Confessions of a G33k

Workblogging

I taught yesterday, and brought along my digital camera for a few pics.

Yesterday's class was Basic Computer Skills, where I get a lab full of people (yesterday, I had 5 Senior Citizens) who know nothing about using a computer. My goal, as I tell my students, is to make my students feel comfortable using a computer. (Yeah, I can tell stories of folks scared to death...) This is probably one of my favorite classes to teach. There is something really cool about introducing folks to something I'm so passionate about. I've taught this curriculum in some shape or fashion to over 300 Vermonters or so.

The way I teach this class, it runs for three hours and there is a lecture in the beginning and a hands on curriculum afterwards. (My other classes run 2 hours each.) At the center where I teach, the class a prerequisite, so we can ensure that students who are not familiar with a computer know basic things like how to use a mouse and what is a hard drive. The lecture runs for about 1hr and 20 minutes and all I do is talk about hardware (naming the drives, showing the motherboard, pointing out a USB port, explaining how RAM works) and simple troubleshooting (like what to do if your monitor doesn't turn on).

This is the machine and other accoutrements I use for my lecture, including different types of removable media, a stick of RAM, an expansion card, a mouse, a usb device, and one very dead IBM hard drive.

This is a view of the lab from the back. You can see the projector screen with the Windows XP desktop straight ahead and the classroom whiteboard scribbled with my illegible handwriting. To the right, is the instructor machine, where I feel a little like Ginger Rogers in that I have no local monitor to work with. To the left you can see the lab with the student machines.

During the hands on portion of the class, I have the students turn on the machines, explain what they see on the Windows desktop, teach them how to use a mouse, point out the features of a typical program window, speak a bit in depth about what an Operating System really is, walk them through creating and saving a document in Microsoft Word and finally, teach them how to turn off a computer the correct way.

So that is what my workspace looks like when I teach. You can't tell from the picture, but there is more than enough room for me to walk around (pace, actually) so I don't actually stay in the front of the room during the class.