't remember all the rules anymore. When can you take another person again ?"

"Oh look, let's just play it and work it out as we go along...."

Play commences.Jack enters the room.

"Hey, Jack, want to play ?" 

He sits down. 

"What do I do ?" 

"You just roll the dice and try to get to the top here. Just start and you'll pick it up".

There is a lot of talk about how much theory and how much practice is the right mix for students. There is much erudite discussion in the pedagogical literature about the importance of hands-on teaching. 

In practice it varies and it is the teacher's job to sense the right mix and the right mood.

It is really not that much more difficult than knowing when you have eaten enough and need to go for a walk.

teaching and meaningful connections with people - online communities Part II

I did a 4 month Zen Shiatsu course at the Australian Shiatsu College in Melbourne last year.

Why ? 

Well it was something I was kind of interested in for a long time. It was not a burning interest but a backburner kind of thing, one of those things to do "some day". 

The reason I joined and paid tuition was simple: I liked the community of the college. I felt that I was a part of it, it was friendly, small and caring. 

That was the key of it for me. 

I would never have gone and enrolled in a large University and studied Shiatsu, not even out of interest. I work in a large bureaucratic University, I didn't want rush in after work, to sit in a lecture hall, do assignments, listen to some lecturer like myself rant and rave. No thanks. Most likely the other students would probably rush in, listen, rush out. All rather impersonal.

What was the course I did actually like ?
- It was after work, Monday night after work 3 hours. - OMG !.
- Yet I looked forward to it.
Why ?
- Small classes.
- Interested students.
- Teacher demonstrated on one us for 20 mins, then we practices on each other.

Ok there is some bias: the subject was practical and I received a massage from a fellow student every week. But it was more than that. It was the sense of belonging and the sense of caring and community that persuaded me to enroll in the first place.

NOTE: This follows on from the previous post online-teaching-growing-communities

Today (May 2009) I spoke with another student from the same college. She too is there, full time, because she likes the sense of community, the small personal size and the caring atmosphere. Yes she is interested in the subject matter she is studying, but the deciding factor was the personal nature of the place.

It seems to me that if online teaching can help to engender this personal community then it is a good thing. If online teaching technology is only a tool to dole out more information, and reach more people in an impersonal way, then it has only reached a small fraction of what it could be.

Of course if students have little choice and are FORCED to take certain courses, then even if the teaching and learning environment is not as good as at the college I went to last year, they will have just HAVE to do it and cope with it.
I hope that word of mouth will help those educational institutions which do a good job...
And I hope there is enough choice for students for that to make a difference :-)

There is another article in the back of my mind about how sheer size alone makes things impersonal bureaucratic and heartless. 

E.F. Schumacher talked about this in his classic "Small is beautiful". 

These days we can sometimes combine the small personal on a larger scale: Facebook is an example of a system that although big, does connect people at the personal level. But it does so by respecting the personal. Every user connects to people he knows in some way. There is a limit. I don't want to have total strangers talk to me all the time, because my time, my life, and I am limited.

And of course there is the issue of Online Community Governance - with fair and good governance a community is more likely to thrive.

What does this mean for teaching ? 

Simple: keep it personal. 

Other than that, I hand it over to the endlessly debating academics (I'm one of them, I should know :-)

Teaching and meaningful connections with people. 

More thoughts about online communities

This follows on from the previous post online-teaching-growing-communities

online teaching - growing communities -

My experiences of online communities

Returning from Overseas after many years abroad I found first hand that all my friends were busy with family kids. Most of them had  moved on in life, our thoughts and ideas had changed a lot and I was no longer the same person. 

Only once I accepted the internet as a "like interest finding tool" did I find a connection to the rest of Australian society again. 

For me: social life and get-togethers along lines of interest happen primarily via the internet.

I use the internet to find language practice groups, social groups, etc... 

A friend to whom I sent a link about a travel blog sent me this reply: (it shows how the net brings together people of similar interest)

Hi Hyko,
 ......Thanks for that website :)
It's amazing to know there are other girls who share the same aspiration.
How about your story :)?

G

I also us the Net to run my own interest groups, earn some pocket money etc...

