Abhas is a friend in Bangalore who is doing some good work in mentoring youngsters. I'd like to introduce his work to this list. It came up on the Project Resource Centre list earlier. FN
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Hi Fred and others...
On (11/12/02 23:33), Frederick Noronha wrote:
Hi Rajeev, Great to hear from you. I already know Abhas and have long admired his work. DeepRoot's mentoring plans in PES IT need to be replicated by the Free Software and Open Source communities elsewhere.
Permit me to share this note with friends on the PRC mailing list.
Maybe you could share with us some of your experiences in mentoring youngsters. What is the help that they need most? At which point do bottlenecks come up? What could *really* make a difference to their achievements?
Thanks again for getting in touch, FN
Here are my views on this issue...
Actually we have been working with students for more than a year and a half before we started our PESIT lab. Working with students has taught us a lot about project management and most importantly, about how to work with students. In fact, today we continue to get project requests from students all over India - Pune, Calcutta, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Srinagar, Bangalore, lots of colleges in Karanataka and a whole lot of cities in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. So at any point of time, there has always been an exciting group of students working with us - either at our development center or remotely over email.
Genearlly, we've met three types of students:
a. Those who have a good knowledge of Linux and are prepared to start off working on projects right away. Here again they are some who have a some specific interests and want to work in a specific field and those who are not yet focused into something specific.
b. Those who are just starters getting initiated into Linux through friends, books and Internet
c. Those who have are looking at Linux as a way of expressing some of their ideas. Their ideas are not Linux specific but then they somehow understand that working on them in Linux could be the best way to do it.
We have different approaches to handling each type of student. Whenever a group of students approach us we try to guage a couple of things about them:
a. Their seriousness for the project b. The amount of passion they have for their work/project c. Things they know and have worked with and which are not a part of their curriculum d. The amount and work they are willing to put into their project
e. Their motivations and drive
Its really important for us to guage this as this will tell us if its worthwhile for us to spend productive time guiding them on their projects. Guiding them on projects can be an enormous sag in our energy and time if the students can't contribute equally in terms of what they are supposed to be doing. Most of the times, we give them something in which we have more than an academic or passing interest. Giving out practical projects that can help achieve something specific is a part of our committment to anyone who applies to us for projects.
We then go about analysing what sort of project the students could do. Our project lists is divided into three parts:
* A research and testing list * A development and programming list * A documentation list
Most projects go through all these three types of tasks. Students first spend time research and test some software and understand basic technology concepts. Then some of them go on to use this knowledge to program while others use this basic knowledge to design and setup more advanced systems and setups which are then tested for things such as stability, performance and so on depending upon what the project is about.
We always make it a point to explain that you can't start programming from day one. And that you have to spend some time experimenting with different things so that you can use them later on to program.
At, PESIT since we were working in a more formal setting and with a larger number students (around 60 now), we held formal introductory classes for them. These started at the usual discources about Free Software, Softwar Freedom, GNU/GPL, Linux, history and other such elements and went on to make them capable enough to install, configure and manage their own desktops and computers.
Our approach was to use very basic and bare-bones utilities (no GUIs or abstraction layers here) to explain how the system boots up and how networking and other stuff work on Linux. Debian GNU/Linux is the distribution of choice in our Lab at PESIT and all students have to do their own installations and configurations.
Anyway, there are a couple of things we have learnt about leading students on these projects:
* Students don't want a formal setting at all (which is why we are very friendly with them with specific limits) - formality would limit their exploration and growth
* Students are mostly very capable and hard-working - their energies just need to be drawn in the correct direction.
* Moulding them in any way is up to the people guiding them - you can get them to write ground-breaking software if you could motive and guide them enough.
* They just need guidance - we've found that most of them can find their own way around technology. We just show them the basic tools and how to use them (Internet, Mailing lists).
* Its important to have an atmosphere congenial to information sharing - all of us share more than information; we also share code and experience. These values of sharing have to be imbibed in students as well otherwise there is no growth at all!
* They need to understand the larger picture about what they are doing - so that they know what they are aiming at with their project. Which is why it is important to give out practical projects that can achieve something in the short run as well. (They have 3-6 months for their project work.)
* They need to be introduced to FLOSS traditions - that is the only way they will ever remain active developers in the Linux community contributing a lot over the period of many years to come.
Another thing we have understood is that sometimes it is difficult to hold them accountable. So there are times when you can't do anything because a student chooses not to do some work on time. At least, this is important for us if we give them a project on which we are also depending upon.
Well - these are somethings that came to my mind and I thought that I should write them down. They are a lot more things of course...
All I'd like to add is that students can be very powerful force if they can be guided properly and professionally. Now its all up to all of us!
cheers, abhas.
PS. Please mark a copy of your replies to me as I am not subscribed to the PRC mailing list.