Re: Hands-on?

Peter Scott writes:
 > At 02:58 PM 11/29/99 -0800, William R Ward wrote:
 > >Peter Scott <[email protected]> writes:
 > > > 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?
 > >
 > >I teach a community college class and don't have the resources
 > >available to me to do a hands-on class.  Even if I did, I don't think
 > >I'd want to, because the students would be too tempted to goof off
 > >with the computers rather than pay attention to my lecture.
 > 
 > Oracle training (I mention this because they're the only people I've seen 
 > with it) have a setup I envy, where the instructor takes control of the PCs 
 > to deliver the lecture material through broadcast PowerPoint slides, then 
 > releases them for the exercises.  (They also have the ability to view any 
 > student display on their own machine and even take the student machine over 
 > to show them what they should be doing.)

Well, PowerPoint in my mind is even worse than overhead projectors.
The reason I don't like overhead projectors and transparencies is that
it makes it impossible to be more spontaneous.  There is never a slide
for the tangent that you drift off into as a result of a student's
question, etc.  I prefer the freedom afforded by a white board, where
I do all the material by hand.

But at least with transparencies, you can write on them.  With
PowerPoint you have to have the whole thing canned - and then, why not
just have them watch a video or something?  I prefer to be more
interactive than that allows.

--Bill.


-- 
William R Ward        [email protected]      http://www.bayview.com/~hermit/
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