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Education #1-4

This is a quote from one of radar's emails to AIMED-Talk:

My vision is for an INFORMAL group that works together to provide self-help, mentored study, and semi-formal teaching activities. No dues, no ads, no fees, no board, no officers, etc. etc.

In another email he wrote:

  1. Get a few of us to agree on a starting subject. MY suggestion for a place to start is: "I know programming concepts but NOT the Mac. I want to develop for the Mac. Save me a LOT of time, please".
  2. Put in some time on OUR parts to put a rough shell in place. This will have more holes in it than swiss cheese at first. We'll patch holes as they are recognized, but it will start serving SOME purpose immediately.
  3. We'll need someone who knows HTML to make the pages
  4. We'll need a place to put the pages.

Radar collected the responses to the various ideas which were contained in emails entitled "Education #1" to "Education #3" and led discussions on these ideas. In the fourth mail message the ideas became more solid:

Subject: Education #4 - My vision

From:radar@SMT-Inc.com
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 1996 05:35:34 -0400

I think we all agree on wanting to improve people's abilities to learn NEW Mac-related skills. We can just DO IT :-).

But, DO WHAT EXACTLY?

I've seen the bickering, etc. in other organizations, and don't want to repeat that. So how do we avoid pissing off each other. Simple. We operate by anarchy. :-)

[Radar has had experience in managing large software development projects at a variety of corporations, and has also had experience in managing net-based groups. To avoid problems he has previously seen in this area when activities are managed 'by committee', he decided that, to be MOST effective, the MOST should have a single leader. Not being shy, he decided that would be himself. After making THIS bold proposal, he followed it with the following comments to the group.]

I am NOT proposing the 'Radar Web Page' and asking each of you to make me famous. But I AM going to approach this effort the way I believe makes sense and NOT argue about that with those who have radically different ideas. I want to DO this. I am going to make sure that there IS at least ONE place where folks can go to learn how to program the Mac.

MY VISION:

We use the web to produce an increasingly complete reference for any topic that would be of interest to those who program the Mac. This can be organized by topic, etc., but I would envision that the pages be tailored in such a way as to facilitate THREE separate approaches to learning.

  1. Self-study.
    Some people prefer to learn on their own. For each topic, the 'self-study guide' section should provide a general discussion of the topic, followed by pointers to books, net resources, organizations, etc. that provided additional information.
  2. Mentored Study.
    Some people prefer to learn with a teacher, and some of us ENJOY teaching. For an area that couldn't get an entire focus group together, or for a topic that someone wanted help with, but which was confidential, we would provide a listing of individuals that claimed expertise in the associated area. Anyone who wanted to discuss a topic in more detail than could be accomplished on a newsgroup, who needed confidentiality, or who wanted to contract with a person for their professional services in that specific area could get the candidates from the list, review their qualifications, etc, and then correspond privately to set up whatever worked for THEM.
  3. Focus groups.
    For topics that are ALWAYS needing to be covered as people progress through their careers (Mac Toolbox, Apple events, specific languages, tools, frameworks, etc) we would establish a formal 'lesson plan' that could be used by a focus group to insure full coverage of the topic without needing to re-invent it each time. People would register for a focus group using the web and when enough had registered, one of the associated mentors for that area would lead the classes and work individually and collectively with the students to complete the curriculum. At the end of the class, the students would be expected to critique the course itself so we could make it better each time. For people who know an area, but NOT how to create a coherent lesson plan/curriculum, those of us that DO have skills in THAT area would assist them with creating it for THEIR subsequent use.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998. Last Update to This Page: 1998/04/22
This Page Maintained by: radar pangaean * * * Original Author: radar pangaean
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