On 2/19/07, Chad Perrin <perrin / apotheon.com> wrote:
> 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.

I agree very much with the effectiveness of such study groups and
would love to join such a thing if it existed, but as I said -
organizing such a thing that would actually pull off is hard.

1:1 is easy - there are just two people involved.

So I did what I COULD do :)

Aur