[AG-TECH] Programming course via the AG, advice sought ...

[Brian Corrie]

Hi Darran,

Todd's SharedDesktop might be ideal for this... It would require having 
AG installed on all students desktops, but if they were in the venue 
with no services they could simply be running the SharedDesktop shared 
application and thats it.

The nice thing about the shared app is that it lists the people that are 
joined and any one can choose to share their desktop at any given time. 
Thus if you want to work with student A you ask student A to make their 
desktop visible (click of a button). You choose to look at it (click of 
a button), and away you go. When your done student A turns off sharing 
(click of a button) and you go on to the next one.

I think this should work quite well for what you want to do, although 
Todd may want to comment more 8-)

Note that the install/config would be rather painless, because you won't 
have to worry about the audio and video services, just that VNC is 
installed and the SharedDesktop shared app is installed...

 From our perspective, if you use it we would love to hear about your 
experience with Shared Desktop for our further development.

Cheers,

Brian


Darran Edmundson wrote:
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Next month I'll be teaching an introductory python course via
> the AG to 12 participants scattered around Australia (2 students
> maximum at any one node).  I've taught the material before - no
> problem there - but never via the AG.  My normal way of teaching
> programming courses is:
> 
> 1) 5-10 minute discourse by me on some topic
>         2) set a related task that takes about 10-15 minutes, students
>             work individually but are encouraged to ask questions.
>        3) stop and discuss when 2/3 of students are done.  Explain my
>            solution, ask for other approaches,  bring everyone up to  speed
>           (remember, 1/3 of class didn't finish) and synchronize  everyone
>           to my source file.
>        4) Back to Step (2) until we've developed a meaningful piece  of 
> code
> 5) Back to Step (1) ....
> 
> In terms of interaction:
>    - need to see student's editor and code output for 1-on-1 debugging
>    - occasionally show a student's solution on class projector
>    - I often stand and point at code on the class projector and draw
>      on the whiteboard
> 
> Given the above, I'd really appreciate hearing from people who
> have taught a programming (or similar) course via the AG.  How
> to adjust my teaching style and/or configure the AG to best
> teach such a course?  I look forward to hearing about your
> experiences ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Darran.
> 
> Darran Edmundson (darran.edmundson at anu.edu.au)
> ANU Supercomputer Facility Vizlab
> Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2600
> tel: +61 2 6125-0517  fax: +61 2 6125-5088
>