We have a mailing list sitting around. Is anyone into the idea of a weekly/whenever e-mail newsletter? I _don't_ think instructional articles would be appropriate for it, because there's no reason to only share an article you make with teens. Community-building features would be a definite plus, however. One idea I had was for each newsletter to have a spotlight on some coding project a member was undertaking for fun. Any other ideas?

Does anyone have any other ideas for TPU in general?

How about a "reply with quote" button on each post.

There are several examples on this page, the first one is 9 posts down

http://www.forumoc.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36716&pagenumber=1

I think quotes are sort of silly when all of the messages are displayed each under the previous ones. E-mail quoting is a completely different matter, as e-mail clients generally don't display mail that way. Use copy and paste if you want to reference specific text. Copying a whole message would just be a waste of disk space and bandwidth, since it's displayed on the same page.

And, though I didn't state it, I didn't mean web site improvements here. I meant new ideas for TPU as an organization.

I think a newsletter would be cool, even with instructional articles if someone wanted to write one. Just because teens would only be reading them wouldn't matter, everyone of all ages want to learn(usually) and if we can learn from a newsletter from this site, then all the better. The author could always post it somewhere else if they wanted, but I(like others) are lazy, and if we can just read an e-mail with an article or a link to an article instead of going out and searching for it then it will expand my knowledge. It will also open up new venues for the readers, I don't know anything about Java programming, but if someone where to write a simple article on it and send it in a newsletter then I will have learned something new and maybe have found something I might like to get into. Knowledge isn't a bad thing.

Also that coding project thing is a good idea too.

How about having a weekly newsletter to mail the latest site/LG news would be nice (especially since the lg news items aren't on the front page). Featured project sounds nice too.

LG news items are on the front page...

When I wrote that they weren't.

Not so. They were when you wrote that.

Really? I noticed that the java group had new news when I went into the lg listing, but there was no news item for it on the front page at the time. Maybe you changed it while I was writing it, or I could be hallucinating again.

That's possible... or you were looking at a cached version.

I think we should have LIVE or interactive programming classes for newbies (like me!)... FOr instance... on Mon.. WEDS and Fridays (lets say 3-5pm eastern time) we could have a tutor teach comp sci (like c++ or java) to a group of people that are willing to learn... These classes would be like actual online classes in which the student would be required to meet certain requirements... such as having MS visual c++ or borland (for c++ programmers) or MS visual j++ (for java classes).. and so that there is no confusion... I believe each student will have to learn from the same source... such as a website or book (a website would be better becuz it is free) WE just need some one that is going to teach at a specified time..... I know the learning groups are setup for this purpose .. i just believe INTERACTIVE or LIVE teaching would be better... we could do it on the IRC or in AOL created room... it doesnt matter... it just needs to be interactive....

The interactive classes can even be held once a week.... im just suggesting we implement some kind of interactive learning class for newbies....

Your ideas put a lot of burden on other people, diegoskryptic. It's a lot of work to be a teacher!

- taubz

I think you need to be careful about assuming the kind of system you find in established academic settings. I personally think it is more valuable for you to motivate yourself as much as possible to learn something new, relying mostly on freely available materials. A weekly chat would be a great idea, but not as a "class" setting, where someone gives orders to people. I think it would be best if the people learning could _help_each_other_, with a few knowledgeable people around to answer the "hard questions."

Of course, doing anything like this would require finding enough interested people for a given LG.

so a weekly class would be good???

The idea of a "class" doesn't sound good to me at all. See my above reply.

A chat group for people working on similar programming pursuits (eg. learning java) sounds excellent, though!