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I co-presented a course!
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 09:46 pmI co-presented a course on MHEG (the programming language used in the UK on digital terrestrial set-top-boxes) the last two days. I'd not presented anything bigger than an hour long before (unless you count tutoring undergraduates), but it went fairly well.
Surprisingly well, in fact, given the week beforehand I'd been on a web services course (which also went surprisingly well, given that it required as a prerequisite six months' experience in Java, when I had none—I'd just read a book, but most of the time I had intended to be getting practical experience in Java I'd ended up preparing for my MHEG course instead!). And the Friday before that, when I had intended to be putting the finishing touches to my MHEG course, I had instead had to pack to move desk.
Also, given that the person who had promised to provide us with a Windows version of a piece of software for the practicals emailed on Sunday saying he had been ill and had not managed to do it. (I'd have chased him beforehand had I not been on my other course and away from work.) Instead, I ended up spending the first morning of the course (when I was not speaking, just helping in the practicals) knocking up a replacement in Perl, as well as setting up all of the PCs for my practicals, which the person organising the course had only half done.
As a result of all of the above, I'd not managed to give my presentations a trial run-through; I ended up guesstimating five minutes per slide, which turned out to be almost spot on; and forty-five minutes per practical, which turned out to be a gross underestimate. As a result of which I ended up dropping a fair chunk of the presentations, as I judged hands-on experience was more important.
There were also any number of errors in the practical instructions, which was due to the fact the whole thing had been put together in a hurry, taking time away from another project that had only learned of this one at a late stage; but I was able to give oral workarounds for these in all cases.
Ah, well, I suppose I learn from my mistakes. And there was not really any easy way I could judge how long the practicals were going to take people new to the concepts involved in any case, without trying them out once. The course was intended to be a pilot anyway; so if it gets repeated we'll be able to put the duff bits right.
Surprisingly well, in fact, given the week beforehand I'd been on a web services course (which also went surprisingly well, given that it required as a prerequisite six months' experience in Java, when I had none—I'd just read a book, but most of the time I had intended to be getting practical experience in Java I'd ended up preparing for my MHEG course instead!). And the Friday before that, when I had intended to be putting the finishing touches to my MHEG course, I had instead had to pack to move desk.
Also, given that the person who had promised to provide us with a Windows version of a piece of software for the practicals emailed on Sunday saying he had been ill and had not managed to do it. (I'd have chased him beforehand had I not been on my other course and away from work.) Instead, I ended up spending the first morning of the course (when I was not speaking, just helping in the practicals) knocking up a replacement in Perl, as well as setting up all of the PCs for my practicals, which the person organising the course had only half done.
As a result of all of the above, I'd not managed to give my presentations a trial run-through; I ended up guesstimating five minutes per slide, which turned out to be almost spot on; and forty-five minutes per practical, which turned out to be a gross underestimate. As a result of which I ended up dropping a fair chunk of the presentations, as I judged hands-on experience was more important.
There were also any number of errors in the practical instructions, which was due to the fact the whole thing had been put together in a hurry, taking time away from another project that had only learned of this one at a late stage; but I was able to give oral workarounds for these in all cases.
Ah, well, I suppose I learn from my mistakes. And there was not really any easy way I could judge how long the practicals were going to take people new to the concepts involved in any case, without trying them out once. The course was intended to be a pilot anyway; so if it gets repeated we'll be able to put the duff bits right.
