I just finished school about a year ago from RIT and sadly enough I felt that when I was done with school I was a worse writer then before I started. This was mostly because I actually wrote a lot in HS. In college after freshman year when I took my writing courses I didn't need to write much afterwards.
On a side note. I agree with the person that wrote that know the difference between passive and active is important. At my first job that was something that we were trying to change throughout the entire work culture. Most of our technical/letter type documents were written in passive voices and just read very poorly. They instituted a new 'Technical Writing' course that was tought in house which one part of it was trying to teach you the difference between passive/active.
Out side of that. If you are teaching mostly engineers I must feel sorry for you. They don't want to be there.
But, they should know that if they can't write they are limiting themselves a lot. My first two jobs require significant writing. Both work around the gov't. The first required deep technical writing analysis reports that can evovled to 1000+ documents. For just a single sub assembly of a larger system.
My next job most of the documentation is concernd with the SBIR programs. Here there is techincal aspect, but there is also a persuation aspect.
So, I would say the things that you really need to teach are as follows. 2 weeks of just review of grammer. I know this is sad, but they really aren't learning this is HS or middle school for the most part. Don't do this as a lets go over what a verb is, but as all those rules of thumbs you actually think that we know.
Next, go over the different types of technical writing techniques. I actully had to write a letter to my boss at my old job that finished with 'Yours very truly'.... Yeah, it felt very lamn writing that.
Next persuation. If they are going to writing(helping at first) proposals to the gov't for grants. This will be helpful (very helpful). The guys that these grants are written to very often have very little technical background. Therefore, it isn't always about who has the best understanding of the concept. But, who can convince the reader that you know what you are going to do. Very good skill to learn and develop. Yes, what I am saying here is if you are very good at BSing, writing proposals will be a good skill to work towards.
At some schools, they have people that all they do is write proposals for PIs. I know some people that have masters in their degree and all they do is take the notes from PIs at schools and companies and write their technical journal articles and etc for them. Yes, they get paid very well. 70+K within 3 years. Starting around 45K. This is to say if you write well.
Ha, I could go all night.
I guess what I am saying is that instead of covering things like poems, non-fiction work, etc. The intro course for engineering types schools should be most pointed at the electives that deal with things that I discussed above. If it does not, then the students will be less inclined to take those elective which they would really benefit from.
Anyways, it is 12:30 PM I and somewhat drunk off my ass. So, I hope you enjoyed my rant.
I'll probably buy a laptop, but I will be getting my gf a macMini. She thinks it is so cute and really, does she need anything more then that(web, typing, and email)? No, and I'm tired of always having to fix her PC and stuff like that.
Are computers really needed in schools except to learn to type, write papers, computations in labs, and take computer programming courses? I don't see why a teacher would need to use a computer in the class room for the most part. I would say most of the computer learning can be done at home at this point.
If they are what are they using? Probably power point or some derivative. And i think we all the the exceptional ability for power point for someone to catch up on their sleep, especially in the college setting.
As a side note, I have heard about a few professors at RIT that have gotten laid off for using power point to much. They got laid off because their reviews all said that they hated the power point based classes and the professor wouldn't change.
This was no surprise to me. Back in the late 90's when I was in school there was that transition to the 'computer' in HS. The teachers really didn't know how to use them effectively and the students usually knew more then the students. So, what would happen was that the people that knew what was going on would just end up playing muds online in the upper row. Those days were so much fun.
you could say that, but then the budget compared to the total GDP looks a lot differet...you can't look at numbers you have to look at indexes, then the whole picture changes.
You got to love the small view of the P2P sharing that the music industry has. It seems they will only look at the simple 'napster' like software and not worry about anything else... Has anyone else noticed the sudden growth of bittorrents? I have and noticed that is works a lot better then the old way. I would put money down that people are leaving the more visible way of downloading music and going deeper underground and much harder to follow and keep track of total number of downloads.
It was a big step for some people to get music for free of the internet. But once they do and they see that the service that they use has been compromised...RIAA watching what they do... they will move to something else.
