Intermediate level Python workshop - review

It didn't go as terribly as I'd expected. I got lucky with my improvisation and pulled off some off fairly successful exercises. However, there were mistakes - so many mistakes. You can't help but admire the people at the top because of their incredible preparation.

Simply trying not to destroy your own workshop with a critical mistake requires hours upon hours of preparation. Devising a workshop where there are relatively few observable flaws is on a completely new level.

Unlike Starcraft, teaching doesn't have replays. The best you can do is write reflection blog posts after the fact about things that you remember. But the valuable lessons cannot be found in the things you remember. The valuable lessons can only be found in the things you didn't notice, or the oversights you made, or the things you forgot.

This is why I think it's really important to take a video of yourself when you're presenting so you can identify and revise flaws in your own teaching. I think the reason I can motivate myself to do this is because I've learned of the value of replays and how important it is to revise the things that you yourself failed to notice.

Watching replays of yourself exposes all your flaws. It's damned painful sometimes. But you've gotta do it. You've got to keep moving forward.

Intermediate level Python workshop - part 3

Coming up with workshops is damned hard. I would say that I'm a fairly experienced presenter, but I actually feel rather pressured by the idea of having to present a completely new workshop tomorrow. I feel like I'm going to be underprepared and I'm going to screw something up in a way I'm going to regret.

I'm going to make a list of all the ideas websites I encounter and that way I'll feel a lot better when I eventually pick some of them for my exercises for the workshop.

Intermediate level Python workshop - part 2

In our planning from the previous post, we've established three major areas of learning that we can pick and choose from. The next step is to establish basic core exercises for each of our three topics, and write down the pre-requisite knowledge for each exercise (NEVER underestimate pre-requisite knowledge!) This will also help us design the revision part at the start of the workshop.

I think coming up with good exercises is the most creative and difficult part of designing and workshop. I'm not looking forward to considering and chucking away hundreds of ideas because they have some essential flaw. We'll see what we can do though.

Intermediate level Python workshop.

I've got 7 days until the workshop. Man, I thought I could put a fair bit of time in and get some decent quality out of this workshop.

I have the feeling that this happens to teachers everywhere from all around the world.

 Basically, I'm part of the volunteer student organization (the same one from compass, right?), and I volunteered for one last workshop. Kind of a throwback to the old days. I kind of want to teach a final workshop, a really polished one, just to prove to myself that my teaching skills have progressed. Is that kind of selfish? I don't know. But I do want to make this workshop better than the ones I've taught before.

This is the workshop description:

Python can draw graphs, send emails, and even visit web pages for you! Learn to use Python to its fullest capacity.

I came up with this workshop idea to replace a crappy previous workshop idea (teach unix tools and regex to high school students? you've got to be joking). Let's see what we can make out of this!

Compass: Update

I'm currently in the process of delegating Compass to different volunteer presenters, so that they can come up with content for each week. It's useful because I don't have all that much time to do everything.

Which means my duties are reduced to mostly talking to other presenters and overseeing the workshops and checking out how everything is going. I have noted a list of things I often say to demonstrators and presenters in and outside of the workshops.

Compass: Planning, week 1

Alright, so remember how I had barely 1.5 hours to plan for protactinium the night before, plus about a shaky hour on the train the morning?

Well, my total planning time for compass is about 40 minutes. I wish myself luck.

Different course, same planning strategy. Here we go.

Audience: est. 15-20 high school students
Resources: Example files and ideas from previous iterations of the workshop. 4 helpers. My own skills and abilities.

It will not be enough - not this time. But maybe next time, or the time after that. Or the time after that.