Insightful post, then
X-Windows died horribly.
Agh! No auto-save!

Yes, yes, I know, it doesn't have season words or the wordplay I so enjoy...

http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~judy/PBL/tr_cse_pbl99.pdf <blockquote> The foundation courses in computer science pose particular challenges for teacher and learner alike. This paper describes some of these challenges and how we have designed problem-based learning (PBL) courses to address them. We discuss the particular problems we were keen to overcome: the purely technical focus of many courses; the problems of individual learning and the need to establish foundations in a range of areas which are important for computer science graduates. We then outline our course design, showing how we have created problem-based learning courses.

The paper reports our evaluation of the approach. This has two parts: assessment of a trial, with a three-year longitudinal follow-up of the students; reports of student learning improve-ment after we had become experienced in full implementation of PBL.

We conclude with a summary of our experience over three years of PBL teaching and discuss some of the pragmatic issues around introducing the radical change in teaching, maintaining staff support, and continuing refinement of our PBL teaching. We also discuss some of our approaches to the commonly acknowledged challenges of PBL teaching.</blockquote>

Hmmm. Problem-based learning is about working on large, real-world problems, not just the toy exercises we do in class. Must check out footnote 4. Teacher as facilitator - precisely! I like the focus on problem-solving skills. Hey, they use Blue too. I so agree with these objectives. I like how the students plan their study and choose the exercises. I want to learn how to do research like this.

Footnote 4: D. Boud and G. Feletti. The Challenge of Problem Based Learning. Kogan Page, 1991.

http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~judy/PBL/tr_cse_pbl99.pdf

Blast. My really long blog post disappeared after stuff crashed.

In brief:

I'm thinking of teaching part-time instead of full-time. I want to collect and refine exercises in introductory computing, explore other schools and other cultures, and chat with people from different walks of life. I also want to take a handful of other classes and workshops like writing, cooking, sewing, theater...

More detail sometime soon - tomorrow?

&lt;sigh&gt; Whoops.

tla make-archive -l sacha@sachachua.com--main ~/notebook/arch
tla my-default-archive sacha@sachachua.com--main
tla archive-setup emacs-wiki--sacha--1.0
tla tag arch@repose.cx--03/emacs-wiki--dev--1.0 emacs-wiki--sacha--1.0
tla cacherev emacs-wiki--sacha--1.0
tla get emacs-wiki--sacha--1.0 emacs-wiki

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Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

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=6lI2
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welterusten, or just trusten for short.

<blockquote> I was recently considering the idea of having a "girlfriend" purely for emotional reasons. i prefer to name it "emotional buffer". My world (or our world) is constantly depressing or increasingly depressing as we see it, jiving with our aging and it has deeply affected my emotional responses. The girl-guy partnership being another example of universal duality is such a good escape or buffer. But recently I met this reading by sacha chua which awakened me to what is reality (not matrix-fed). That I am terribly pre-occupied with my personal life that if I ever I consider an "outside" attachment, it must put as a second priority. Being sane is a matter of defining what is "sane-ness" to me. So i define sane-ness to be my personal happiness and gratification. No attachments. All me. She is 20. I am 18. She wants to have a PhD at 25 or 26. I can do better than that. </blockquote>

&lt;laugh&gt; Certainly wouldn't think of getting into a relationship only as a buffer; think the world is tons of fun and enjoy living very much. Perhaps would like to be able to share stories with someone at the end of the day or come up with clever load-balancing to take advantage of respective strengths and weaknesses, but do not feel any need to hide from the world. =) Personally enjoy friendships very much. Also have realized that have no real time limit for PhD and in fact may be able to bring more to it with more experience, but definitely want to earn it before possibly being distracted by personal life, as hear it is very difficult for women in particular if they've already settled down.

http://prara.netfirms.com/2003_12_14_archive.html#107179895472075766

:help modeline

Only a few hours ago did fireworks light up the sky to celebrate the beginning of a new year, yet now the night is still save for stray firecrackers belatedly punctuating the calm. The rush of well-wishing messages has abated. People have gone to sleep nursing hangovers and dreams. Around the world the celebration starts again, but for here and now it is over. Life returns to normal. I will have to remember to write 2004 instead of 2003, but aside from that, not much has changed. It is a day just like any other day.

http://www.acm.org/sigcse/

SIGCSE is the special interest group for computer science education in the Association for Computing Machinery. It regularly organizes conferences and the proceedings are available in the digital library. Be sure to check out their extensive link collection!

ACM SIGCSE

- Speak slower and lower.

- Check requirements within 3 days.

- Log all of my expenses in plain text in Emacs so that I get forced

to develop a ledger mode.

- Journal every day. 23:00 - 23:30 is my journaling time. Drop

everything and write (unless have earlier substantial journal entry).

- Visit at least one new website related to computer science education

every day.

- Play at least one game of chess a week.

- Chat with friends at least once a week in order to swap stories and

get ideas.

Plans for 2004

- Visit AU and NZ during the summer. Sit in classes, visit friends,

meet professors.

- Collect or compose at least 100 exercises, examples, and ideas for

introductory computer science education.

- Collect at least 30 CookOrDie recipes and stories into something

publishable.

- Apply for an MS or PhD program in computer science education or

computer science.

I'm having problems with the ADMTek Centaur-P. It's a tulip card, but for some reason it does not want to be ifconfig upped. Let me give /etc/modules a shot. If that doesn't work, I'll swap in one of the Realtek cards instead.

w00t, tulip-scyld works.