A format of teaching
by Vasil Kolev(as usual, this is MY PERSONAL OPINION. It has nothing to do with FMI, SU, the people I work on the network security course, etc.)
Our format is bad and we refuse to acknowledge that. There’s something really nice in presenting a lecture in front of a lot of people, looking at you and thinking you’re great (hah), etc., but that’s not the way. The one-way “pouring” of knowledge would work if everyone was the same, if we had the time to consider VERY CAREFULLY what were we speaking and if we’d done this for 4-5 years with feedback.
(which can’t happen)
A few hours ago we spoke on something related with Veso and I think that the universities won’t do this (Veso, write your POV, there are a lot of interesting things in it). Some time ago there was apprenticeship, etc. which now should be the internship, but for an admin this is pretty hard, for the rest of IT it’s also not easy.
There’s a group of people for which this is not that big of a problem – the self-taught idiots like me (and most of the admins I know) – we find a way to learn something new, with reading or with talking/drinking with other people. Especially in system administration the other kind of people just can’t handle it (I’ve seen such cases, just doesn’t work), so I’m thinking of we should just organize discussions like – like IBB with drinking and a topic.. We drink, we speak, we answer some questions, we might even have a scheduled topic for every night (but without recordings :) ).
The idea is still under consideration – we might do it without the drinking (at least in the beginning :) ), we might find a nice place and way to do tests/experiments, but the thing really needed is people that want to learn and at some level to feel equal, not like sheep. And if they lack courage, they can drink one or two and go on…
The main advantages of the idea as I seem them are as follows – they don’t require preparation, it’s easy to improvise and try while talking, gives a better connection and way to explain, also real feedback, and there’s the drinking…
I’m thinking about proposing the same for OpenFest next year – no lectures but discussions with 4-5 people and the ability for the audience to participate.