Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I had only two classes today: the 1030am programming class and my 230pm-astronomy class. My 920am class has their required whole-day freshman recollection.

In my programming hands-on session I decided to do something different. I copied a program to their diskettes and asked them to revise and debug it, based on how it’s supposed to work. It’s actually the same program task I gave them last week, the election with three candidates. It’s also the same faulty program that was in their exam last Monday. I even listed down the corrections they were supposed to make, such as “change the value used in one assignment statement”.

Again, not following recommendations, a couple of students asked if they could add some statements to make the program workable. I said it was possible, but that meant not fixing the bad code which would still make that part of the program useless. Besides, they’ll only get full points if they were able to do all the proper revisions.

Just like in the previous exercises that they had found difficult, this time a lot of students were still working even though the hour was up. Of course we’ll take up the correct answer next meeting, but I don’t think I’ll be introducing any new topics anymore in the lecture sessions we have left. Instead I’ll focus on refining their use of all the statements we’ve discussed so far in lower level math problems, which is just a smaller scale of all the calculations computers are asked to make.

One of the students actually asked if I was going to teach advanced programming next term. I’m not sure, I said. She hoped I was, she replied.

Seeing our vice dean (and former vice chair) while waiting for elevator in the College of Education building later, he told me that the biology students on their last year of study were looking to open an advanced programming class. This is because it is going to be replaced with another course code, isn’t offered anymore. So he asked if I was willing to handle a special class next term.

I agreed, although I don’t understand how that works. Why stop offering a regular class when some students, however irregular, are yet to take it. And how can there not be enough students in advanced programming to fill a regular class when there are two classes this term taking up introductory programming?

In my astronomy class, they were the last ones to perform the personal constellation exercise. I also gave them the group assignments for next week, including the half-shaded ball for the phases of the moon. I had actually tried coloring a Styrofoam ball with stamp pad ink earlier, but it took a long time to dry that it was dripping towards the non-shaded part unless I tilted it with the colored part downwards, and put a paper below it to catch the drippings. I won’t have the chance to show it until next week though.

I was also able to talk to two of the three panelists of my thesis advisee today, and warned them of what he was going to ask. The department chairman and head of the panel already sees my side. The expert on programming, who used to be a real strict teacher when I was his student, and who has mellowed out considerably in the intervening years, said he would defer to my judgment on the student’s request. In the end I just told him those were the two most important aspects of the program I wanted to demonstrate to my astronomy classes.