Err...I'm not sure how you guys would feel about help from my side - but
here's what I've generally observed from evangelizing Microsoft technologies
and Windows
- The staff are no help. I'm not generalizing - just an observation from the
colleges I've been to. Though they are usually enthusiastic about helping
you out, their lack of technical skills is a big obstacle.
- Most of the students are not geeks..so they don't think like us.Their
definition of 'cool' is different from our definition of 'cool'
Here are my $0.02 worth of suggestions...
- Show students the 'cool' stuff. For example, I would love to talk about
how cool delegates are in Mono/.NET. But most students would probably give
me a blank stare. So the demo I usually do is to write a web service that
generates a love letter and then run a hands-on lab that walks them through
the process.
What I've found is that instead of aiming for the students to learn the
correct stuff or the fundamentals, you're better off showing them the flashy
stuff up front. For example, I know that a lot of students struggle to do
graphics using Tc. So when I show them how easy graphics is in .NET, they're
instantly hooked. Now,is that the recommended fashion? Absolutely not.
Microsoft would be happy if I start from the basics and work my way up. But
if I open up a PPT with a lot of bullets and start talking about
type-safety, I'll just be wasting everyone's time.
My suggestion would be to look at 2 different sections of students
1. The geeks. The people who've been coding a lot. For these guys, just have
a look at what kind of apps they want to write and then show-off how
easy/clean/elegant it is with your technology/OS/platform/whatever
2. For the non-geeks. Show them the eye-candy. Tell them stuff like "You
never have to use a pointer again. Ban the '*'"...find out what they hate
doing and tell them how if they use technology X, they won't have to do any
of it.
Once you have them interested, then you can get them to convince their
faculty for you...this has worked every single time in my case.
Hope this helps...
Regards,
Sriram
Microsoft Student Ambassador
P.P.S One small suggestion - stay away from the religious debates on stage.
Impress them with technology rather than philosophy gyan. This comes from
personal experience - people automatically don't like it if you criticize
someone else without the other person being there to defend themselves. I've
got bad feedback whenever I've criticized Linux (however slightly, even in
jest) on stage...but whenever I've spoken only of MS stuff,I'd got great
feedback. I have a friend who does Linux sessions..and when he cracked
jokes about Microsoft on stage, I could hear students sniggering around
me..they were whispering about how superior MS is. I was pretty surprised -
the very act of him criticizing someone else seemed to provoke hostile
responses from the neutral sections of the crowd. But whenever he stuck to
Linux, the people were pretty receptive.
P.S Insert standard disclaimer here about how these are my views and not
Microsoft's..blah..blah
---------------------------------------------------
I blog at http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sriram
----------------------------------------------------
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I blog at http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sriram
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-----Original Message-----
From: Arvind Kalyan [mailto:arvy@xxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: 05 July 2004 00:01
To: bsd unix
Cc: ilugc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; klug@xxxxxxxxxxxx; Arvind Kalyan
Subject: Re: [klug] Re: [Ilugc] About Linux advocacy in colleges (failed
inCEG)
Its unwise to make such general statements.
1. Being well informed of the latest trends in the engineering arena
doesnt mean they have to know how the ELF headers are laid out in
the binary images and such or being able to take up a VB project.
If thats what your benchmark of "being up to date" is, then I
think you are seriously wrong.
They are knowledgeable enough to know whats important and how
to guide the students here.
2. There are professors here who have had decades of industry
exposure. Industry here refering to top of the line establishments,
organizations, companies etc.
3. It doesnt matter if they do part-time business or not. What matters
is when they are in college, they dedicate their time to the
welfare of their students.
Regards,
Arvind Kalyan
bsd unix <chennai_bsd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
lots a part time business.The reasons for the success in Kongu Engineering College is the
presence of lecturers and professors who are well informed of the
latest trends in the engineering arena (not just the IT industry).
I don't beleive this. i completely disagree It is not to offend the
lecturers / teachers.
(i) Lecturers don't have adequate knowledge about the latest trends (
i have seen lecturers asking students to do a visual basic project --
really not a joke ) (ii)It is a sad state that today ( atleast in
india )that lecturers / others take up teaching only because thay
didn't get a high paying job
(iii) i have seen professors / lecturers are very business minded and do
--
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