Motivating Students

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Correcting a teacher on a lecture doesn't say anything as to the quality of the teacher. Frankly I prefer it when educators make mistakes, it demonstrates common traps and problems everyone has. Not only does it have a positive moral effect on me when I screw up too but it shows how best to recover or identify mistakes. A brief aside about mistakes. I screw up... no, I screw up a LOT. I take a very iterative approach to nearly every problem (this post has already been rewritten 3 times by this point). From failure I learn; Success... not so much. JVN always preaches that design is an iterative process but I think it goes beyond that, life is an iterative process. Never be afraid to screw up and have to rebuild because otherwise you won't accomplish anything of any value.

Just to expand on this a little... a coworker was telling me the other day that your average programmer will introduce 1 bug for every 13 lines of code he writes. An excellent programmer can stretch that to 1 bug per 20 lines of code. When I thought on this to a recently completed assignment (~300 lines of code, with ~2500 lines of unit tests and ~30 integration level tests), I realized how right he was. Thus far, no bugs in this area of code have been discovered in our software builds because of all the testing I did before delivering the code... but that testing caused many rounds of iteration and bug fixes - a vital skill best learned early in your programming career.

Screwing up is part of the game. Iterating, testing, and analyzing your failures separates the great from the average.

[nlknauss]

Great discussion and points being made here by both students and post high school people. I really do believe that this article does a great job of explaining really where many of our students are and possibly why they might come to an organization like FIRST. FIRST is a great application of the Rs and also bridges the gap while many students are in the "Big Wait". I would certainly suggest sharing this mentors and other leaders on your team.

[davidthefat]

I talked to my counsellor: she pretty much told me to deal with it. Like in life, we aren't always going to have the best equipment or the assignments that we love; we have to make the best of what we have. I guess she is right, I'll stop whining and take it like a man... Actually the section she taught today just clicked like that, too bad I missed the previous sections and there is a quiz on it tomorrow -__-


edit: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/
In this list, what would be the best course for me to follow to supplement my math class? I am learning from this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/013...4HYVGBNJA4MV84