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The content of this blog does not reflect the positions of the Peace Corps and is solely the responsibility of the author.

Seminar!

I have just finished day 2 of a five day 2 hr/day seminar on Linux that I'm doing with my counterpart.  (Yes, it's weird that it starts on Thursday and breaks over the weekend, but our original plan of starting on Monday was revised at the last minute because Pagan Fertility Festival aka Easter.)  So far we've had ~25 people/day, many if not most of whom are my students.  I'm ok with that.  Actually, I'm a lot less nervous talking to my students than I would be talking to complete strangers.   Today, I noticed some of my students had gotten the notes in advance and were helping the people around them.  I could not be more proud.

Day 1 didn't go as well as I had hoped.  One of the other lecturers offered to teach the very basics of day 1 so I wouldn't have to teach all 5 days, and I accepted because 1) I should be encouraging participation and doing as little as possible because sustainability and 2) I was very nervous because some sys admins from the offices in town are present as well as lecturers from other departments, and I get nervous about teaching people who are real adults.  I wish I had just taught it myself since this lecturer, while good at lecturing, ignored every place I had written demonstration in the notes (I prepared all the slideshows and notes) and then people rightly complained that the seminar didn't have enough practical instruction.  But it's ok, today, I totally made people do things along with me, my students helped, and no one told me I should be doing anything better by Monday, so either I'm hopeless or awesome, and I just got to stand in front of people and proclaim my undying love for wget -c, so I'm going with awesome.  

4 comments:

  1. This sounds awesome. You should get some photos and post them to some Linux journal/user group.

    Also clearly you don't have to be nervous as not one of those other adults took the time to organize and put on such an event.

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  2. Photos to come! Monday I plan to give one of my students my camera and say go crazy. Posting them to a Linux group is a really good idea, thanks!

    I'm so happy this is actually going well.

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  3. wget utility is the best option to download files from internet. wget can pretty much handle all complex download situations including large file downloads, recursive downloads, non-interactive downloads, multiple file downloads etc.,

    Whatever.

    Cthulhu is way more interesting than wget. You can even find a YouTube on "How to Pronounce Cthulhu." Or one about "L'il Cthulhu."

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  4. Unfortunately, due to Peace Corps policies on religious proselytizing, I think it would be a violation of my contract to proclaim the undying wonders of Cthulhu. No matter how much I love Cthulhu and truly believe that Cthulhu will make a download manager unnecessary.

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