I had been working on SQL Injection attacks for the past couple of days. I designed a vulnerable website (I wont give the website...because its vulnerable) for the students to crack. The whole concept of introducing an undergrad to real world security threats is really awesome and I wish that I had done my undergrad here. Anyway comming to the point, Dr Du wanted me to give a presentation to the undergrads(he was not in town)... So what better way to impress a bunch of undergrads if not with a *bling* presentation made in LaTeX and shown on an Ubuntu machine with all the eye candies and a shiny ubuntu sticker on the laptop case :D.
The class was at 8:00 am, so I forced myself out of bed at around 6:50, organized my self and headed for my first class ever. There were just 10 students in the class!! as opposed to 30+ students i am used to seeing in a class. I booted my laptop to a shiny ubuntu screen fully loaded with the MacOSX look. I waited for the ooohs... they never came :(. I walked them through the presentation.. i was too enthusiastic about it.. come on.. I was showing them how to break into a website and not a single soul showed any interest. To top it all, the floor was not wired with wireless internet so I was not able to demo the website I had built. I finished the one hour presentation in half an hour... not a single person asked any question. Nobody was even surprised to see powerpoint like effect in the pdf I had prepared. No one had any doubts when i finished the presentation. They were all staring blankly at me, or at time staring trough me at some invisible object... or probably were sleeping open eyed. At the end they silently left the room before I could say anything. I remember someone giving me a presentation when I was a freshman and in my senior years... I and my gang of friends used to flock the speaker and talk at lengths about the machine he was using and the presentation he gave.. What has the world come to?
The class was at 8:00 am, so I forced myself out of bed at around 6:50, organized my self and headed for my first class ever. There were just 10 students in the class!! as opposed to 30+ students i am used to seeing in a class. I booted my laptop to a shiny ubuntu screen fully loaded with the MacOSX look. I waited for the ooohs... they never came :(. I walked them through the presentation.. i was too enthusiastic about it.. come on.. I was showing them how to break into a website and not a single soul showed any interest. To top it all, the floor was not wired with wireless internet so I was not able to demo the website I had built. I finished the one hour presentation in half an hour... not a single person asked any question. Nobody was even surprised to see powerpoint like effect in the pdf I had prepared. No one had any doubts when i finished the presentation. They were all staring blankly at me, or at time staring trough me at some invisible object... or probably were sleeping open eyed. At the end they silently left the room before I could say anything. I remember someone giving me a presentation when I was a freshman and in my senior years... I and my gang of friends used to flock the speaker and talk at lengths about the machine he was using and the presentation he gave.. What has the world come to?
Sorry you are so disappointed, but here's a little reality check. Things most people don't care about:
ReplyDelete1) Class (specially when not taught by the professor)
2) Linux
3) LaTeX
I know I don't :P.
Oh, and most people never say anything in CS classes because they're socially challenged. You could give the same talk in a different department (say, Psychology) and you would be flooded with questions, even if they didn't understand one word you said.
Yeah I guess u r right.. I was expecting too much :(
ReplyDeleteThat's too bad, remember its an 8:00 AM class.
ReplyDeleteBut dont let their lack of enthusiasm burn your own enthusiasm to teach. Remember you teach to the one or two that appreciate it not to the whole class.
@azad: That was my one and only class. I dont teach them on a regular basis
ReplyDelete