[TriLUG] Re: Linux @ Wake-Tech

[Rick DeNatale]

On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 15:13 -0500, Frye, Matthew wrote:
> >Oh, and Phil, one nitpick.  Just because someone has a Masters
> >in a subject doesn't make them a good teacher.  They can know
> >the material up and down and still not be a good teacher.  I'm
> >not suggesting this guy is a bad teacher, but I think it's independent
> >of what degree he has.
> 
> True.  So very, very true.  

I don't know how it is at the community colleges, but my experience at
University (way back in the last century about three decades ago) was
that sometimes a course was taught by a masters or PhD student whose
lower degree was in a different discipline and was trying to learn the
subject just in time. Sometimes even Professors worked this way when
teaching a new course.

For example my undergraduate Computer Architecture class was taught by a
very nice guy who had a masters in Math and was in his first year
towards a PhD in Computer Science.  A lot of us undergraduates knew more
than he did. For our final project we were to design the logic for a
computer with a simple instruction set. I had been reading outside of
the course and inspired by Samir Husson's book on microprogramming
designed a microprogrammable computer and gave the ROM contents to
implement the given instruction set.

It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the guy that I had indeed
successfully solved the problem.