This is all by way of explanation of an interesting response I received on a recent question to one of my Introduction to Computer Science homework questions. Note, this particular student is one of my better ones and there is nothing wrong with the answer….

The question was something along the lines of “Write a set of steps that conform to the definition of an informal algorithm”.

He wrote
Task is to get a mango
(a) Find a mango tree
(b) Start throwing rocks
(c) If any mango falls, pick it up.

Again, I consider this a pretty decent answer it’s just something that no American college student would likely think of when answering this question… It’s a fairly small example but this type of situation brings to light many challenges we often face in teaching in this sort of environment. How much more of an effective teacher would I be if i had a better cultural and historical background to pull from when creating assignments and giving examples in class? It’s hard to say…

The term for UTG officially started on January 24th or so, not that anybody really showed up or started teaching (including myself…ahem…). My first classes were last week, so, it’s been a little busy around here. For some unknown and inexplicable reason, I decided to pick up three classes at UTG that I’ve never taught before, one of which is completely new and one of which hasn’t been taught in 3 years. This means that I need to develop most of the class material myself which really just takes an inordinate amount of time…

The brand new class is a programming logic and design course that is intended to teach new CS students on how to actually solve a problem. The tragic thing about some of our students here is that they know the syntax of a language well but they are unable to turn a word problem like “take a set of numbers and calculate the average” into a working solution. Hopefully this class will address that issue a bit. The course is going to be taught using several versions of a language called Racket, which is based of Scheme, which for those keeping score at home is a bit like lisp. I decided on the use of this language for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that the book is available for free online at http://www.htdp.org/ and draft second edition at http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/ .

The language also comes with a nice IDE that allows students to easily play around with the language. That combined with the fact that the language it’s self does not have a complicated syntax means I should be able to get into more advanced computer science topics fairly quickly.

Other than that, I’m teaching a Introduction to Java course, which is the language used in all other programming classes here and a general introduction to computer science. I’m hoping that even in the Java course I’ll be able to incorporate more problem solving concepts found in the How to Design Programs book.

Anyway. I did want to post the answer which caused the most tragedy in my little heart…

The question was: Create a function that takes an array  and returns the average of the array. If the function is called with no arguments the function should return -1.

Answer:

function average($i $j){
	$i = average Array[];
	$i = [] = 4;
	$i = [] = 2;
	return($i as average_array)
else{
	echo(-1)
}

Now, for those of you who don’t know php or programming this is a pretty bad… If nothing else, he just picks two random numbers and doesn’t even try to average those.  For reference’s sake here is what it might look like

function avg($numbers = FALSE){
	if (!$numbers) return -1;

	foreach ($numbers as $value){
		$total = $value + $total;
		$count++;
	}
	return $total/$count;
}

I just thought the pictures were interesting…. Check them out. The one with the numbers taped to the wall show what I had to do when one of the questions didn’t print out completely….

cps111 test

Practicals

These students hate me

Also they said the test is too long. Not my fault

All taking the written exam

Only 2/3 of these people actually registered for the course

Why take the exam?

I don't know.

 

Gambian printers suck.

During the few days around Tobaski many people eat more meat than they do in months.  This is mainly due to the sacrificing of rams, which all heads of households are supposed to do.  Really, any animal will work.  Due to the inexplicable rapid increase in ram costs in the months leading up to the holiday some families can’t afford to obtain a ram and will instead go with a goat or even a chicken.  The idea is to have the highest quality domestic animal that the family can afford.  After the sacrifice the meat is divided between the household, neighbors and the needy (one of the major tenets of Islam is to be charitable, this practice is just one more instance of that).

After the prayers and cooking are over children and adults get decked out in their finest threads, many made special for the holiday, and go visit friends and family.  This leads us to the tradition of asking for “salibo”.  From what I can gather, it was originally more akin to a Christmas present.  When you went to visit a friend or family and they gave you something, often money, it was called salibo.  Here in The Mighty G kids have taken to wondering the streets asking for it.  Samantha and I took it to mean it was Halloween so sat outside and handed out candy that she got in one of her many, many wonderful packages.  Now for pictures…. Beware, there are some of the ram being slaughtered so… Be Aware.

Tobaski 2010

Going to westfield.

Buther shops love tobaski

 

Rams in westfield

So fresh and so clean

More goats

How do you get them home? Trunk

 

Dress up

Pixel and Samantha have asobi

 

 

This cat, i hate

Fight!

All gambian women cook on tobaski

Dinner

Blood Hole

Digging the hole

Laying him down

Sad goat

= [

= [ =[

Watching the slaughter

Me and Mohummod.

Hiding from the buthering

Too bad you can't hide

Rowdy

Cutting it up after skinning

Note the head is on the legs

This reminds of zelda somehow...

Mbasse getting dinner ready

 

First, one eats the liver and ?

Kane dislikes liver

So does Samantha

 

So sad

This one barely eats meat...

Sucker

Grilling it up

 

!!

Tobaski outfit

 

 

Frightened children looking for candy

I give salibo to the boys

She gives to the girls

Gangster

 

Mbasse and Samantha

Halloween 2010

Zombies Gele Assistant (apparente)

The soccer team

I'm hard.

