Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

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

In the three-hour session of my Interfacing Computer Systems class for the ninth week of the second term, the two groups that were assigned in the last meeting started on their latest experiment, which as I said the last time I mentioned it, is the same as the task (hardware and software) they were supposed to make for their exam.

It was only in the middle of the period though that I realized that one of the groups, the one that was using the computer on the side of the room beside the window, had not yet finished their previous experiment, which was the external circuit input through the parallel port to be read by the software program.

They had members who had finished it, so part of the time had to be used for explaining how they were able to make their last experiment work, and coming up with their output.

There was even a suspicion that maybe the architecture of the two computers were different, which was why some programs and circuits that worked on one computer would not work on the other.

And when I suggested to the groups that while someone was working on the circuit that someone else should be fine tuning the program, the students resisted, because most of them did not another situation that arose from their last exam when they could only answer half of the exam because they were ignorant of the other part.

This time they wanted to be involved in both hardware and software construction of the experiment, in preparation for the next exam and for their own edification on all aspects of the lesson.

Again I was surprised that the group using the computer beside the door was able to finish the experiment in one session, while the other group was still not finished.

So I’m at a quandary as to what to do for the next meeting. If I give them a new experiment, it is possible that the leading group will finish it before the other group again, and they will still be behind. Besides, how do I reshuffle the group members again if all the students have not yet finished the last experiment?

Maybe I’ll just give the first group the task of making their circuit and program work on the other computer, and give the second group the task of studying the work of the other group on the computer of the faster group.

And I still have to think whether I can give them projects they can finish on time.

Session 855 achieves the expected output. Class dismissed.