This stuff looks pretty cool, Office Live Workspace and Exchange for Primary Schools right through to Universities (what, no kindergarten love?) for free. The Exchange stuff would be particularly cool. Maybe I can convince Live@Edu that I’m part of the “Aeoth University of Awesome“?
I’ll never see it before I graduate, Monash are stuck in their days of overuse of Java and Blackboard – the system that doesn’t let you open two tabs at once.
Thanks to encouragement from Nicholas Ellery, I’m now a Microsoft Student Partner, and I’ll make a rather unusual one at that because of my health/study status – that is, I’m an off-campus student.
Long story short, I’m to help out Nick with Uni related competitions/etc from Microsoft, and generally try and replace Nick Hodge as a Professional Geek/Enthusiast Evangelist for Microsoft. In return I get some pretty cool stuff, on top of the benefits I’ll get form having this on my resume.
- Flown to attend Tech.Ed
- Invited to various other Microsoft events
- A free MSDN subscription (valued at ~$4000)
- An MSDN Welcome pack
- Preferential treatment in recruiting for technical graduate roles at Microsoft
- To be part of the most fun group of people you ever met (seriously)
(source)
On a side note, my finger is still sore from where I mauled it, so the other posts I’ve been making lately have been just clearing out the backlog. I do have a few code examples/walk-through’s lined up for when my finger heals and I can type without pain again.
At the start of the year, I was aware of Visual Studio Express, but I found it a bit limiting to the VS2005 trial I’d used.
When my OpenGL/C++ unit began for Monash, they supported Visual Studio, but not Express. As it turned out, it was a little hard to get GLUT working with VSE, or something.
I did the logical thing, and asked my uni’s techdepartment if they could get me Visual Studio through MSDNAA – which they are a part of.
I got this response back at the start of this month (been slack posting this)
Your request has been closed with the following entry:
Hi Paul,
We’re sorry for the delay of this request. Please log the call from the online service desk (http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/itsupport/onlineform/ ) if you still need the Visual Studio.Net and we can arrange the media to be sent out to your home as a loan.
Thank you
Regards,
FIT Technical Services
I waited six or seven months….for that? Visual Studio.NET? Wow Monash, either Microsoft are jerking you around with MSDNAA, or you’re being the asses you’ve consistently been.
Lets not forget to mention the unit I needed it for is well and truly over now.
Five year old software, when two other versions have been released, and the third is in public beta. I’m glad I ended up using a trial of VS2005 before migrating to Orcas for it.
I wonder what msozacademic would make of all this.
The word liar is thrown around a lot these days and I’m going to use it yet again tonight (perhaps inappropriately)
Monash, my fabulous tertiary educator, have stuffed up materials yet again. This time, the lecturer in charge, Shane Moore (who is one of the few good blokes at Monash), was furious with those in charge – and rightly so, its hard for students to study when the materials you promise them never show up (sound familiar?)
Eventually the material showed up, before the third week so it wasn’t a disaster. Execpt, well, not all of the materials showed up.
The materials consist of three parts, a CDRom (UML software), the Study Guide, and the Reader. Of the three, the Reader didn’t arrive.
Another student, quiet angry and stressed with the situation, blasted away asking for answers to where his reader was. I piped up that I still hadn’t recieved mine, and shortly after Shane responded with the details of the despatch unit so we could chase it up.
It turns out Shane did a bit more than that, and actually chased it up for me a little, to see where my materials were.
Shane shot off an email to me
“According to Despatch, they sent all 3 items to you on 18th July”
I’m believe Shane in thats what they told him, but the hilarious thing is, in the ‘Unit Packing Note’ (the little slip that goes into everything Monash send out to you – material wise), it has the reader highlighted and “TO FOLLOW” stamped on it.
This is typical of Despatch, who last semester told one of my lecturers they’d be in touch with me immediately when the materials were dispatched. They never contacted me, because funnily enough, the materials were never dispatched for that unit.
Update: Turns out some of the later ones, apparently, cover material we didn’t, so they won’t be on the exam. Exams tomorrow. Good time for people to find that out Ray
One of my fellow students had queries about the “Some Typical Exam Questions” document posted by our lecturer, namely, the answers seemed to be wrong.
This was the response
Yes some of those earlier sample solutions were done incorrectly. Hopefully the later ones are correctly done.
Ray
…what? So, the sample solutions with you provide sample answers for isn’t right? And you can only hope that the later ones are correct?
I think its about time I say “KTHXBAI” to Monash, as this certainly isn’t the first thing on the list of complaints…
I’ll post the letter I’ll send to the head of school (started writing it a few days ago) once it’s finished.
“Sample Solution for assignment 1. Note I have put this together very quickly and it doesn’t have a lot of comments. It also doesn’t adhere completely to the specification, I’ve just done the major parts. There also appears to be a separate floor plan down below the building, this is in fact a representation of the array I have used to check for limitations on movement, I drew it to check it was right and then didn’t remove it.”
That’s the note attached to the sample solution for Assignment 1 in my OpenGL unit.
It wouldn’t be so bad if assignment 2 wasn’t based on assignment 1. And it probably wouldn’t be so bad if the note was vaguely true.
In any other unit, an example like this would receive zero marks for code layout (lack of comments, although, this is the first example he’s given with consistent indentation), understandability (variable names? ugh), etc.
I have other problems with this unit, specifically, the language of choice. I don’t have any real objections to C++/OpenGL, but I have objections to the way its taught.
If you visited the unit description, you’ll see a good knowledge of Java OR C/C++, as well as two prerequisite units that are taught using Java.
At Monash, the languages in this course have been: Java, VB.NET, PHP/Perl. Two out of three (the two you actually ‘compile’) are heavily Object Orientated. In this subject, we’re discouraged from using OO. That’s right, discouraged.
To make matters worse, no C++ is taught, just the GLUT commands. While the syntax is similar, there are some things that are very different from Java (pointers, not being able to return arrays, etc etc)
To make matters worse, this is the best taught subject I’m doing this semester.
When chickz0r’s mother had a heart attack, obviously my studies were effected, so I applied for an extension. Gour Karmakar, my lecturer for Enterprise Programming did not respond. In-fact, he hasn’t even acknowledged I sent it, despite how many messages I’ve left in the discussion boards (being off-campus, I don’t have any other access to staff).
For this subject, I’m yet to receive my unit book. We’re in week 11 or 12 of the semester, and I’m yet to receive the unit book or DVD containing the virtual image we’re supposed to be working off.
But when I complain, oh, how quickly did he jump to email somebody else to look after it. Note, that was a week ago, still no further contact, and no materials.
Although, I dont’ know if I’d like the materials anyway, all of its from Douglas Thomson (not saying Doug is bad, from memory, he was one of the few who could actually teach! I mean it more in a ‘I wish Gour would make/understand/read his own materials’ sort of thing), who was fired by the Uni (I believe). Its rediculous that everything has his name written on it, lecture slides, assignments, etc, its as if Gour just doesnt’ care!
And with my final subject, Operating Systems, the lecturer seems pretty lazy. I don’t know if this is the case, but all the lecture slides/example materials come from the text book. I don’t mean rewording or derivation from the text book, I mean, word-for-word copying of Tenembaum‘s Modern Operating Systems. The most hilarious thing is we’re forced to do a Plagiarism Declaration before we can access the assignments.