The safe remoteness and yet the meeting point on a common interest is great.

Couchsurfing is a site I like especially, I feel more at home there and it gives me hope to know others who feel similar to me are 'out there' doing this kind of thing - my profile is here  www.couchsurfing.org/people/cinnamon.

Online communities to me mean I don't have to earbash my physically close friends, I can find people who relate to my interest on the internet. This blog is one way to get my ideas out there, instead of telling my co-workers I share them with you ! :-) 

I publish stories and ideas on various blog sites. I have a story site, and site for metaphysical musings, another for travel and a static old fashioned home-site that is the hub of it all.

And there is one other aspects to online communities: you can become part of a community ! 

Huh? 

Yes, you can feel part of a community just like you can be a part of a group of people in your neighbourhood. 

There are people on the net, I have never met in person, but I follow their exploits and tune in, and they feel like old friends. One such site is: mamamusings.net/

There are others who I talk to occasionally but again, will probably never ever meet in person. 

And there is yet another aspect to online communities: 

They are a way to get things "out". 

For me it is something I want to, or need to do. 

I miss not being able to write my ideas and thoughts down and share them with the world. 

This will not appeal to everyone but it is something I and I'd imagine most bloggers have in common: this need to share, talk, get it 'out'.

Long before blogging became 'blogging' I would write my ideas, make books to be published one of these centuries, or keep up a very lively correspondence with many people.
So I think it is a certain 'writer or author' personality type who likes to share, and write.
Blogging is just the modern version of something that has always been there. Samuel Johnson, G. K. Chesterton, Aldous Huxley and thousands more wrote streams of essays and articles - in today's world, I've no doubt they would be blogging as well.

Not every person likes to blog and write. Only a certain group do. This is important to keep in mind when you set up online learning and teaching communities.

Some students will love it, others simply don't want to do it. Those are simply natural differences, not everyone is an athlete and everyone is a natural scholar.
What does it mean for online learning though ?


How to do you get the best kind of online teaching ?

At its worst, online teaching is just a do-it-yourself guide, a manual that is doled out in small expen$ive chunks.

At its best online teaching is a living community of active people that has a life of its own. It is fun to belong and motivates people to contribute.

There is no sure-fire recipe, but there are a few commonsense foundations - details below.

Once I sat down to list them, I realized they are all put much better in the links below. So the rest of this article is more of a list of useful links about online communities.

Good governance: 

Set up a fair and good government for online communities. The article by Joel Spolsky gives a good introduction:  Building Communities with Software by Joel Spolsky  -  www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.htm

I think this quote from Joel's site sums it up very well:

 So, we have discovered the primary axiom of online communities:

Small software implementation details result in big differences in the way the community develops, behaves, and feels.

The theme of good government, fair government is also debated at:

Anthropology: The Art of Building a Successful Social Site  -  www.readwriteweb.com/archives/anthropology_the_art_of_building_a_successful_soci.php

Small things can matter a lot: 
Can registration and email alerts hurt online communities?    -    philip.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000teT

A  review of the above articles:

Reflections on Online Communities     -     www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/web/online-communities/#text

The article below is a classic and talks about the early days of online communities. We have progressed (???) since then.

See the classic: Clay Shirkey's    "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy"   -   shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

Who is the community for ?

Be aware of the age and lifestyle of your target community. Busy parents, with kids, will not react the same way as teenager, who will not respond the same way as single

University students.

"demographics" is the key word: single people, will use the Internet and online tools totally differently from those who have children, a full time busy job.

Not everything can be engineered.

And of course, there is that final mysterious element which you simply can't force, can't bottle and can't define. Just as you might have two restaurants that look the same right next to each other, for some reason one is always full and the other is always empty.

However: if you do the above commnsense things and you do it with joy, chances are you will get a thriving online community in which people learn.

The links below are useful for anyone wanting to grow an online learning community:  - you might not agree with it all, but they raises some good points.