RIAA your in a losing battle, join Napster and maybe you will live!!!
msn search also does a load on apple. They didn't seem to hit it nearly as hard as linux, but when you search for apple, apple.com is the 10th on the list. In google, apple search comes up with apple.com as the first result.
Well, actually most CAD program are ported to the PC after they are written for a UNIX server to run them. What is nice about the MAC is that with X11 built in now you will be able to run to unix version for the important CAD programs like I-Deas, ProE, UG, etc. You will also be able to use the standard FEA package ANSYS. And be much more stable than the PC version. I don't think there will be much work needed on the software side of things for this to happen.
I also don't see many engineering firms upgrading their hardware cause unless you are a high performance CAD drafter or you do tons of number crunching on your PC you won't need a big computer to do these things.
I think the companies that could afford to make a PC->Mac switch for their engineers wouldn't do it anyways cause they have their engineers work on a UNIX on their PCs. Which is what I do:-), gets annoying when the stupid SUN server crashed. At least it gives me some time on/.
Why shouldn't AOL block out other companies from using their own protocals to access their databases. AOL offers a service which they pay for out of their own pocket in most cases, since I don't have AOL I never give them money, but I use AIM all the time at school. Now, shouldn't we use the program that they offer and if we don't like the way they offer the service we can just leave and join ICQ or whatever else we would want. AOL has a right here. You use their server and whatever else it takes to run an IM then you use their program to access is. What is so wrong with that. Yeah, their program is fairly weak in the features and stability side of things, but we could change. I did try Trillion this past weekend, and I did like the features that it had, especially the resume feature for downloads. So I would like to see AOL lose, but they will probably win. Which, they probably should win cause they built this monopoly, and whatever profits that they make of it they should enjoy. Most people that I know that use AIM don't belong to AOL, they just use the service.
This isn't very new news; RIT has had this plan for years now. My friends at other schools also have similar programs. What is really interesting is that our school supposedly keeps a database of all programs ever written, so not only does it compare the current class, but all past classes to.
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I just finished school about a year ago from RIT and sadly enough I felt that when I was done with school I was a worse writer then before I started. This was mostly because I actually wrote a lot in HS. In college after freshman year when I took my writing courses I didn't need to write much afterwards.
On a side note. I agree with the person that wrote that know the difference between passive and active is important. At my first job that was something that we were trying to change throughout the entire work culture. Most of our technical/letter type documents were written in passive voices and just read very poorly. They instituted a new 'Technical Writing' course that was tought in house which one part of it was trying to teach you the difference between passive/active.
Out side of that. If you are teaching mostly engineers I must feel sorry for you. They don't want to be there.
But, they should know that if they can't write they are limiting themselves a lot. My first two jobs require significant writing. Both work around the gov't. The first required deep technical writing analysis reports that can evovled to 1000+ documents. For just a single sub assembly of a larger system.
My next job most of the documentation is concernd with the SBIR programs. Here there is techincal aspect, but there is also a persuation aspect.
So, I would say the things that you really need to teach are as follows. 2 weeks of just review of grammer. I know this is sad, but they really aren't learning this is HS or middle school for the most part. Don't do this as a lets go over what a verb is, but as all those rules of thumbs you actually think that we know.
Next, go over the different types of technical writing techniques. I actully had to write a letter to my boss at my old job that finished with 'Yours very truly'.... Yeah, it felt very lamn writing that.
Next persuation. If they are going to writing(helping at first) proposals to the gov't for grants. This will be helpful (very helpful). The guys that these grants are written to very often have very little technical background. Therefore, it isn't always about who has the best understanding of the concept. But, who can convince the reader that you know what you are going to do. Very good skill to learn and develop. Yes, what I am saying here is if you are very good at BSing, writing proposals will be a good skill to work towards.
At some schools, they have people that all they do is write proposals for PIs. I know some people that have masters in their degree and all they do is take the notes from PIs at schools and companies and write their technical journal articles and etc for them. Yes, they get paid very well. 70+K within 3 years. Starting around 45K. This is to say if you write well.
Ha, I could go all night.
I guess what I am saying is that instead of covering things like poems, non-fiction work, etc. The intro course for engineering types schools should be most pointed at the electives that deal with things that I discussed above. If it does not, then the students will be less inclined to take those elective which they would really benefit from.
