When I read "Now if only JCreator worked on it...", I got a blast from the past! I didn't know JCreator was still around! JCreator Lite Edition was ideal for the Java classes I taught in 2002 because this IDE wasn't written in Java. Because of this, it started up quicker and used less memory than the rest of the IDEs at the time. Since this iMac's minimum RAM is 512 MB, there's no reason not to use either Eclipse or NetBeans today.
This Friday I will be ending my two-year career as a computer science instructor. The main reason I am done with teaching is because the quality of students is actually getting worse.
When I first started, there were 25 computer science majors enrolled at this small 2-year technical institute. Out of those 25, I had only 3 or 4 bad apples and the rest were great. I really liked teaching material that regular students wouldn't get to learn in school (ODBC, XML, ASP scripting, packet sniffing with Ethereal, etc.) I thought I found a job that would be fun and challenging because I would keep getting a high quality crop of students because of the lack of computer jobs.
Flash forward to today, there are about 18 current computer science majors. No surprise in the drop in enrollment. Out of those 18, however, only 4 students know what the hell they're doing. The other 14 have no business being in this field. 6 months ago when I got these new crop of students, I'm thinking "WTF Happend!?". Some of these students are in their fourth networking course, and I still need to review with them how to create a folder in Windows. In my programming class, a student turns in an assignment that converts feet to meters, and her code accomplishes this by multiplying the number of feet by 2 (and I even give them the calculation for how to convert feet to meters)!
I have dozens and dozens of these stories and everyday I'm adding a new entry. To me there's just no point in teaching these students anymore. I don't know if it's because we're marketing the technical institute to the wrong target audience or if the high schools in this area just don't care anymore, but all the instructors I talk to agree on one thing: the quality of students is not getting better.
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Hehe, wish the Amish were the problem in Lancaster. The city of Lancaster's getting a lot worse. This happened right in front of our house: http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/236402
When I read "Now if only JCreator worked on it...", I got a blast from the past! I didn't know JCreator was still around! JCreator Lite Edition was ideal for the Java classes I taught in 2002 because this IDE wasn't written in Java. Because of this, it started up quicker and used less memory than the rest of the IDEs at the time. Since this iMac's minimum RAM is 512 MB, there's no reason not to use either Eclipse or NetBeans today.
Would using Linux, Apache, MySQL, Evolution, and Ruby make me a LAMER?
My Firewall only ever makes this sound: *arf* *arf* *arf*
But that could be because my dog is named Firewall.
When I first started, there were 25 computer science majors enrolled at this small 2-year technical institute. Out of those 25, I had only 3 or 4 bad apples and the rest were great. I really liked teaching material that regular students wouldn't get to learn in school (ODBC, XML, ASP scripting, packet sniffing with Ethereal, etc.) I thought I found a job that would be fun and challenging because I would keep getting a high quality crop of students because of the lack of computer jobs.
Flash forward to today, there are about 18 current computer science majors. No surprise in the drop in enrollment. Out of those 18, however, only 4 students know what the hell they're doing. The other 14 have no business being in this field. 6 months ago when I got these new crop of students, I'm thinking "WTF Happend!?". Some of these students are in their fourth networking course, and I still need to review with them how to create a folder in Windows. In my programming class, a student turns in an assignment that converts feet to meters, and her code accomplishes this by multiplying the number of feet by 2 (and I even give them the calculation for how to convert feet to meters)!
I have dozens and dozens of these stories and everyday I'm adding a new entry. To me there's just no point in teaching these students anymore. I don't know if it's because we're marketing the technical institute to the wrong target audience or if the high schools in this area just don't care anymore, but all the instructors I talk to agree on one thing: the quality of students is not getting better.