On Sunday 28 November 2010 06:29 PM, Shrinivasan T wrote:
We can share this link to the college students so that they can choose
their mentors and start contributing.
Share your thoughts.
A very good initiative, but I think it needs to be done in a lot more
organized manner than just listing contacts on a wiki. Perhaps,
something like GSoC but with a more general approach. While I have
always been keen to interact with college students, the kind of
interaction is almost always "please spoon feed me". I send them almost
step by step instructions to how to "ask smart questions" and do their
homework, and most of them will never get back.
Perhaps we should turn it around - since most of us have jobs and our
time is limited, we can list what platforms/technologies we are willing
to help with, and ask them to submit ideas - give them ample resources
to read up and what to ask and how to ask.
Say if there are 3 people interested in mentoring in Python, we allow
the students to submit as many proposals as possible (maybe giving
advice on how to fine-tune it) and pair *1 student with 1
volunteer/mentor*. So out of maybe 10 project ideas presented, only 3
will be selected. This puts the onus on students with come up with a
good idea, and makes them compete for experts' time/attention.
I think this gives the maximum attention to a deserving student, while
also giving value to the mentor's time.
Vamsee.
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