Third lesson day
February 8th, 2007 by xavier
Today was y first light day.
With the agreement of Bonaventure, the rector of the university, I’ve reduced my charge to 6 hours a day.
And actually, I did almost 7 hours today since I’ve also reduced the Tea-break (which by the way has tea only in its name!) to 15 mn instead of half an hour and I’ve finished always later than what I should.
But still, it’s incredible the difference between 7 hours a day, and 8 hours when you have to give class. I feel much more better after my day than the previous days.
During the morning I had only 12 students (the 9 of the third class are not attending anymore the database 1 class). We continued on the operation of the algebra on the relations. There are 3 students that have a much better level than the others. Hence, it’s quite difficult for me to be manage them. They may think that I’m a bit too slow, but on the other hand, the others have really difficulties to understand the matter.
We stop at 11:20 instead of 12 (since I had to give them only 3 hours, instead of 4). But since we also reduced the T-break, at the end, it’s was quite the same.
I’ve started the afternoon at 3 instead of 2. That way I can make a tiny nap. Just enough to be much more relaxed. Perfect.
I gave class till 6:10 with a reduced break too.
We continued the HTML introduction. I started the class by recording them what we do, and why we do it. Why HTML will be useful for them in order to achieve their project.
Since it’s not the topic of the course, I’ve just limited this introduction to the things they really need to know.
So, today, we have just seen the lists and the forms.
In parallel, they have to finish their first report on their own project (one topic per group) by tomorrow. It consists of a description and a first version of the entity-relations graph. So tomorrow, we’ll start to learn how to convert it to a relational graph. That way, next week we will be able to start implementing the database in MySQL. By the end of the week, I hope I will start the introduction to PHP and they will have all the tools to implement a real simple program that will interact with their own homemade database.
The afternoon passed very well. I wrote a lot on the black board and I felt very more and more comfortable with my way of giving class. And this is very important to me.
After the class, we, Bénédicte, Julien (both from France), Augustin (from the university) and I went to a bar on the side of the (small) water-pool of Ngozi. We had very good time. Then, we went back to the “Paroisse” for supper and once again, we got (free) beers and we had very nice chats.
At the end, it was a very pleasant day. A subtle balance between work and fun. A perfect day! 
It’s only 22:56 and it’s already time to sleep. Days begin very early over here.