

The First Lecture - cfinger
http://blog.punchthrough.com/post/30067893806/first-lecture

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invalidOrTaken
Argghh, please do not decry the state of general education when you can't
spell. I _know_ this is a nitpick, but phrases like "I've had the good
fortunate" do not help your cause.

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sandyarmstrong
Really? His typo invalidates his premise about how to teach engineering in a
fun and engaging way?

As far as I could tell, his main concern was for the curiosity and motivation
of the students, not their ability to communicate via the written word.

Typos may detract from his post, and nitpicking is fine, but your first
sentence is illogical, incorrect (it's not a spelling error), and
unnecessarily negative. Take it easy with the attitude, man.

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invalidOrTaken
Of course the typo is logically irrelevant, and yes, I should have referred to
diction rather than spelling.

But I don't think my point is illogical at all. Statements like "College is
broken" (the original submission title) are counterintuitive (outside of HN,
anyway) enough that they strain credibility. Sloppiness strains it further.

You're right on the unnecessary negativity. It would have been more helpful to
note specific typos in a friendly manner. What was posted, however, was just
my knee-jerk reaction upon opening the link. That said, though it doesn't
serve as a good excuse, I doubt I'm the only one who might react as such.

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coffen
This is cool...I had no idea people didn't like microcontroller classes. At my
school, "Principles of Engineering" (microcontrollers + mechE) is almost
universally loved and a whole lot of fun.

<http://www.olinprojects.com/tag/principles-of-engineering/>

It seems that we learn in class a lot like how you originally did. Agreed that
it is way better and more fun.

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cfinger
I've heard a lot of good things about Olin and have always been impressed by
it's grads. Seems like they are doing it right. I get the impression it's
still a smaller school, is that true?

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acgourley
Half our founding team is from olin, they came out of college waaaaay more
prepared for a startup than I did out of a UC. They are doing it right.

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acgourley
This is great, while I've often _thought_ I should go back to my college and
bridge the glaring holes between the curriculum and reality, I never got much
further than that.

Definitely alumni going back and helping their schools should be encouraged,
and hopefully most dept's are humble enough to accept that help. But I worry
it's a small thing that doesn't scale, have you thought about the growing
online education movement as a vector?

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cfinger
Definitely. This is kind of the test of my hypothesis, that doing these
projects in the real world create a motivation that influences your school
work, life, career, etc.

I've long thought that there should be a 'maker scholarship', giving small
amounts of funding to people/students building real things. I found small
amounts of this in the form of sponsorships from companies, but I really had
to hustle for it. Whereas I randomly (literally just showed up in my mail)
received a scholarship simply because my grades were above a certain mark. The
'Maker Scholarship' idea is definitely scalable.

As far as a new kind of school, I'm not sure the best way to do that.
Certainly interested in all the online activity but I do like the social feel
of a 'real life' school.

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acgourley
Maybe there is some concept you can develop at one school that can spread to
more. I'd also bet maker companies like sparkfun would be interested in
sponsoring such things.

