Entrance Forbidden
July 29th, 2004 at 05:20 pm
Let’s see: I should have bought a video camera, still photography just doesn’t do it for me. I haven’t written in a very long time. There are many things to say. For the interesting bits, skip to paragraph “yesterday.” Two weeks of recitations and labs. My recitation section is great, with several strong students. The labs have been interesting. I wrote a few classes worth of code to animate simple shapes on the screen, and the students have been “extending” (that’s a Java joke, kids) it, eventually “implementing” (there he goes again) a graphical racecar program with features of their choosing. Lots of teamwork, some object model design… all in all, a successful extended series of labs, in my opinion. And I think my code has held up well :)
Last weekend in Tel Aviv. Some beach, some writing, some sleep. A trip up to Caesaria. Neat ruins. And again, as with our trip to Metzada, very hot. Hopefully I have a picture or two worth posting.
This week was the last week of lectures. Interfaces, exceptions, a last quiz, and the first of two lectures on Swing. I give the second Swing lecture, and the final lecture of the program, on Sunday. Although perhaps it won’t be the final lecture, if we decide to do some advanced topics lectures in the last week… I gave a lecture on coding two weeks ago using material from 6.095 and it was great fun. In any case, final projects are on the immediate horizon, and we’ll decide on groups for those projects this weekend.
Yesterday we had a gala event for all the students, parents, organizers, teachers, and supporters of MEET. The event was very well planned and executed, the space was wonderful, the food excellent, and everyone (Hebrew University president, two of the students, etc.) gave very nice speeches. It was really interesting to meet the parents of these kids. Many of them seem exceedingly enthusiastic and happy about their participation and about what they’ve been learning. Making small talk with the parents was not easy, but it was a great evening. It was marred only by a security guard at the gate, who decided at some point that no more Palestinian families could enter the university with their car. Three pairs of Palestinian parents walked across the campus while their Israeli counterparts were driving and parking next to the building. You see, perhaps, why this is an uphill battle.
The past few days have been additionally crazy because of the cameras. It started with the two folks who are doing a small documentary on MEET year one. Then Israeli channel 10 comes with their camera, and last night the evening news included a few-minute segment on MEET. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m told it has a snippet of me teaching recitation, and I already have a funny story which I’ll recount in a moment, after mentioning that a woman from the Israeli AP desk came to interview us, along with AP cameras, and that MEET might appear in print and perhaps even on network television in the US. Stay on the lookout!
As for my funny story, I should say first that today we took a trip to Jaffa. We went with all the kids out on a boat, and to an all-we-could-eat hummus place, and to see Spider-Man II. But on the way, I stopped with Yaron at the office of the only Apple distributor in Israel, to purchase a new memory module to replace the one damaged in our apartment flood. As we waited for the word from the storeroom, we chatted with the guy who was helping me, and he asked where I was from. Boston, I answered, and he asked if I studied at Harvard, since his girlfriend was at Harvard. “No, I study at MIT.” He then asked Yaron if he lived in Israel, and Yaron answered that, no, he was Israeli, but he also was studying at MIT. At which point this guy says, huh, that’s funny, because I just saw on the news last night, about these other students from MIT in Israel, something called MEET… I laughed, and Yaron pulled out a business card and handed it to him: “we are MEET.”
Finally, I called the Technion today. Finally spoke to Rodica Levi for the first time. She (that answers that, for those of you keeping score) gave me some encouraging and useful information. I now have new questions to ask her and others, but things are looking up, and I think the Technion plan will come together. I think I’m even pleased about it.
maxg
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