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.

This week is the start of the student reports in my Robotics class for the various sensors that can be used for their projects.

It was a bit annoying that those who were not reporting could not even respect their fellows enough to stay quiet during their presentations.

That's why afterwards I decided to ask the reporters for some questions to be placed in an improptu quiz just to see how much the others were listening.

For the reporters themselves, I asked them for the technical specifications of the component they were assigned to report on, and the cost.

In the lab class afterwards, the students still had difficulty in making the six-player game show buzzer to work.

The two-player buzzer was fine, but the more players there are, the slightly more convoluted the program had to be. I had to clarify to the students that they had to make their loop as short as possible to catch only the first buzzer to turn on, then put the lighting of the appropriate LED outside the loop, after.

As usual, the fourth year irregulars, who were supposed to be working on their project for which they have bought parts even though they have not submitted a proposal yet (which means zero in the 30% overall grade for the project) were actually working on the project for another subject, not mine.

This was made clear when during another of my classes they approached me in the room about taking apart the project of another student in another subject, because they needed it. So much for building a "library" of projects for demonstration at any given time then, especially since their predecessors in the advanced robotics lab still used the kits for the introduction course for their projects, assuring that it will be taken apart afterwards. Talk about no documentation whatsoever.

But then, that's also the lack of foresight of slacker co-teacher in action (or lack of action), just to have something to do for the term.

Now I see why it might be too late to give these students proper training, after having been under the auspices of a bad teacher for so long.

Session 1877 doesn't want the challenge of starting from scratch. Class dismissed.