Lily's Learning Code

I have been trying using some videos while learning some subjects. Sometimes it works OK especially when I don't have books available. It works best when I have chance to listen very inspiring lectures delivered by people who are able to provide insightful views about subjects of interest, and those views are usually not from any books but from their own thoughts and experiences. But most time so far videos are not my favorite format I use to systematically learn something, even though I like watching videos to see how the video presenters deliver their work. (That is my very interest to watch videos actually.) If I plan to learn a subject, I prefer reading books, trying examples, and practicing by solving simple questions step by step. What bothered me most when I studied a subject by watching videos was that the time spent on the video-watching process was constrained strictly by the video length. If the videos were long, the learning process would be very likely an infor...

If you are just a user of the cloud, you are like a user of computers running Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.   The operating systems and application programs provide a beautiful interface hiding the ugly underlying complexity.   For cloud computing, interesting topics include how the service is provided, discovered, organized in the cloud; and how the computing resources are managed efficiently in the cloud.  These topics certainly have their correlation with design and development of Operating Systems.  But they have their own special challenges because of the large scale magnitude and distributed characteristics of cloud computing.   In summary, learning Operating Systems certainly will guide us to solve new problems in the new modern context. 

There are challenges that should be considered by online learners and teachers.  Based on my teaching experiences to teach Web-based class components, I summarize some prominent challenges for both teachers and learners.  First, reading in the online learning package might be overwhelming when learners just start to learn online.  Second, even though online learning makes self-paced learning possible, it requires a learner to be disciplined and persistent.  As a teacher, I am interested in the instructor role in an online class.  Here are some questions I ask myself.   1. How to guide students to read effectively and efficiently?  Some students are good readers, but others are not.  Traditional text books and lots of online materials are too much for students who are new to learn online.  How to help these students to maximize their learning from reading?  Working examples and problem-solving questions seem working fine with tex...