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The student in question added more information in the comments below the article, and has this to say: >Some extra information: >Before I started the assessme

The student in question added more information in the comments below the article, and has this to say: >Some extra information: >Before I started the assessment, I asked for the mark scheme to make sure my project hit the criteria for a passing grade. We weren’t asked to build in powerpoint, but most opted to do so for lack of a better option. I asked if it would be a good idea to build an iPhone app for the assessment and the teacher of my class said “Sure if you can, give it a shot”. I maintained close contact with the teacher, regularly demoed the project and all was well. I have no idea when the teacher became aware that the project would fail but at no point was a concern raised with me until final marking. >I didn’t build a complex project ‘just to be different’, I instead thought “Well here’s an opportunity to learn to do something I didn’t know how to do before”. Id been developing web things for a while but hadn’t dipped into native code up until that point. Again, the thought crossed my mind “If I can learn this in a week, surely they can at least have some basic understanding of it after 2 months” >I was commenting while writing the code where I thought it necessary however, I had to go back and comment on libraries I used, on top of the comments that already existed, in basic terms To me this sounds like the teacher screwed up.

roel_v 15y ago
"To me this sounds like the teacher screwed up." Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Of course it's possible that there is a teacher who for several weeks/months says 'looks good, go for it' and then out of the blue, at the end, decides to do a 180, fails the students and says 'I'm failing you because I don't understand'. But despite me knowing quite a few idiots and incompetent people, that just doesn't sound very much like something that would really happen in the way it is being painted. Of course I don't know the student, so I'm not going to go out and say that he's a liar, either. But there is room between calling somebody a liar and word for word believing a random stranger on the internet. Which is why I commented that in these cases, I'd prefer to hear the other side of the story, rather than using an obviously colored view as 'proof' for the article's author preconceived notions.
- GeneralMaximus 15y ago
  > Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Not at all. I'm in India. I regularly score terrible marks because my teachers don't understand my projects, not even when I limit my projects to things that most college students across the world are assigned as homework. A week ago I tried to explain to my teacher how I'm going to build a Scheme interpreter for my final year project. Now, this teacher spends about fifteen minutes talking to most students about their projects, most of which are basic CRUD apps/websites done in Java or C#. She spent all of 3 minutes with me, and then sent me on my way. All this time, she thought I was building a "steam interpreter". I'd tried really hard to explain to her what Scheme was, and I'd even shown her some example code in the Racket REPL. At the end of my explanation, she was blank. At the end of the year, every guy with a partially-working, hacked-together ASP.NET CRUD app that he grabbed off of CodeProject is going to walk away with an 85 or a 90, and I'll score a 75 or something. This happens every semester we have a project. Oh, and this isn't even the first time I'm getting screwed. Moreover, I'm not the only Indian kid who regularly gets screwed. The blogosphere is replete with nightmarish tales of Indian teachers screwing over students. I don't know about the UK, but 99% of the teachers here in India are absolute shitheads who don't deserve their jobs. And here's a little bonus for those who read this far: tomorrow, I have to explain some of the concepts behind ZFS to my teacher. Whee.
  - chc 15y ago
    This sounds like a perfect case study for Patrick's advice about awesome points.
  - DanBC 15y ago
    For school: just do the work that will get you the good grades, no matter how tedious it is. For home: hey, that's when you do the Steam Interpreter.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Three pieces of advice. 1) Write some shitty CRUD app in C# for school, and write your scheme interpreter just for fun. Don't waste your time fighting with a prof, just play the game and move on. 2) Add README files to your github projects. Some prospective employers will ignore your grades/cv and browse your github - readme files will help them. Put the scheme interpreter here too, even if it's just a fun little project. 2) When you are looking for a job, send me an email. I'm CTO at a startup based out of Pune and NY. When you graduate we'll either be hiring or bankrupt, and in the former case we probably want to talk to you (see point 2).

roel_v 15y ago

"To me this sounds like the teacher screwed up." Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Of course it's possible that there is a teacher who for several weeks/months says 'looks good, go for it' and then out of the blue, at the end, decides to do a 180, fails the students and says 'I'm failing you because I don't understand'. But despite me knowing quite a few idiots and incompetent people, that just doesn't sound very much like something that would really happen in the way it is being painted. Of course I don't know the student, so I'm not going to go out and say that he's a liar, either. But there is room between calling somebody a liar and word for word believing a random stranger on the internet. Which is why I commented that in these cases, I'd prefer to hear the other side of the story, rather than using an obviously colored view as 'proof' for the article's author preconceived notions.

GeneralMaximus 15y ago
> Call me cynical, to me this sounds like a story so outrageous that it becomes rather implausible. Not at all. I'm in India. I regularly score terrible marks because my teachers don't understand my projects, not even when I limit my projects to things that most college students across the world are assigned as homework. A week ago I tried to explain to my teacher how I'm going to build a Scheme interpreter for my final year project. Now, this teacher spends about fifteen minutes talking to most students about their projects, most of which are basic CRUD apps/websites done in Java or C#. She spent all of 3 minutes with me, and then sent me on my way. All this time, she thought I was building a "steam interpreter". I'd tried really hard to explain to her what Scheme was, and I'd even shown her some example code in the Racket REPL. At the end of my explanation, she was blank. At the end of the year, every guy with a partially-working, hacked-together ASP.NET CRUD app that he grabbed off of CodeProject is going to walk away with an 85 or a 90, and I'll score a 75 or something. This happens every semester we have a project. Oh, and this isn't even the first time I'm getting screwed. Moreover, I'm not the only Indian kid who regularly gets screwed. The blogosphere is replete with nightmarish tales of Indian teachers screwing over students. I don't know about the UK, but 99% of the teachers here in India are absolute shitheads who don't deserve their jobs. And here's a little bonus for those who read this far: tomorrow, I have to explain some of the concepts behind ZFS to my teacher. Whee.
- chc 15y ago
  This sounds like a perfect case study for Patrick's advice about awesome points.
- DanBC 15y ago
  For school: just do the work that will get you the good grades, no matter how tedious it is. For home: hey, that's when you do the Steam Interpreter.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Three pieces of advice. 1) Write some shitty CRUD app in C# for school, and write your scheme interpreter just for fun. Don't waste your time fighting with a prof, just play the game and move on. 2) Add README files to your github projects. Some prospective employers will ignore your grades/cv and browse your github - readme files will help them. Put the scheme interpreter here too, even if it's just a fun little project. 2) When you are looking for a job, send me an email. I'm CTO at a startup based out of Pune and NY. When you graduate we'll either be hiring or bankrupt, and in the former case we probably want to talk to you (see point 2).