
Steve Wozniak to teach at University of Technology, Sydney - femto
http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/557833/steve-wozniak-teach-uts/
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GuiA
> _The stint will include two to three annual visits – Wozniak is due for his
> second trip to UTS in December – and interactive telepresence sessions with
> research groups and student projects._

> _Students will also be permitted to interact with Wozniak on a one-to-one
> basis via telepresence, dependent on his availability upon request._

I had a class in grad school that was taught by 3-4 different professors (it
was HPC, and each of them was highly knowledgeable in a particular subfield).
One of them did the whole thing by telepresence, and it was far from a great
experience.

I don't think there's a single factor I can neatly describe - it's just that
tele-presence is everything BUT presence. You don't get the micro interactions
with the students, you don't get the professor pacing back and forth and
scribbling things on the board on the fly, you just lack all those subtle
things that you expect from a live lecture.

It's closer to watching a pre-recorded video than to the real thing. Maybe
this was particularly apparent because this was a graduate level class, with
only a dozen or so students, but still.

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13
Yes, I had the same experience with "remote" teaching. Seen from both sides
it's very taxing for everybody involved. It's extremely hard for the teacher
because they have no interaction with their students, and the students have an
experience which can best be described as yelling into cotton wool. If there's
an option for some interaction between parties it's often very difficult to
get a technical question across a lossy and high latency feed.

In one case it turned out the "remote" teacher was in the next room across
from where the class was sitting, which made the experience all the more
insulting.

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netcan
I think teaching is one of those things where you need to either follow a
formula that works or become obsessed and blaze your own path. Figuring out
how to teach using tools that aren't really understood yet is blazing your own
path.

Making teaching non-reliant on a teacher's presence, improved by the
possibilities of digital communication, interaction and teaching tools is
trying to write a revolution of sorts. You can't dabble in revolution.

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mathattack
While I believe that class with Woz is awesome, I wonder if the video-lectures
is the worst of both worlds. It lacks the interactive in-person presence of
real classes (teachers making eye contact with all the students to understand
who is following) and lacks the trial and error ("Pick the best of the 10
times you video it") of a MOOC. That said, the 1 on 1 telepresence sessions
with Woz would make the class worth it no matter what other challenges are
included.

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Communitivity
I am so jealous. Being his student would be an amazing learning experience. I
suspect this will be a major trend - and that we'll see more and more remote
teaching resources. A possible opportunity for YC16.

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astrodust
I can't be the only one disappointed that the legacy ".oz" domain for
Australia is defunct because he could get "w.oz" otherwise.

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Jedd
A story about Woz teaching at UTS in Sydney - and the focus of the picture is
Jobs (with a little bit of out-of-focus Woz on the side). A small insight into
what ARN thinks of its readers.

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acd
Hope he would give an online course in electronics. Steve Wozniak is as much
hero as Steve Jobs are for creating apple and Wozniak is much nicer as a
person.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were both hackers and phone phreakers. Plus Jobs
smoked a whole lot of mind altering drugs in India something that I think gave
his mind a different perspective.

