My Experience of Leading Lab Session

The week before, when sir announced in the class that the slot for the leading lab session for the next week was open, I and my lab partner Yash rushed straight off to the lab after the class to send sir the mail to lead that lab session which was going to cover some limited LINUX commands.

Not only did we have to put in a lot of effort to first get ourselves acquainted to the commands but also teach them to our fellow batchmates on the lab day though how well or bad we acquainted was yet to be seen.We felt that day that in a batch of as less as 26 students it was very challenging to focus on each and every student's problems and then we thought of the plight of our teachers who take on almost a 100 of us everyday. KUDOS TO THEM!! AND A VERY HAPPY TEACHERS DAY (Sorry, am two days late).

Though, we who had to lead the session were also not very perfect on those commands but we tried our best to understand and make others understand how these commands are formed.Still, most of the students were confused on how these commands work. Most of the students were convinced that they are required to rote learn these long commands which is not the case. What you need to do is form these commands from some elementary commands which are not difficult to learn.The commands that we took on that day were some of the most basic commands in Linux like 'top', 'grep', 'awk, 'sed', 'echo' etc.(it is not my fault if they look alien blame it on Linus Torvalds or for that matter on Blaise Pascal) and we also read about the loops and shell files. Most of the students were not clear about command

$ chmod 755 name.sh

that we used to write before executing the shell file(some asked ,some didn't).I will explain it here once again.This command what it basically does is that it makes the file executable.

What we are doing is that we are setting the specifications of the file to read,write and execute.We use 111 to signify that a file is readable, writable as well as executable.This 111 when transformed from binary to decimal gives the value 7.This is the reason why we write chmod 777 or chmod 755(even this value sets the file to executable which is our ultimate goal from this staement).Now this blog is not the place to explain the commands that we did in lab so I will not elaborate further on commands that students found difficult to follow.

Yash has named it Labmare but what we really did was Labshare!

All in all, leading the lab was really a fine experience to have and should continue in future years too. And I would like to thank sir for providing me with this opportunity.

My post was really boring,isn't it?Let's put in a photograph.

OOPS!! Isn't that a photograph of MAC OS X.What is that doing in here?Well, Whatever.It is vaguely related, isn't it?

Linux->Terminal==Mac->Terminal

True

Look at it and pass your time admiring it at your own risk, after all

THE MID-SEM IS HERE!

Hey what am I doing on net, aren't the mid-sem exams approaching?I think i must get offline and put some of my brains(if I have any) into my five subjects(for one of which I am here).

Labmare!!

Ok... So here it goes...I am about to describe my experience of leading the lab...

If I can describe this experience in two words, I will say it was an enjoyable 'labmare'.Weird it might seem,but indeed, it was a sort of problematic challenge that ended quite well...
The idea of conducting a lab seemed interesting.We were very eager to try it out as early as possible, but got a chance only this past week.We were called for training on Saturday at 10 am, and as some of you might have anticipated, I was late yet again, and so I missed quite a bit of the explanation part...:-)
Soumya, then helped me out.I tried to understand everything that I had missed and simultaneously made an attempt to keep track of what was going on(Multi-tasking I may say).Unfortunately,it didn't help much, I could not understand what was going on.Thankfully, at that very instant,when matters seemed to be getting out of hand, Madhuri ma'am gave us a break...We went to play TT.We had a great,refreshing one hour.Then we returned to business.
The scene was quite different now, I seemed to understand things better now.Soumya and I tried our hands out on the questions along with our friends from the other sub-groups.We all put our heads together, and finally things seemed to be in place.An exciting day,I must say.
Then began the difficult part.Understanding the things, was easy, but explaining them to others was not going to be.So we put in our efforts,tried to understand the concepts, practiced a little more.And got ready for the day.
(Oh boy!!it was tiring...)
With little confidence,I started the lab session.My mantra "tension kis baat ki hai" really helped.Though, my confidence was low, but I managed to bring conviction in my voice :-).
The lab went on quite well.We were able to help our mates out.They had no complains(at least this was what I felt).Moreover, we got to learn a lot from our group mates, who came up with doubts, that needed some on the spot research.(I was ready for it and so I was carrying a book on LINUX commands :-D).
So on the whole, it ended pretty well.But the effort that went into it made me realise one thing-"Teachers ko toh bohot jyada mehnat karni padti hogi!!"
Thank you sir, for this opportunity, but I would not like to do it again.
Being on the receiving end is much easier... :-D