[Technical] Using IRC for student development collaboration

[Con Zymaris]

In the open source world, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is often used by
dispirate (and often geographically distant) developers as a form of
collaborative programming, real-time/low-cost interaction and information 
sharing. It allows many developers to efficiently ask questions and 
recieve fast answers to thorny problems which might other have them 
stymied and frustrated for hours.

What may be a complex problem for you ("How do I insert a row into an SQL
database table?") might be a 30 second one-liner from one of the other 
programmers on the IRC channel. All conversations are logged, and can be 
refined as  the basis of FAQs on technical topics. 

It's fun; it allows programmers to share effort, ideas and code snippets,
and makes the task of learning programming much much easier.

My question to the teachers on this list is: Are you using IRC (or
similar) to boost your students' learning of the programming craft. If
not, why not?

Cheers,

Con Zymaris

- CEO, Cybersource Pty. Ltd.
- Director, Open Source Industry Australia, Limited.
- Convenor, Open Source Victoria (A Government-funded industry cluster.)

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
Con Zymaris <conz at cyber.com.au> Level 4, 10 Queen St, Melbourne, Australia 
Cybersource: Australia's Leading Linux and Open Source Solutions Company 
Web: http://www.cyber.com.au/  Phone: 03 9621 2377   Fax: 03 9621 2477