I took two semesters of Arabic in college and I found I didn't actually get much out of the class itself. I learned the most when I sat down with my friend and just tried to have a conversation with her in Arabic. By practicing how to speak and listen to it the writing and reading bit came much more easily (since, after all, writing is supposed to be a graphical representation of a spoken language).
If you don't know anyone who speaks Arabic then I'm sure you could find a college student or something that needs a little money. Pay them to sit down with you for an hour each day and just speak with you. Don't use them as a tutor for the reading and writing except for the odd question or two! You should be able to figure most of it yourself from a textbook or something if you take it seriously.
Would this service just be for students living in the dorms? I go to Penn State and I live off campus (along with at least half the student body, most Penn State students only live in the dorms their first year or two) and I would be pretty mad if I had to pay for something that I couldn't even use.
We just had a 14% tuition hike this year. I bet parents are going to love this.
(And to all thos people saying that a university shouldn't go into business it's already happened. Big time collegiate athletics turned universities into quasi-corporations years ago. Though I agree it's pretty shady and shouldn't be done.)
I find one of the most rewarding things that I get by going to class is learning from the experiences of my professors. They have been working with computers for a long time and in most cases have developed effective ways to solve problems (and I don't mean problems out of the textbook) and simply have experience with which program design/implementation ideas will work well and which will not.
Of course this means you have to actually go to class and listen to the professor (which is very hard in some cases.) If things are slow try asking a few questions and you'd be surprised how animated some of the most boring professors can be when they actually get an interesting question from the class (not just "Is this going to be on the test?") And if you want to ask something that doesn't really have much to do with the topic being discussed in class, go to office hours or email them. Most will be more than happy to discuss an interesting topic with you.
And how do fix the problem of being able to learn more from an O'Reilly book? Take classes that aren't directly related to computing. I'm double majoring in CS and math (at Penn State) and I love how I can see that the ideas and implementations we discuss in my comp sci classes are cool applications of the more general and fundamental concepts I've worked with in my math classes.
Of course this is all based on my personal experiences. ymmv
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I took two semesters of Arabic in college and I found I didn't actually get much out of the class itself. I learned the most when I sat down with my friend and just tried to have a conversation with her in Arabic. By practicing how to speak and listen to it the writing and reading bit came much more easily (since, after all, writing is supposed to be a graphical representation of a spoken language).
If you don't know anyone who speaks Arabic then I'm sure you could find a college student or something that needs a little money. Pay them to sit down with you for an hour each day and just speak with you. Don't use them as a tutor for the reading and writing except for the odd question or two! You should be able to figure most of it yourself from a textbook or something if you take it seriously.
If you managed to save over $800,000 on your home by moving into the country then I think you can afford to pay the extra cost for a cable modem.
Would this service just be for students living in the dorms? I go to Penn State and I live off campus (along with at least half the student body, most Penn State students only live in the dorms their first year or two) and I would be pretty mad if I had to pay for something that I couldn't even use.
We just had a 14% tuition hike this year. I bet parents are going to love this.
(And to all thos people saying that a university shouldn't go into business it's already happened. Big time collegiate athletics turned universities into quasi-corporations years ago. Though I agree it's pretty shady and shouldn't be done.)
I find one of the most rewarding things that I get by going to class is learning from the experiences of my professors. They have been working with computers for a long time and in most cases have developed effective ways to solve problems (and I don't mean problems out of the textbook) and simply have experience with which program design/implementation ideas will work well and which will not.
Of course this means you have to actually go to class and listen to the professor (which is very hard in some cases.) If things are slow try asking a few questions and you'd be surprised how animated some of the most boring professors can be when they actually get an interesting question from the class (not just "Is this going to be on the test?") And if you want to ask something that doesn't really have much to do with the topic being discussed in class, go to office hours or email them. Most will be more than happy to discuss an interesting topic with you.
And how do fix the problem of being able to learn more from an O'Reilly book? Take classes that aren't directly related to computing. I'm double majoring in CS and math (at Penn State) and I love how I can see that the ideas and implementations we discuss in my comp sci classes are cool applications of the more general and fundamental concepts I've worked with in my math classes.
Of course this is all based on my personal experiences. ymmv
woohoo!!
now, to actually read the article....