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.

One of the problems I had with the first two training meetings of my Introduction to Robotics classes was that there was inadvertently always one group that was lagging behind because one of the computers wasn’t working properly, with no sound drivers installed after it had recently been reformatted.

The training software, particularly in the early part of the introduction, relied heavily on verbal instructions. That makes the application hearing-impaired unfriendly. So there were times when I would hear the same phrases over and over again from speakers attached to the computers in different parts of the room, as the groups set their volume at various levels depending on how many people there were in the group and how much they were distracted by the noise from the neighboring tables.

In fact, one group, dominated by computer science sophomores, just asked for the CD to install the software in one of their laptops so they could run the program from there.

The first meetings for the second week of the third term in these classes were also marked by all kinds of changes in the class lists: students dropping because of conflict with subjects they have decided are more important (or have more urgent prerequisites), students changing sections to be with their friends or to make their schedules easier (both through the registrar and by arrangement with the same teacher of both sections), and students, swayed by the early raves of their peers, still attempting to add the subject to their load.

Some, like my former co-teacher David’s younger brother, were denied because he already has twenty-one units, and he would not drop any of his minor subjects like Introduction to Philosophy. That doesn’t prevent him from attending the class though, and I don’t deny him.

I suspect that some of the groups may be skipping some of the challenges presented or not even trying to modify and improve the sample programs given with some of the tasks, but that is their loss if they are not able to answer the questions in the first quiz I am always threatening them with.

At least since the challenges after the training missions concentrate on text, so the groups are using all the computers in the lab now.

Session 941 has no driver. Class dismissed.