This is almost a jack-o-lantern. He's just green. Don't Judge

Gangster

Samantha is hungry

Madness

 

Ok. Also. Samantha got a kitten.  An adorable kitten.  They, however, have a bit of a love/hate relation ship.  This cat pretty much pooped all over her house.  Also, while trying to clean it up I once dumped a big bucket of poop water all over her spare bedroom. She was asking for it though.  Here.  Cat Pictures!!  Whoever comes up with the best lolcat i’ll send a prize. Go!

Crazy Cat Lady

Crazy straws and booze. Good gifts. Hint Hint

Pixel

What is this?

This kitten is a liar

I'm like a pirate but with a cat!

Pixel won this fight

She's a kitten eater. Jerk.

Don't trust her.

Food Stuff!

• Seasoning Packets like taco seasoning, chili, pretty much anything
• Koolaid
• Mac and Cheese
• Cheese Nips
• Dried noodle packet things
• Starbucks Via package <= best instant coffee ever
• Sour Skittles
• Beef Jerky
• Hot Chocolate!
• Tea Bags
• Sunflower seeds
• Peanut M&Ms
• Refried beans
• Dried pinto beans
• Anything else you think will make it…

School Stuff! (Me and Students)

• Good dry erase markers
• Stapler and staples
• USB Sticks (filled with media?)
• Pens red/black
• Pencils
• Folders
• Notebooks
• Paper clips
• Permanent markers..

Ok. I think that’s it for now.  Pictures next time.  And. Just for the record…

Kane Mason, PCV
C/O Peace Corps/The Gambia
PO box 582
Banjul, The Gambia
West Africa

As far as updates in “work” go I’m starting to newish projects.  One or both obviously may not go anywhere but they are both something i’ve been wanting to try.  I’m working with a couple of gambians to create a proposal to the university to finish up networking the campus.  We have a couple of networks with their own internet connection, some 3g sticks and various other ways to access the net but the IT staff here isn’t really able to offer things like printing services and student informations systems because it might not be available at any given computer at any given time.  There are some pretty talented networking guys here and I think we have the resources so it might just be a matter of putting all the costs together and giving it a push.

For those interested in slightly more detail ( no one) we have a fairly spread out campus with a few offices  per building. Currently, the plan is to sort of hop around with switches and run cabling on the outside of the wall in conduit of some kind.  The walls are concrete so no going inside…  In many places the options seems either to be running several long cables from a switch or plopping down a switch and running like 5 shorter cables.  I’m not sure what’s best though… right now we are planning on more switches and less cables…. Input?  Hopefully this thing will be finished by the end of the month and we can forward on to more stake holders and get input then send it over for finalish approval….

The other thing I’m working on is trying to get more books and learning resources for the students.  Right now as teachers we can’t really tell people to read the book because it doesn’t exist.  Sometimes there are PDF copies of books floating around but that leads to certain ethical issues and they normally aren’t really textbooks anyway.  I’ve even seen students taking pictures of pages of books so they can turn them into pdf and study them lady.  Do’h!  I’m talking to one of the big book publishers about various pricing and ebook options for the gambia and they seem to be really receptive.  Someone from UTG has already been talking to them as well so I hope to jump in on that band wagon.

Ok.  So thats projects for now…

I’ve been pretending to be busy the last few weeks with going back to the Americas and coming back here and all of that exciting and powerful stuff.  Since coming back I’ve started teaching at the university again and at GTTI.  Turns out I’m liking teaching at UTG more and more, mainly due to the students being a little more serious.   I’m teaching a Web Development I class that deals just with CSS, HTML, and all of that.  Luckily, I’ve got a TA for that one and I’m mainly making him do most of the teaching.  I’m helping him make notes and homework and such but he’s really doing most of the work.  I’m also doing a Web Dev II class that is just like what I taught last year….  I’ve got me a TA for that guy too but he just graduated so the plan is to have me do it this year, make slides and all that and him due it next term.  We’ll see how that goes.

The other class I was supposed to teach was a intro to programming logic and design course, which is basically learning how to solve problems programmatically but not using an actual language yet.  We’ve found that often times students here get the syntax really well but even at the junior and senior years they have trouble actually using the language to solve a problem.  The idea is that we can do a new intro course that will help cover some of those missing problem solving skills for those students.  Tragically, They didn’t ask me to take the class until we were like 2 weeks in and I’ve been having trouble getting material for it so I actually haven’t started it yet.  We might not be able to do it until next term, which would be a little sad…

So it goes.

Also. ALSO! My poor poor laptop died.  America is sending me a new one though.  Thanks America!

Other than that things have been really good here. I did miss The Gambia when I was gone and now I miss America. I guess you really just can’t win. When I first got back the power across the entire city was pretty buster. It would work maybe 5 hours a day, which as a spoiled Kombo Kid made me really sad. Finally it started working OK for everyone else and I noticed that still, No Dice for the lovely Kane. I could run maybe one fan if i unplugged everything in the house. A week of calling Nawec, the electric company, later they finally got it sorted out. I’m not sure what the deal was but I assume it has to do with the giant thunder lizards living in my roof eating through wires or something

Also, I never really noticed much before but the kids in my little compound, AKA the ones who live in my garage, are rather adorable. Samantha painted one the oldest ones nails the other day and now every time i see here she shows me all of her nails, smiles really big and asks where fatou is. I’ve got pictures but, alas, no way to post them right this second. Soon Soon, I will…