Protactinium: Planning, Week 10

Only three more weeks after this one! It looks like we're nearing the end of my career as a university TA. After this, I'm gonna go start working in industry, and I think I'll have less opportunities to teach.

- Offer to have a prac exam setting in the tutorial, followed by solution to the prac exam
- Cover linked lists
- If I have time later, fix my website with linked list examples
- Walk around and discuss Assignment 3 with the other students
- Revise the concept of linked lists and give an example of a linked list practical exam
- Tell people to start preparing their resumes and final portfolios and catching up work - the end is coming up. make it positive - you'll have a lot of fun finishing up the course. you've learned a lot over the course, make sure you go out with a bang and finish up well!
- Offer a sample resume review from last year and resume feedback
- Blog highlights encourage blogging

Protactinium: Review, Week 7

One week skipped because of not enough time. Interviewing for jobs is particularly time-consuming. Recently I've had less and less energy. I'll probably stop blogging at the end of the semester - I don't think there's much more tutoring for me to do.

General thoughts:
- Students are paying less attention in class recently. I'm not sure what I need to do. I feel like I have tried many strategies - I have tried to get them to have group exercises and discussions (but they're really not inclined to offer feedback), I have tried code reviews (but they're really not efficient in terms of time and do not promote discussion), and I have tried interesting examples (which I suppose work better. I guess I need to focus on making sure the content is advanced enough to be engaging, which requires a tonne of prep.

It's not as if they're going off and doing other things - they're being friendly with each other as a class, which is really great. If only I could somehow channel that friendly energy into learning energy...

Protactinium: Review, week 5

Lately I have been getting worse and worse at reflecting on time. And I've paid the price. The valuable memories, the memories I should have been reflecting on, they've disappeared from my mind one by one like temporal butterflies.

These experiences are so very valuable - you only get two a week, and it's not like you can just click "Play again" if you screw up.

Start with dot points. Always start with dot points. Even if you forget, the dot points will be your valuable link to the past event that you've so easily forgotten.

Protactinium: Review, week 4

This week was alright. Neither good, nor bad. Now that I've established the main features of my tutorial, I generally have less things to say.

Tutorial
- Lately our class has become a lot more lively and it is a bit more difficult to maintain students' attention during classes. I will have to make my teachings especially engaging to deal with this.

Lab
- I failed to select a pair for the code review next week. This means that next week I will have to improvise some content to cover in the extra 20 minutes. Since I will be standing up the front for an extra 20 minutes, I will make sure to make the content extra engaging so that the students will be able to pay attention easily.

Protactinium: Planning, week 4

Contextual information:
- Assignment is due in 3 days
- Time management portfolio due and 14 (most) people have done it
-  First year CSE camp just finished. idk if people went

tute:
- Link microprocessors to real content - nonverbal, pictures, etc.
- Cool demonstrations
- Explicitly mention pair programming
- Breaking down abstract problems realistic example from work (interview questions)
- Talk about code reviews
- Prepare people for the assignment
- functions and pointers activity

lab:
- select pair for code review

Protactinium: Review, week 3

The tutorial and lab were mostly successful, I think, with few problems encountered. I feel like the main drive of my tutorials and labs (trying to hit everyone with generic, general teaching) has been largely unproblematic. In the next few weeks, however, I will need to start targeting specific people and identifying more specific problems.

The general approach is designed with average person in mind, and will be found ineffective when approaching outliers (specifically, people who are struggling more than the others). It will also be ineffective at engaging especially strong students, but at least they're keeping up with the work.

Protactinium: Planning, week 3

Tutorial:
- eth0 programming competition: Cool stuff you can do in programming (may be too distant - out of their scope)
-  Discussion about resume

- Class rep
- Ampersand trick
- Age advisor from icecold: dating range n/2 + 7
- Demonstration of failing at coding and debugging; joke about being unemployed
- Code review: confusing style activity
- If, nested if
- Functions

Lab:
- Pick code review: explore memory

Protactinium: Review, week 2

So this time I got some time to do my review directly after the tutorial. This kind of review is the best kind of review.


Tutorial plan was executed exceedingly well (i.e. many times better than any other tutorials I've had). I think this is partially due to my increased experience, and partially due to the fact that this tutorial has some fairly enthusiastic students who responded well.

That doesn't mean crap, though. I've still got so far to go, so far to towards grandmastery.

Protactinium: Planning, week 2

So I have discovered that it is a common occurrence to end up having not enough time to prepare for the tutorials. However, review time is a bit easier to acquire, since I can just review the tutorial at university, directly after the tutorial has been completed.

I have come up with a more efficient strategy for tutorial planning: I will simply note down dot points of my plan without writing down my justifications, then I will explain them in further depth in the review. Writing down takes time, and I can think much faster than I type (150wpm).

Protactinium: Review, week 1

So I didn't end up writing the review on the same day, as I had planned. On the bright side, I was able to take notes during the tutorial, so there is a lot that I can reference.

Some of my notes don't make sense to me, because I took them quickly. I should reread the notes directly after the tutorial, to keep my memory of them active.

Protactinium: Planning, Week 1

Here we go for our first planning session for 2015! The tutorial was basically sprung on me with little prior time to figure things out, so I have a bit less than an hour to prepare my first tutorial for Protactinium. It is time that I am sorely lacking, but I am already sleep-deprived, and getting more sleep will be the most valuable thing for my didactic effectiveness.

My time is so very valuable.