BBC article about the business of online communities 

The Online Community Biz     -    www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs/2006/08/the_online_community_biz_1.shtml

Masters degree in social media     -    mashable.com/2009/03/30/masters-degree-social-media/

Open source social networking platform, set up your own system   -   lovdbyless.com

Various links that are related to this post

One person's positive experience from an online commuity   -   blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/what-stack-overflow-can-teach-you/

What does a moderator do in a community ?

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/

My favourite is still:

Building Communities with Software by Joel Spolsky  -  www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html

Why Academics Blog

Why do Academics blog ?

This is an extract from an email to a friend who is just starting her academic life.

Hi S,

you said: " I like writing and sharing opinions about Laos. If I could do that for the rest of my life I'd be pretty happy."

You might want to check out: the site: thechinabeat.blogspot.com
You will notice that is a site run by a number of academics, Phd's and a collection of authors. It's a joint effort. It has a good following.
See what you think of it.

Blogging in some way and building up your presence online is a good way to start your academic profile, it will take years to reach the right momentum and there is nothing to stop you starting now, as a student.
This Blogger site on which you are reading this now is a good start, there are others such as Wordpress.com which have advantages.

If you are interested in blogging, sharing your knowledge and building up a presence:
I'd suggest: write about the things which grab YOU now about Laos, things which YOU want to say, put them on the blog, your blog, and then later those blogs may turn into fully fledged papers. Comments and feedback in the meantime will help to refine your ideas, - aid your papers.

I have a number of blogs on different subjects. I'm now building up my academic presence on the web.

It took me 6 years to realize that I needed to do that, that the Uni and official publications are old technology and very limited, talking to a small elite that plays the paper counting game, for prestige, for job security, career and of course genuine interest.

The academics that have impact on many people have a web presence and are known and quoted online.
Their official paper output is a subset of that.

A blog/web-presence, also gets your ideas out to anyone and everyone interested, not as limited as official papers in official journals.


A fine line between 'pestering' and 'sharing'.

With email you need to decide who to send your latest great idea to, and chances are your friends will politely receive your mails and never read them. They are your friends, that does not mean they will be interested in ALL you are latest great ideas.
A blog, like a social network site, offers things to people, it does not thrust it in their faces. Like birdseed on a hand, you hold it out, and if and only if interested, people come and look.

A recent BBC article makes a very nice point of how we have shifted from direct 'in-your-face-email' to 'check-and-look-if-you-like' status updates, found on social networks.

I think of blogs as the mature, slow moving more encompassing equivalent of social network sites. In a blog you focus on one area and you do it in to a depth that is not possible in a social network site.

On a blog I want my ideas to be seen and listened to by as many people as possible, even those who are not 'friends' simply because I don't know them yet. The upshot of this is that what I put on the net has to be:

• Appealing to an interest group.
  
• Make sense and be coherent to a degree I might not bother with in just a quick email.

In a blog I want to attract people along similar interests, like a magnet attracting iron filings.

Below is a list of links to other academics, describing their reasons for blogging.

An academic, Elizabeth Lane Lawley writes a nice intro called:

why do academics blog? click here

She writes: I keep getting asked this question by colleagues here at RIT and elsewhere, and I find myself sending them the same links over and over again. So here’s what I give people who ask me this, in an attempt to clarify the value of blogging to those of us in academia. It’s not all about personal confessionals. Really. click here.

Lawley describes why she blogs and how she started here: why_do_academics_blog.php

The next four points below are taken from her blog above:

1. Anders Jacobsen describes why he blogs here,
2. The contribution academics make in blogging here and here and here and here .
   
3. Collin Brooke - blogging_mea.html
4. Essay collection on blogging here http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/
   

• - Corruption of blogging, ethics & the number and fame game here.
• - general commonsense tips on blogging here.
• - The pro's & con's of blogging as an academic here.
• - Successful academic blogger here.
• - BBC article on social network sites: Status updates as the new email here.

Below is a list of academics with sizable blogs and a web-presence:

• Richard Felder, well known in Engineering Education, with practical tips for students and academics. www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/
• A group of China focussed acadmics on: thechinabeat.blogspot.com
• A small weblog for an academics local students: here
• --your suggestion here -----

If anyone has other examples please email or comment.