Skip to main content

Java discussions and screencasts for learning

From some time I have been thinking about publishing a series of podcasts/screencasts to help people learning Java. I would like to structure them as discussions (with professional Java developers) instead of lectures. These discussions will be structured with the aim to educate.

Each session will be focussed on a particular Java concept or library. Things that would ideally constitute a session are:

  1. Brief explanation of the concept/library (say the Java IO library)
  2. Places where it can be applied
  3. Special situations to take care of
  4. Pain points
  5. Best practices

These sessions will be augmented blog posts containing screencasts, code samples, exercises, and links to other learning resources.

What do you guys think of such a series? Will it be helpful to developers? Do you have any suggestions?



Note: This text was originally posted on my earlier blog at http://www.adaptivelearningonline.net
Here are the comments from the original post

-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sanket Daru
URL: http://sankdadevildaru.blogspot.com
DATE: 06/07/2007 08:58:40 AM
Great Idea. Go for it.

Its only through a developer's interaction with other developers that any value will be added to his knowledge base. This to-be followed methodology of yours will go a long way in ensuring that the value-addition takes place.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Parag
DATE: 06/07/2007 11:45:40 AM
Thanks for your thoughts Sanket.

I would like to start this series with the perspective of a student who has learned Java sometime back. A discussion where he or she talks about what they found difficult to understand, and how they finally managed to grasp it. Their methodology for learning, and some tips for those who are starting now. It will be very valuable for other learners to know where pitfalls exist and how to overcome them.

Since you are the first person to post a comment on this topic and you are also a very good learner :-) I would like to start this series with a discussion with you. Would you like to be participate?

--
Regards
Parag
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: anonymous
URL:
DATE: 06/08/2007 05:23:39 AM
gr8 idea. Looking forward to it.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Badal Burathoki
URL:
DATE: 06/11/2007 06:34:05 AM
sir, your idea to publishing a series of podcasts/screencasts will really help us to learn and the section 'Special situations to take care of' will be interesting one.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: kishore hariharan
URL:
DATE: 06/13/2007 09:38:45 AM
hi,
its an interesting thought to which i would like to add my own..what i found after being into development in java for the past 9 months or so is that there is a clear distinction between concepts and their implementations..concepts more or less are well understood through appropriate real world analogies..but its their code implementation that pose a challenge..the implementation part could be one other area which could be looked into..which would enable better programming practices..its just a suggestion..what do you say prof.??

kishore hariharan
student 2006 batch SCIT
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sanket Daru
URL: http://sankdadevildaru.blogspot.com
DATE: 06/15/2007 03:50:22 PM
Dear Sir,
Sorry didn't reply to your comment. I usually go through the blogs with the help of RSS reader and hence miss out on the comments.

Well, you know that I am always very eager to participate in any form of learning and if I can be of any help to you in this process, it will be my pleasure!

I do agree with Kishore that implementation is one area where many students fail. After clearing the base thoroughly, the implementation is the one key area which needs to be addressed.

In any case, I will be very glad to offer any help possible from my side. And now I will keep in mind to visit the blog often to check out the comments.

Regards,
Sanket.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Parag
DATE: 06/15/2007 05:16:36 PM
Hi Sanket,

Thanks for offering to help.

--
Regards
Parag
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Parag
DATE: 06/16/2007 08:34:30 AM
Hi Sanket,

I too have a lot of trouble keeping track of my comments and people's responses. Some blogs allow you to subscribe to the comment feed or support email notification when someone adds a comment to the post on which you have commented. However, this feature is not available on all blogs.

A simple process that I follow is to bookmark all the posts that I comment on and then check the posts after a few days to see if someone has written anything in response to my comment. This process has worked out well for me.

HTH

--
Regards
Parag
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Sanket Daru
URL: http://sankdadevildaru.blogspot.com
DATE: 06/23/2007 11:31:50 AM
Dear Sir,
Will try out the tracking method suggested by you. But I guess, keeping a track of the bookmarks itself will become a headache if one is used to commenting a lot!!! Nevertheless, a good idea.

Subscribing to the comments feed doesn't make much sense, that is what I feel, because more often than not, the comments are mere one-liners, not informative and hardly worth reading! Still, some blogs have really interesting comment feeds as well. So again, its a matter of choice and availability!

Regards,
Sanket Daru.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: A.K.Purandare
URL:
DATE: 06/24/2007 04:18:46 AM
You are very precise in your description and plan.I believe you may be somewhere sharing your thoughts on other fields as well.Like providing solutions/help to Indian University students,Discussing various problems and solutions related to on line coaching and learning etc.Will be delighted to know.Thanks.
-----
COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Parag
DATE: 06/25/2007 05:39:29 AM
Hi,

I try to share my thoughts and the results of my online learning experiments with everyone through my blog. Even though I do not formally collaborate with or mentor any students or institute, though I will be glad to share whatever I know through this blog.

For online learning there are some people who are real pioneers. They have an awesome vision of how learning should happen and how the Internet and New Media can prove to be helpful resources.

Some people whose blogs I regularly visit to get more insight on learning are:
Stephen Downes: http://www.downes.ca
Cristopher Sessums: http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog

--
Regards
Parag
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Commenting your code

Comments are an integral part of any program, even though they do not contribute to the logic. Appropriate comments add to the maintainability of a software. I have heard developers complain about not remembering the logic of some code they wrote a few months back. Can you imagine how difficult it can be to understand programs written by others, when we sometimes find it hard to understand our own code. It is a nightmare to maintain programs that are not appropriately commented. Java classes should contain comments at various levels. There are two types of comments; implementation comments and documentation comments. Implementation comments usually explain design desicisions, or a particularly intricate peice of code. If you find the need to make a lot of implementation comments, then it may signal overly complex code. Documentation comments usually describe the API of a program, they are meant for developers who are going to use your classes. All classes, methods and variables ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inheritance vs. composition depending on how much is same and how much differs

I am reading the excellent Django book right now. In the 4th chapter on Django templates , there is an example of includes and inheritance in Django templates. Without going into details about Django templates, the include is very similar to composition where we can include the text of another template for evaluation. Inheritance in Django templates works in a way similar to object inheritance. Django templates can specify certain blocks which can be redefined in subtemplates. The subtemplates use the rest of the parent template as is. Now we have all learned that inheritance is used when we have a is-a relationship between classes, and composition is used when we have a contains-a relationship. This is absolutely right, but while reading about Django templates, I just realized another pattern in these relationships. This is really simple and perhaps many of you may have already have had this insight... We use inheritance when we want to allow reuse of the bulk of one object in other ...
3 comments
Read more

Planning a User Guide - Part 3/5 - Co-ordinate the Team

Photo by  Helloquence  on  Unsplash This is the third post in a series of five posts on how to plan a user guide. In the first post , I wrote about how to conduct an audience analysis and the second post discussed how to define the overall scope of the manual. Once the overall scope of the user guide is defined, the next step is to coordinate the team that will work on creating the manual. A typical team will consist of the following roles. Many of these roles will be fulfilled by freelancers since they are one-off or intermittent work engagements. At the end of the article, I have provided a list of websites where you can find good freelancers. Creative Artist You'll need to work with a creative artist to design the cover page and any other images for the user guide. Most small to mid-sized companies don't have a dedicated creative artist on their rolls. But that's not a problem. There are several freelancing websites where you can work with great creative ...
Post a Comment
Read more