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Jul 22, 2008

It is hot.

So…

I’m sitting here next to Ted (another EECS blogger), who by the way is crazy.  Now mind you, not scary, Silence of the Lambs crazy, but more like a friendly, Mork from Mork and Mindy crazy.

Anyways, we’re sitting here in Jerusalem and it is hot.  The reason that we are in Jerusalem is, I guess, the point of this post.  Ted and I are here in Jerusalem to teach Israeli and Palestinian high school students Java, teamwork, leadership, entrepreneurship, and other good things.  This is a MIT-based program called MEET.

I taught for MEET in 2006 and Ted did in 2007.  We are both back this year.  I am back this summer as the Head Instructor.  This basically means that I do not get to actually teach any students directly.  I am also the Head of Curriculum, so I am here to evaluate the curriculum and make sure that the students are learning everything that we want them to.  But, the real thing that I do - the reason why I am here - is that I get to make the schedule for each day and print it on little pieces of paper with clever witticisms on the top (wittiness is actually infrequent and debatable) and give them to all the instructors.

I feel fortunate that I have an advisor that is OK with me going away for the summer.  Not even that, but he was excited and said that it was a good opportunity and was supportive of me going!  It totally threw me off… I was expecting a battle and threats of not-graduating… but there were none.  So here I am.

Which brings me back to my original point.  It is hot.  My favorite time of day is when I get home and get to take my shoes off.  That and I enjoy interacting with the students and doing all those other things that are the actual reasons why I am here.

I actually miss Boston and my research.  But, I am sure that it is there waiting for me to come back, and that is comforting to know.

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3 Responses To This Entry:

    FIRST!

    LOL, I liked your mention of “Silence of the Lambs” crazy, hee hee!

    Posted by: ninja on July 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Oh, I was wondering… do you have a course syllabus for your MEET class you are running? I would be interested to see what Java stuff you are teaching to high school students. “Hello World”? JDBC? Servlets? Swing?

    Posted by: ninja on July 29th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    Hi ninja,

    You can see an overview of our curriculum here: http://meet.mit.edu/programs.html

    Basically, MEET is a three-year program. The first year students come with no Java knowledge, and we teach them the basics of the language in an “Objects and Usage First” approach, so they do not actually write “Hello World” until a few weeks in. By the end of the summer, they can write basic programs by themselves with simple GUIs. The students start the first week programming by themselves, but then move to pair programming for the labs, and work on projects with slowly increasing numbers of people (up to 6 for the final project in Y1).

    In the second year, the students work the entire summer on a single project. They work in teams of ~9 students. The tecnologies they learn vary based on the project. This summer they included: advanced swing, JSP, networking, and SQL. Also, they go through a “mini-MBA” course given by a Sloan MBA student. The students then work on a business plan for their idea in parallel with the technical prototype that they produce by the end of the summer.

    In the third summer, the students work on projects for external clients, and similar to Y2, the technologies depend on the project. This summer, all the projects were web-based, so they students used: JSP, JSF, JBoss Seam, and SQL.

    The students also have workshops on teamwork, leadership, creative thinking, and other topics that are important for excelling high school students to have.

    So, basically we follow the MIT model of instruction, where we give them a ton of information and have them work on difficult projects. I think that the model works well - I have been pleased with what the students have accomplished.

    Posted by: jvarsanik on August 16th, 2008 at 5:19 am

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