First official day teaching
Dec. 4th, 2007 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olivia_suttonWell, after three months of fretting, and worrying, and plain-old wondering just what would happen and how, I finally had my first official class. It went fairly well. It was WAAAAYYY fun. Extremely fun. There were things that got a bit messed-up and things that worked out, but overall, I think I did well - those teacher genes must have kicked in. Tonight (well, Monday Dec 3rd, but who's counting just because it's after midnight) was my first of two classes that I teach: Computing and Productivity software (Microsoft office) for non-majors. Most of the students are either criminal justice students or business (bus. admin) students. Tho' I do have one student that wants to get into Cyber Forensics (EC Council Certified Ethical Hacker) and I need to get him some info. the next class is Wednesday, Desktop Operating Systems (XP) - that class is for (IT) majors, usings the Microsoft textbook and curriculm and is in Microsoft's admin track. I'm expecting that class to be a little bit more difficult to teach, but it should still be fun.
Anyway, and I'm almost falling asleep here. The first hour of my class is in the superlab, which sucks, 'cause there's four other classes going on at the same time - you can't really lecture, you don't have your own computer or a projector to run Power Point slides, and first the first class it was a nightmare. I introduced myself, had the students introduce themselves, kinda' skimmed through the syllabus, went over the homework due the following week, mentioned the quiz for the following week (which I now need to revise because we never got thru' chapter 4 - so I have to take the questions from ch 4 out of the quiz). Then, out of desperation and a student suggestion we worked on the labs I had on the syllabus - touring the Intel museum (www.intel.com/museum.index.htm) and having each student take a typing speed and accuracy test (www.typeonline.co.uk). Most of my students had typing speeds in the 32-39 wpm range (fairly low) and about half of them literally could not type (e.g. traditional 10 fingered typing). For the Intel site, I had everyone look at the "how sand becomes silocin chips" exhibit, then let them explore the site on their own. It was choatic, and not much real work got done, but in following weeks I'll have to be prepared and creative about finding things to do in lab. Plus give them assignments to work on in the following week's lab.
The lecture half - I went thru' about 2 2/3rds of the required material (I had four chapters to do). I figure, given how much material I had, that wasn't too bad. And I ran into Mark, another instuctor after class and asked him about it (not getting everything in) and he said not to worry about it - cover it later (like the next week). I did also add a lot of info. as I was going thru' the slides, updating info, adding relevant data (or stuff that seemed relevant), trying to be engaging. It was kinda' hard, but I think it went all right. I did get some student questions/comments and that worked just fine for me. Actually, the student questions made the class more lively, and added to the lecture.
Points for next week
Prepare LAB Stuff that can be done in superlab first.
Check Power Points, remove redunant slides, add more relevant slides/info
Fix quiz - remove questions from ch 4
HW - two assignments due next week
Readings for next week 1-4, week 2.
Nighty-night, zonk!
--Olivia
PS - The Weather - More snow this morning, trees encrusted with snow. Last Saturday night, freezing rain, ice covering snow on Sunday, heavy rain Sunday afternoon and snow fog.
Anyway, and I'm almost falling asleep here. The first hour of my class is in the superlab, which sucks, 'cause there's four other classes going on at the same time - you can't really lecture, you don't have your own computer or a projector to run Power Point slides, and first the first class it was a nightmare. I introduced myself, had the students introduce themselves, kinda' skimmed through the syllabus, went over the homework due the following week, mentioned the quiz for the following week (which I now need to revise because we never got thru' chapter 4 - so I have to take the questions from ch 4 out of the quiz). Then, out of desperation and a student suggestion we worked on the labs I had on the syllabus - touring the Intel museum (www.intel.com/museum.index.htm) and having each student take a typing speed and accuracy test (www.typeonline.co.uk). Most of my students had typing speeds in the 32-39 wpm range (fairly low) and about half of them literally could not type (e.g. traditional 10 fingered typing). For the Intel site, I had everyone look at the "how sand becomes silocin chips" exhibit, then let them explore the site on their own. It was choatic, and not much real work got done, but in following weeks I'll have to be prepared and creative about finding things to do in lab. Plus give them assignments to work on in the following week's lab.
The lecture half - I went thru' about 2 2/3rds of the required material (I had four chapters to do). I figure, given how much material I had, that wasn't too bad. And I ran into Mark, another instuctor after class and asked him about it (not getting everything in) and he said not to worry about it - cover it later (like the next week). I did also add a lot of info. as I was going thru' the slides, updating info, adding relevant data (or stuff that seemed relevant), trying to be engaging. It was kinda' hard, but I think it went all right. I did get some student questions/comments and that worked just fine for me. Actually, the student questions made the class more lively, and added to the lecture.
Points for next week
Prepare LAB Stuff that can be done in superlab first.
Check Power Points, remove redunant slides, add more relevant slides/info
Fix quiz - remove questions from ch 4
HW - two assignments due next week
Readings for next week 1-4, week 2.
Nighty-night, zonk!
--Olivia
PS - The Weather - More snow this morning, trees encrusted with snow. Last Saturday night, freezing rain, ice covering snow on Sunday, heavy rain Sunday afternoon and snow fog.
