On Mon, Feb 19, 2007 at 08:25:11PM +0900, Mark Woodward wrote:
> 
> 2. Have some (progressively harder) newbie quizzes on RubyQuiz. ie have a
> series of quizzes that brings the (semi) newbie up to the level of the
> quizzes that are there now.

I'd love to see something like that happen.  My first brush with
RubyQuiz was frustrating because I wasn't anywhere near familiar enough
with the language to make heads or tails of the quizzes -- despite the
fact that a bunch of quizzes would be an excellent way to build skill
quickly for a newbie.


> 
> 3. I remember a while ago, although I can't remember the site, someone was
> organising a series of 'on-line lectures' from the 'Rute User's Tutorial
> and Exposition'. Something along the lines of:
> "In 3 weeks time we're going to start studying each chapter over the
> course of a week. During the first week we'll study 'Computing Sub-basics'
> the second week 'Basic Commands', wk7 'Shell Scripting' etc
> Again, could a small group of newbies under the watchful eye of a Mentor
> do a similar thing with the 'Pickaxe' for eg? 

That's . . . almost ironic.  I rejoined the ruby-talk list today after a
long hiatus (it's too high-traffic for me to stay subscribed for more
than a few months at a time) specifically because I started putting
something similar together.  The idea, however, is not to organize Ruby
newbie groups, but to get a bunch of people interested in programming
languages and similar subjects to benefit from a sort of synergistic
community learning environment for one subject after another.  The first
such learning project for this putative study group will be the Ruby
programming language, using one of the several excellent online Ruby
books.  Next . . . probably some other programming language, depending
on what the participants in general want to do.  We might hit Rails or
another Ruby book, though, for all I know.

I think a "study group" model is one of the most effective means of
learning, when people are actually interested in the subject matter.
While mentors are nice, I don't think they're really necessary -- with a
small group of interested people working together and using each other
as resources, the group becomes the "mentor".  This helps keep the
learning process honest (nobody's going to be able to really use a
mentor as a crutch when the "mentor" is a bunch of similarly skilled
people who will also be seeking that person's help), and ensures that
people can come to someone when stuck without feeling like he or she is
imposing on an expert with better things to do.  Rather than feeling
impeded by an authority-figure relationship, peers can interact and
figure things out together.  That's the theory, anyway.

As such, it occurs to me that maybe what's needed is merely a study
group connection service of some kind, not a formal mentoring program.
Mentoring, I think, would be a far more appropriate system for
professional training than enthusiast autodidactic efforts (which means
that mentoring should be going on in the workplace, and study groups at
home or in coffee shops or online, or whatever).

At least, that's how it seems to me.  I'll let you all know how well it
works for the group I've decided to draw together, and how much
mentoring I end up doing with them.  (I'm sorta like a re-virgin here,
since I hadn't used Ruby enough for it to really sink in long-term
before setting it aside to do other things that needed doing -- so I'm
in the odd position of being both newbie and old hand at the same time.)
This could either prove me right or very, very wrong, by the time this
first study group project is done.

By the way . . . I also think that some familiarity between members of
such a group before it gets started is important.  Otherwise, one might
as well just learn on one's own and ask questions on a mailing list.
The problems that arise there with ruby-talk are the main reason people
show up every few months asking if there's a newbie list (or, at least,
they did so the last two or three times I was subscribed -- and I doubt
that has changed in the interim), I think.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
This sig for rent:  a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/