RE: Hands-on?

Thought you guys might be interested in the set-up I use.  First off,
I don't train anywhere near full time and normally have good control
of the environment in use.

Hardware: laptop, XGA projector (600 ANSI lumens - bright) and a
          Wacom graphics tablet
Software: photoshop

I have a small but growing set of canned slides in jpeg format.  I put
these up to give my audience something to look at, but mostly for clues
to keep me on track.

Creating a new layer in photoshop allows scrawling/annotations over
the slide which is a habit from using whiteboards and OHP slides.
Selecting different layers allows the annotations to be easily shown
or not. 

For tangents, which occur often in my sessions, I start a new page then
draw away as with a whiteboard.  For hardcopy, we just printout the 
jpegs on a 600 dpi colour printer.  Interesting tangent pages may get
turned into a slide for the next session.

Taking advantage of the technology, each new "whiteboard" page is 
divided into quarters and zoomed into that quarter.  This makes the
printouts more compact but also allows more than one "whiteboard"
to be used at a time.  I find this invaluable.  The ability to pan
around the image is also useful when running out of "real estate."

Drawbacks:
  - It takes a while to get used to writing in photoshop as easily
    and legibly as a whiteboard, but after some practise it is almost
    as natural as using paper and a fairly fat pen

  - "Ownership" of the medium - with whiteboards it's easy to give
    someone a pen and let them scrawl away, it's hard with this set 
    up

I've never held sessions for more than four hours, never more than
six people, and usually know the attendees fairly well.  That said,
the results are more than satisfactory all round.

Lastly, this set-up isn't just for training - it's the early stages
of a shared brainstorming/project environment.  Eventually we'd like
everyone to have a tablet in front of them and to be able to control
the drawing application at will.  We've tried using a large (6x4)
Ibid electronic whiteboard with projection onto it, but the heat,
light, shadows and standing position makes use of more than an hour
distractingly uncomfortable.

Steve Ganly.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Randal L. Schwartz [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 3:43 PM
> To: William R. Ward
> Cc: Peter Scott; [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Hands-on?
> 
> 
> >>>>> "William" == William R Ward <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> William>   There is never a slide for the tangent that you drift off
> William> into as a result of a student's question, etc.  I prefer the
> William> freedom afforded by a white board, where I do all the
> William> material by hand.
> 
> That'd probably work fine for 1-5 students, but there's no way to keep
> on track, week after week, for 15 students, with that method.
> 
> As Nat said, it's good to have both canned stuff and a way to digress.
> I know *my* students would suffer if I had to handwrite all the stuff
> we do in the llama course week after week.  For one, they'd never be
> able to read any of my handwriting at the end of the day. :)
> 
> I know that when I write something on the board, the next 45 seconds
> of student attention is on COPYING the stuff on the board, not
> listening to me.  So I've just lost 45 seconds of valuable class time.
> If I talk during that 45 seconds, I almost always have to repeat it
> because someone wasn't listening.  If I don't talk (like sometimes I
> hum the theme from Jepoardy), I bore the people that aren't making
> notes. :) And then there's the "when can I erase" question... since
> some people take notes only when they've decided that what I've
> written is interesting enough... so if I want to go on to the next
> thing, I have to wait until I get a response to "everyone got this --
> I'm gonna erase" question.
> 
> So William, do you just present 1/3 as fast then (time to write, time
> to copy, time to talk)?  Actually curious now. :)
> 
> -- 
> Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 
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