Ok, I don’t really hate the Java language. In fact, up until this past week I was having a lot of fun taking my project-oriented theory class, a.k.a. Programming I. But this past week, well…it knocked me on my butt. Oh everything started out alright, but by the time I got to the end…forget it. I was lost and my program wouldn’t run. Hours upon hours of trying to get help, re-reading, re-watching tutorials, and reviewing older programs I had written didn’t work. In the end, I had to turn in a non-running program, but in my defense, at least it compiled!
So why I am telling you all this? Because, when it came to this week’s assignment for our Hypermedia blog, and it was to look for an audio or video pod cast on an educational subject, I thought Great!! I can look for a podcast on Java, which I did and found, although it wasn’t as easy as that, but in the end, I found one (actually a series) that would work for me.
The url http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtfJxA1J3h8&feature=fvw features a tutorial on object oriented programming. I watched the podcast and enjoyed it. It gives examples that are easy to understand using morphograms, pictures, text (both written and verbal) all on one page. Although it is basic (looks like it was created on PowerPoint) and the voice sounds computerized, it got to the point quickly. One (of many) problems I had last week was with “method calling”. This podcast easily put it in perspective for me in two slides that took about (I didn’t actually time it) ten seconds. I will watch the rest of the podcasts, and I did subscribe to the feed.
I did watch (or begin to watch) many other pod casts in search of one that would actually help me. Many professors created pod casts of their classes and posted them on iTunes. While I can’t speak for all of them, the ones I did watch were overly long and distracting rather than helpful.
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