Re: Hands-on?

Peter Scott writes:
> Do you teach hands-on (computers in the classroom, time out for 
> participants to perform exercises distributed by you)?

Yes, although sometimes a slow class gets much more lecture than lab.
(I know they deserve lots of labs if they're slow, but just explaining
it to them can chew up lecture AND lab time).

When I teach the beginner+advanced five-day course, I can be "on" for
five solid days and sometimes talk for almost all of it.  This is
incredibly tiring.  In the middle of this year, I was putting in a lot
of hours to make up for the paternity leave to be taken in August, and
ended up teaching three weeks out of four for a while.  That was
pretty hard, and I don't recommend it.  The wife didn't like it either :-)

I used to laugh when actors said that what they did was hard, but it
is.  Keeping people's attention for eight hours is damn hard.

Back to your question, I also teach with a projectable computer in
front of me.  I like to *show* students the answers to their
questions.  I like to play "what if" games, demonstrate the things
we're learning, and generally be able to do as well as tell.

> If you teach hands-on, on what platforms, and - assuming you don't operate 
> the classroom yourself - how do you communicate your hardware and 
> configuration requirements to the client?  Has that process worked well?

We have the usual checklist.  I can survive on Windows, but much
prefer shared access to a Unix box.  I bring my laptop, but haven't
yet had to resort to giving the students logins on it (although one
particularly frustrating client in Texas did have us log in over what
appeared to be a 48 baud modem to their web server in Canada so that
the students could learn about CGI).  It almost always worked well.

I teach for Tom Christiansen's Perl Consulting, and we get a lot of
return business from our clients.  I find that any problems we have
can be ironed out on the first trip and they won't be present on the
second.

The worst configuration problem I've encountered is the time I drew on
a client's whiteboard with permanent marker.  D'oh.  Now I *always*
check the labels before writing.

Nat