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 second session of my Computer Systems Organization lecture class during the sixth week of the third term, I met them in the lab instead of the classroom, so that they would have time to finish their very belated experiments on both three- and four variable logic circuits, and the use of alternative gates.

The problem was that most of the groups were not practicing good troubleshooting as I taught them.

If a complex circuit they connected does not give the correct output, they would pull out all the wires again and start over, or keep shaking wires that may be loose in their plugs or touching other exposed wires until they get the correct output.

They didn’t even want to check the functionality of the chips I give them, because some complained that the methods we used in the first meetings were time consuming.

In the long run they couldn’t see that their rejection to applying the short cut methods I’ve shown were more time consuming.

It was also a factor of some of their previous knowledge seeping in, not wanting to stoop to what they considered as basic strategies when I have not taught them the more advanced techniques their familiarity with some aspects of computers afford them to know exists.

But the fact that at the end of the period we were averaging one circuit to be checked per group, despite the fact that I was allowing them to use more than one breadboard at a time to make several circuit functions simultaneously.

There was also one group that had the disadvantage of having none of its members present during the lecture about alternative “NAND” and “NOR” gates, so they had to rely on the notes of the other groups.

They somehow also accidentally conveyed the wrong information to another group about what function to make a circuit of “NAND” gates for, although there wer members of that misinformed group who were present during my lecture.

The second group’s Achilles heel: they didn’t keep notes.

Session 999 also has no notes. Class dismissed.