Nearing the end of a second week

Well, I'm behind on the blogging again. We spent last weekend in Tel Aviv, which was amazing and beautiful, and an entry about that will appear sometime soon. In the meantime, I've decided to catch up on this week.

First though, those of you who follow the news probably heard about the bulldozer attack yesterday in Jerusalem. All of us are ok. All of our students are also ok. The attack did take place near the King David hotel, where Obama was staying, which is actually right across the street from the YMCA, where our overnight students are staying. (We actually drove by there twice today.) I was worried that the incident might generate lots of conflict during the program today, but it was basically another chaotic, fun-and-Java-filled day at MEET. It's an interesting place over here.

So, Week 2. For the Year 2 students, Week 2 is the week of project design. On Sunday, the kids arrived and were separated into their project groups, each instructor leading one group of about 9 students. Amazingly enough, we were able to give all of the kids their 1st or 2nd choice, and by "we" I mean Jon (Head of Curriculum) since we instructors weren't allowed to see the students' preferences.

I guess I haven't explained the Year 2 curriculum. The students in Year 2 have already survived one summer session and one year in the yearlong program. During the yearlong program, they meet weekly and work in teams of ~7 students to develop a project under the guidance of a mentor. They've had experience with Java during both these periods. The curriculum for the second summer session centers around a group project. The first week (last week) is devoted to review and some new topics like software engineering and modularity. The idea is to move beyond basic programming to create larger software projects. During the rest of the program (4 weeks), they work to create a prototype of a software project. Each week, there is a progress report and Milestone Presentation, and at the end, they will present their project, along with a business plan.

The business curriculum is another awesome part of MEET. During the second year, the students also attend business lectures on topics like Industry Analysis, Marketing, and Project Management. In this way, they're forced to think about how they might develop a software system in real life, instead of just creating small programs. Last week, Asaaf (one of MEET's founders gave the business lectures, but since Juan, a student at Sloan and our business instructor, arrived last Saturday, he runs this aspect of the program.

Students listening intently to Asaaf. His secret? use incentives! (i.e. candy)

So, back to my team. My team began the week with a Project Group Meeting (PGM) with much brainstorming, much designing, and much trying to get organized. They elected a project manager (who will rotate each week) and also a business manager. Much had to be accomplished this week, since our first Milestone presentation involves:
- Project description, intended features
- Business rationale for project and features
- Code structure, module diagrams, timeline
- Having a name!

As I probably mentioned, my kids are creating an instant messaging system that provides support for both text-based and drawing-based communication. The idea this week is to do market research to determine what the desired features of such a program would be. They're not allowed to code anything, but they are encouraged to complete the design of the entire system so that implementation will be much easier.

As for the other teams:
- Zach is leading a team that is developing a project using the GoogleMaps API to create a collaborative map where users can comment on routes.
- Bo's team is developing a web based registration system that will be used by the Israeli Special Olympics to register athletes. His is the only project in Year 2 which is being developed for a real client.
- Humberto's team is creating an instant messaging system that uses encryption to send messages securely (unlike AIM).
Expect to hear more as the projects develop!

In some ways, I should have less work now, since the students are supposed to do all of the work. I'm there to offer support, guidance, and technical advice, but it's the Project Manager who should be running the show. Ironically, though I think I got less sleep this week. I spent one evening having Java fun as Humberto and I altered the MEETSpot application to be more user-friendly (allowing users to edit surveys, view individual results, etc.). I then spent last night putting together a Swing and GUI Design workshop for today - definitely poor planning on my part. Suffice it to say that I'm severely behind on sleep. Today though, I decided to go hang out with the overnight students and some of the other instructors on a bowling excursion (pronounced "bowel-ing" by some of the kids). Bowling here is not a common activity, but much fun was had by all.

Sadek and Sally

Aaron

Everyone else, looking on

Over the week, the kids slowly became more organized, and our presentation is coming together. It's fun to watch the project manager and business manager step into their leadership roles and begin to bring the team together. Today, we had an external visitor (a representative from one of MEET's sponsors) who came by to observe our PGM time and ended up talking with my team. I was very impressed by how my team handled themselves and how they presented their work to our visitor. The Milestone presentation is tomorrow afternoon, so by the time 2:30 rolls around, after several hours of PGM and preparation time, they should be ready.

This is my team. They rock.

front: Shahira, Anna, Shir, Amir
middle: me, Jameel, Rachel, Zahi
top: Waseem, Sadek, Alex