Dear Samantha:

Thanks for the email. You really shouldn't write them when

you're angry. They don't come out very well.

First of all, the class is not stupid...it's very important

to your education and you should take it more seriously. In your

earlier message you said you wanted to get a good grade, but to do

this you must do better than your fellow students. I never said you

should kiss up to the TAs in order to get better grades on the

homework as you said in class last Thursday...I said you should make

modifications to the Catlin programs that show you understand the

purpose of the programs and that you have mastered a variety of

unassigned programming skills such as color, sound, graphics,

arrays, etc. as I use in the programs demonstrated in lecture. The

TAs are all experienced programmers, and will detect it if you are

not demonstrating computer skill and understanding of the example

program purposes.

Modifications in the class procedures are intended to help

learning and to give me the most accurate measures of relative

student progress possible so I can assign grades fairly. I am very

interested in class opinions, but I am responsible for making the

decisions and I post them in a timely fashion on the class webpage.

The in-class quizzes were reinstated by popular

demand. If you want to make up quiz 8a

you can do so tomorrow in class. I will demonstrate the take-home

quiz problems then to anyone that asks. They are very easy to do,

and do not triple the work unless you are only putting in a half an

hour per week.

You are not correct at all about True BASIC. It not

complicated compared to other computer languages, and is not at all

outdated. The True BASIC company was founded by the authors of BASIC

at Dartmouth (see the webpage links), and is used widely to produce

commercial software. All the elements of computer programming are

included, so once you know how to program in BASIC, the other

languages are easy to learn. It is very powerful, the language is

growing, and you will need it. Your department is right to make

computer programming a required subject.

See you in class.

Cheers,

CHG

>

Content-Description:

> Dear Professor,

> I was looking at the web page for AMES 5 to check the week 7 quiz grades

> and noticed your little note under week 8. I don't want this to sound

> rude, but I think I need to say it. I'm getting really annoyed with you

> changing the syallabus and your methods every day. You can't change your

> mind on how you want to run your class at the flip of a dime. We, the

> student, have no idea what you're doing and are desperately looking

> forward to finals week, when the class is over. You said on Thursday that

> we did not have to come to class unless we wanted help with the assigned

> quiz problems. You also decided that we would have 2 practice problems

> rather than having quizzes. Now you've decided to increase the number of

> practice problems and give us in class quizzes. You don't realize how much

> time we put into this stupid class. The practice problems are a pain and

> we're never ever going to use TRUE BASIC again in our lives. It's outdated

> and complicated, and no one cares. You've just tripled our work for the

> week when we are at a time when we need all the time we can get. I've

> tried to be nice before and give suggestions, but now I'm just getting

> really mad. I suggest you stick with a format. This class has actually

> made me cry because I've been sooooo angry. You're not benefiting the

> students. Please tell me what you're doing so I can make extra time for

> your policy changes. I also, obviously, missed the quiz today, which you

> shouldn't count anyway because you said we didn't have to come to class.

> This is getting ridiculous. Let me know what you're doing. Do I need to

> come to class on Thursday? Are you going to change the entire class

> structure again?

> Samantha French

>