Anyways, it is 12:30 PM I and somewhat drunk off my ass. So, I hope you enjoyed my rant.
I'll probably buy a laptop, but I will be getting my gf a macMini. She thinks it is so cute and really, does she need anything more then that(web, typing, and email)? No, and I'm tired of always having to fix her PC and stuff like that.
Are computers really needed in schools except to learn to type, write papers, computations in labs, and take computer programming courses? I don't see why a teacher would need to use a computer in the class room for the most part. I would say most of the computer learning can be done at home at this point.
If they are what are they using? Probably power point or some derivative. And i think we all the the exceptional ability for power point for someone to catch up on their sleep, especially in the college setting.
As a side note, I have heard about a few professors at RIT that have gotten laid off for using power point to much. They got laid off because their reviews all said that they hated the power point based classes and the professor wouldn't change.
This was no surprise to me. Back in the late 90's when I was in school there was that transition to the 'computer' in HS. The teachers really didn't know how to use them effectively and the students usually knew more then the students. So, what would happen was that the people that knew what was going on would just end up playing muds online in the upper row. Those days were so much fun.
How much does this service actually cost? The web site doesn't seem to come out and say clearly.
Wow, something that resembles intellagence comes out of the courts. Maybe this will be a new year full of good court rulings.
you could say that, but then the budget compared to the total GDP looks a lot differet...you can't look at numbers you have to look at indexes, then the whole picture changes.
You got to love the small view of the P2P sharing that the music industry has. It seems they will only look at the simple 'napster' like software and not worry about anything else... Has anyone else noticed the sudden growth of bittorrents? I have and noticed that is works a lot better then the old way. I would put money down that people are leaving the more visible way of downloading music and going deeper underground and much harder to follow and keep track of total number of downloads.
It was a big step for some people to get music for free of the internet. But once they do and they see that the service that they use has been compromised...RIAA watching what they do... they will move to something else.
RIAA your in a losing battle, join Napster and maybe you will live!!!
msn search also does a load on apple. They didn't seem to hit it nearly as hard as linux, but when you search for apple, apple.com is the 10th on the list. In google, apple search comes up with apple.com as the first result.
Well, actually most CAD program are ported to the PC after they are written for a UNIX server to run them. What is nice about the MAC is that with X11 built in now you will be able to run to unix version for the important CAD programs like I-Deas, ProE, UG, etc. You will also be able to use the standard FEA package ANSYS. And be much more stable than the PC version. I don't think there will be much work needed on the software side of things for this to happen.
:-), gets annoying when the stupid SUN server crashed. At least it gives me some time on /.
I also don't see many engineering firms upgrading their hardware cause unless you are a high performance CAD drafter or you do tons of number crunching on your PC you won't need a big computer to do these things.
I think the companies that could afford to make a PC->Mac switch for their engineers wouldn't do it anyways cause they have their engineers work on a UNIX on their PCs. Which is what I do
Open bar at the holiday party :-)
That is all I need this time of year.
I'll look for my bonus check when taxes come around.
Why shouldn't AOL block out other companies from using their own protocals to access their databases. AOL offers a service which they pay for out of their own pocket in most cases, since I don't have AOL I never give them money, but I use AIM all the time at school. Now, shouldn't we use the program that they offer and if we don't like the way they offer the service we can just leave and join ICQ or whatever else we would want. AOL has a right here. You use their server and whatever else it takes to run an IM then you use their program to access is. What is so wrong with that. Yeah, their program is fairly weak in the features and stability side of things, but we could change. I did try Trillion this past weekend, and I did like the features that it had, especially the resume feature for downloads. So I would like to see AOL lose, but they will probably win. Which, they probably should win cause they built this monopoly, and whatever profits that they make of it they should enjoy. Most people that I know that use AIM don't belong to AOL, they just use the service.
This isn't very new news; RIT has had this plan for years now. My friends at other schools also have similar programs. What is really interesting is that our school supposedly keeps a database of all programs ever written, so not only does it compare the current class, but all past classes to.