One Week Down

Today finishes the first week of MEET. Because of the shifted workweek over here, MEET runs Sunday through Thursday.

Overall, it was an amazing, awesome, exciting, fun, and EXHAUSTING week. Admittedly, the week began with a rocky start, with lots of technical difficulties, but these eventually got resolved (thanks to Max and Jon!) and the rest of the week was awesome!

Our students spent the majority of the week working on a lab called MEETSpot, which stands for MEET Survey Project Organizational Tool. Over the course of the week, the students created the client end of a survey creation tool. Students will later use these to create surveys which will be viewable on the web and will be used for market research for their group projects. The students got really excited about the lab and creating their own surveys, which made me really happy, since we spent so much time developing this lab. For an example survey, you can go to http://meet.mit.edu/projects/meetspot/ and enter "2" for the id number. Pretty, eh?

Today we gave our project pitches, during which each of the Y2 instructors gave a short spiel about the project they will lead over the next 4 weeks. My project idea is a collaborative whiteboard chat program, kind of like an instant messaging client but with drawing instead of typing. Funny story: I get about 2 minutes in, and several students raise their hands:

"Kim, this already exists. In Windows Live."

Me: "Ok, then. Now who here uses Windows Live?"

[EVERYONE raises their hands.]

Me: "Well, shoot."

This is where Asaaf (a MEET founder, the current business instructor, and my new hero) speaks up and points out a) He has a Mac and cannot use Windows Live, b) He knows lots of people who would be interested in such a product. Whereupon I expand on the fact that I use a Mac as well, and even though they know this exists, they can come up with ways to make it better.

Oh well. Hopefully I didn't look too stupid. And I'm sure it'll be a fun project anyway!

[Note: I tried to test this Windows Live feature this evening (I have Parallels installed on my Mac), and although I can apparently run the whiteboard feature, I don't have anyone to test it with. Humberto is the only one here with Windows (everyone else uses Linux or Mac, yay!) and Vista seems to have disabled support for the whiteboard function. Ha.]

This is mainly funny because a similar thing happened during my lecture earlier this week. On Wednesday, I gave my lecture on modularity. I'll admit I was a bit nervous about giving a lecture, but it actually went really well. Doing a dry run the night before definitely helped. However, at the end, when I was explaining my last concept (Model-View-Controller design pattern), I pull up the slide and start explaining, and a few students raise their hand and say, "Kim, we already know this." So, I try really hard not to get flustered (think I succeeded) and asked them to explain it. And they did. Excellent. If only I could teach them something they don't already know.

By now, I know all my students' names (and can even match names with people!) I'm working on pronunciation, but for now my attempts seem to be decent, at least. I'm excited to see who my team is on Sunday. (The MEET staff forms our project teams without our input, based on the students' preferences. So I will never know how many students actually liked my project.)

This evening, Bo, Alice, Humberto, Max, and I drove to Abu Gosh to eat dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, where we had the most delicious hummus I've ever eaten in my life. We had hummus with meat, and hummus with pine nuts. I wish I could describe to you all back in the US what you're missing.

Tomorrow, we're off to Tel Aviv and Old Jaffa. We're spending Friday touring Old Jaffa with a guide, and then Saturday will be a free day, likely spent at the beach! But now, off to sleep!