Thank you all once again for your entries for Round 5.4: we had a lot of good discussion, particularly when the morning group wandered off-track for a few minutes and discussed how to handle learners, helpers, and co-instructors who want to grab the steering wheel.
Our next and final round is the graduation exercise. We have a full month to do it—we’ll be meeting on August 29 and again on September 3 to wrap it up—and the goal is to do one complete lesson from conception to delivery.
- Pick a small topic that is either part of the core of Software Carpentry, or closely related—something that can be taught in 8-10 minutes.
- Write a three-line blog post outlining your topic, so that other people know what you’re working on and can give you feedback. Please try to get this up right away, and put it in Round 5.5.
- Create a concept map for your topic and add it to your blog post. (You’ll be extending your initial blog post in this exercise rather than writing multiple posts.)
- Create two questions you could use after teaching to determine whether your learners had grasped the key idea or not. Your goal here is to distinguish competent practitioners from novices; we’re not worried about experts in this round. Add these to your post.
- Create your lesson materials. These can include any of an IPython Notebook, PowerPoint slides, a couple of hand-drawn sketches, a video, or anything else—it’s up to you. Again, post these on the blog.
- Deliver the lesson in front of an audience. 2-3 people is enough, and if you can’t talk your office mates into attending, you can try delivering it online. Get feedback from your audience, add that to your blost post, and woo hoo, you’re done.
And that’s it: once you’ve done this, and we’ve discussed it, you’ll be ready to help teach your first workshop.
I’m offline from August 3 to August 12—if you have questions while I’m gone, please post ‘em to this list and come to a consensus answer. I hope you have fun with this, and I look forward to your lessons.
Later:
- Your choices don’t have to be unique: it’s OK if several people choose the same topic.
- As I said in the evening session, the best training I ever had for teaching was a one-day improv comedy workshop. If any of you would like to do that, please find something near you and let me know—I’ll cover any reasonable cost. If you can go with colleagues (either from your lab, or from this group), it’ll be even more fun
