Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Loop
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2014 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I just reread Lee Iacocca's autobiography, in which he mentioned the loop apprenticeship he did when he first got to Ford. Fog Creek's SMTP and the vaunted Procter & Gamble apprenticeships are a bit like this.
Reading about cognitive apprenticeships brings up all sorts of fun moments. For instance, the ideal way to design an apprenticeship experience is to have students do global tasks early on, then local tasks later. Do something that lets them see the big picture (assemble a whole dress) first before focusing on detailed parts (cut out a piece for a dress)....* teach release engineering first, instead of programming
What would a real open source software apprenticeship flow look like? May First/People Link has an idea, around systems administration. Anyway, I know Mel probably has a zillion thoughts on this and I look forward to reading her thesis, but it's just on my mind and I thought I'd note it down so I can get to sleep.
