Video construction ideas

I wasn't able to finish the videos to be submitted on time. Not really surprising, and may have been for the best, since I was on point for leaving the country.

I'll write down some ideas I had for the videos, and maybe they'll come in useful later.

Origami video:
- Intro with title. Pictures of To the Moon game. Small clips of failed rabbit and chucking away the model multiple times to make people feel better about the fact that they have to retry it
- Show paper and explain choice of having paper which is differently coloured on both sides
- ...
- Conclusion - Ask for feedback and things to improve on, and what videos they want to see. Don't bother subscribing

Time complexity video: Binary search on an intuitive level and gloss over logarithmic complexity (but mention it briefly)
- Context: Programs are fast in modern times but still lag, and we need to make them faster
- Demonstration of how a program takes longer with larger numbers
- Normally it doesn't matter: demonstrate multiplication
- Binary search on an intuitive level. Gloss over the logarithmic complexity but don't really mention it.
- Challenge: exponentiation: how do we find a**n in less multiplications?

Intermediate level Python workshop - part 3

Coming up with workshops is damned hard. I would say that I'm a fairly experienced presenter, but I actually feel rather pressured by the idea of having to present a completely new workshop tomorrow. I feel like I'm going to be underprepared and I'm going to screw something up in a way I'm going to regret.

I'm going to make a list of all the ideas websites I encounter and that way I'll feel a lot better when I eventually pick some of them for my exercises for the workshop.

Intermediate level Python workshop - part 2

In our planning from the previous post, we've established three major areas of learning that we can pick and choose from. The next step is to establish basic core exercises for each of our three topics, and write down the pre-requisite knowledge for each exercise (NEVER underestimate pre-requisite knowledge!) This will also help us design the revision part at the start of the workshop.

I think coming up with good exercises is the most creative and difficult part of designing and workshop. I'm not looking forward to considering and chucking away hundreds of ideas because they have some essential flaw. We'll see what we can do though.

Intermediate level Python workshop.

I've got 7 days until the workshop. Man, I thought I could put a fair bit of time in and get some decent quality out of this workshop.

I have the feeling that this happens to teachers everywhere from all around the world.

 Basically, I'm part of the volunteer student organization (the same one from compass, right?), and I volunteered for one last workshop. Kind of a throwback to the old days. I kind of want to teach a final workshop, a really polished one, just to prove to myself that my teaching skills have progressed. Is that kind of selfish? I don't know. But I do want to make this workshop better than the ones I've taught before.

This is the workshop description:

Python can draw graphs, send emails, and even visit web pages for you! Learn to use Python to its fullest capacity.

I came up with this workshop idea to replace a crappy previous workshop idea (teach unix tools and regex to high school students? you've got to be joking). Let's see what we can make out of this!

Video construction

A well known online education company is holding a video competition for creation of education videos. Initially I didn't think it was really worth the effort to enter, but I have reconsidered - it would be a good exercise of my skills, a good opportunity to improve and learn a lot about information format.

I have made videos before - my last one was notably an origami tutorial that got ok feedback from other people. But I watched the video again, and I realised there is so, so much room to improve. I'm not the same person that I was before. I don't have a lid on my heart anymore (did I ever have one?) - I'm so much better at getting criticised. Being criticised is the fastest way to the top, and I won't be fully satisfied unless I am battling it out with the very best at the very peak of the mountain. Or the tree, in this case. I'm meant to be a tree climber?

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...