Entries categorized as ‘software’
Social communication is with us
2010 March 11 (Week 10: Thursday) · Leave a Comment
Categories: innovation · social media · social networking · software
Tagged: Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter
A better Java programming course?
2010 January 19 (Week 03: Tuesday) · Leave a Comment
Questions, questions!
What would a better training course be like?
In what ways would it differ?
For whom would it be better?
How would we know that it is better?
What would we measure?
Better for learners and providers
In general, whatever you are learning, all of these questions might be important to you. To a large extent, the answers depend on your needs and on the structure of the subject area. So, more specifically, my interest is in the answers in the case of learning to use a programming language.
In talking to potential partners who would like to be able to deliver a course on Java programming, I am struck by the absence of any discussion of what might make a course better than other courses. Naturally, there is discussion about the course being “better” for the training provider.
But in the end, the needs of the learner will surely dominate. So, of course, “better” must mean better in the eye of the beholder, who is ultimately the learner, although there may be two or more layers in between.
What is needed?
Having spent hundreds of hours training people in Java programming, it is clear to me that there is more than one way to approach the subject. Having spent hundreds more hours training people in object-oriented design for implementation in Java, it is also clear to me that the most generally used approach does not work at all well.
People who have completed a Java course, apparently without undue difficulty, can frequently manage to avoid understanding some important concepts.
So, a few years ago, I set out to do better. The resulting course has been the subject of my thoughts, from time to time, ever since. It seems to stand the test of time.
Improving the sequence!
For the Java programming course in question, I have modified the sequence in ways that are mostly subtle, but not always! As you may know, this is consistent with my belief that the sequence is the foundation of learning anything.
When the course is available, we can discuss the specific differences from a more normal sequence. But, in the meantime, I am thinking about what might be expected by learners and others, and about whether further changes are also possible.
Categories: business · innovation · learning · object-oriented · software · training
Tagged: innovation, Java, learning, sequence, training
Go, Nokia, Go!
2009 November 27 (Week 48: Friday) · Leave a Comment
You have nothing to fear and everything to gain!
The mobile internet is becoming mainstream, so the smartphone market is booming. Nokia occupy the strongest position in the smartphone market, has loyal customers and a reputation for phones that, relative to other mainstream phones, are user friendly.
So what is happening?
This means that Nokia has one of the biggest opportunity in its history. Yet it is not clear that they see it like that. (more…)
Categories: business · hardware · software
Tagged: Mobile devices, Pocket computing
Version inversion!
2009 November 12 (Week 46: Thursday) · 1 Comment
What happened?
I have a license to a software product which ran satisfactorily, but now fails to run on a newly released version of the operating system. Surely, unless facilities in the operating system have been withdrawn or there is a fault in the operating system: this is a fault in the product? (more…)
Social relationship management
2009 November 11 (Week 46: Wednesday) · 2 Comments
So Twitter and LinkedIn are interconnecting. What is the background to this and where is it leading?
Twitter seems to have caught many people’s mindshare because it is fundamentally different from most other services; its asymmetric “follower” relationship is more complex and flexible than simple connections on LinkedIn or friends on Facebook. Other services are now following(!). (more…)
Categories: modelling · social media · social networking · software
Learning and social networks
2009 June 4 (Week 23: Thursday) · Leave a Comment
My interest in learning, and in the ways in which we can enable it, makes conversations like this really interesting.
This is my (very rapidly composed) take on it. I write it here because my intended comment in that conversation grew in size so fast that, before I could get it out, it seemed to have become too large for a comment; that, also says something about the medium/channel communication!
So here goes … (more…)
Architectural advice
2009 February 11 (Week 07: Wednesday) · Leave a Comment
O’Reilly are publishing a new book “97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know”. This caught my attention for a variety of reasons. One is an interest in trying to get to the bottom of what the issues commonly labelled as “software architecture” are really all about! Another reason is that there are a couple of contributions from Kevlin Henney, with whom I have worked and who frequently comes up with a “different take” on any situation. (more…)
“Training”, “learning” or both?
2009 January 7 (Week 02: Wednesday) · Leave a Comment
Naming is important! When we encounter overlapping terms applied to similar concepts, they often carry important differences in emphasis or meaning. So what have I been doing all these years?
Maybe it is “training”, but the world is now focussed on “learning”, let’s pick this apart? (more…)
Categories: learning · software · training
Tagged: Add new tag
