>In the case of pointers, the appropriate response is along
>the lines of "yes, it's a hard subject. No, there's no real
>way to make it easy, but if you want to succeed in this field
>you've got to learn it.  Keep trying.  You can do it.
>It's going to be a lot of work, but it will be worth it."

Sometimes the difficulty of teaching/learning a subject is a reflection on
the teacher as well. Try using a real world example of tangible items. For
pointers, you could say you are looking for an item in a filing cabinet.
Write the file number down on a piece of paper. That number is data while on
the paper, but it is also an address, i.e. a pointer. Now use that pointer
to go to the filing cabinet to pull the file, which is data.

It does sometimes take a the tangible concepts to get across the intangible
happenings inside the micro. If the student has problems with the intangible
concept, come up with a tangible version that they can visualise.

--
http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us!
email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body