Observation Experience

During the fall semester of 2002, I had the opportunity to observe a presenter, Joy Rousseau, that Arlington ISD brought to the district for Flash workshops. There were two six-hour sessions taught three or four weeks apart, and the attendees were people teaching in some field of technology, so they were definitely computer literate.

During the spring semester of 2003, I observed a six-hour Saturday workshop taught by Katie Favara and Peter Baron. They taught Flash in the morning and Dreamweaver in the afternoon. This training was provided under a TIFF Grant to any AISD teacher who wanted to attend. The audience was much more diverse, so in general it was less technologically advanced.

All of the sessions were taught at Annex II in well equipped labs with good projectors in comfortable, pleasant surroundings.

The planning, organization, and manner of presentation made the spring workshop far more successful than the ones in the fall. Even though the teachers attending were, in general, less proficient with computers, the instruction flowed at a better pace, more material was covered, and the attitudes of the teachers was more positive because they never reached a frustration point from lack of assistance when it was needed.

I am going to contrast negative and positive impressions for the two workshops. I'll begin with the negative and end on a nice positive note. Forgive me if some of this sounds rather cynical.

When the instructor spends the first hour on trivia that does not add significantly to the workshop, you have the impression that she is just winging it. She’s not on a mission to instill knowledge. Try hard to find that magic balance for covering as much material as you can without losing your students.

When the lecture / demonstration finally starts, and the teacher is reading the instructions to you, which lures you into reading the handout with her, and you suddenly hear her say, “Now, click right here,” you know you’ve had it. Describe your keystrokes and mouse clicks verbally, and hesitate if you are projecting to give students a chance to find the cursor on the screen.

When you contract to teach a workshop, find out what version of the software will be available in the lab, and make your handout accordingly. It can become a huge issue. If different versions will be used, then you must be prepared to address those differences as you teach – unless you have a prior agreement that only certain versions will be addressed in the class lecture.

When you prepare a handout, don’t vacillate between self-paced and instructor-paced work. If you need people to hear what you are saying, and you are letting them read ahead, then take the responsibility of getting their attention when you are elaborating on information in the handout. A good technique is to say, “I am going to demonstrate steps 5 through 9, and then we will stop and be sure everyone has been able to follow.” Then the student knows he can work independently for a while, but there will be a point where the class is drawn together again to evaluate progress.

When you are teaching graphics, don't use crude unattractive graphic images. If you are animating a plane flying over a city, students prefer to see a plane in the animation instead of a plane surrounded by a white rectangle. It’s easy to make the canvas around the image transparent with a little preparation time.

If you insist that students keep your pace, then provide help when one can’t recover from an inadvertent keystroke. That help could be instructor or peer, but it must be given before more instructions are given.

If you take over a student’s keyboard and mouse and wipe out his files, then you better be ready to make it right instead of walking away and not dealing with it.

If you tell a student to wait for help because you are going to repeat some steps, then do it – and not two hours later. When you say “Wait for me”, you have discouraged the student from trying to follow the handout independently. You have instead placed the emphasis on not being distracted when the instructor resumes the lecture.

Don’t make comments about concepts that you can’t justify or explain if someone has a question, like the difference in “quality” of bitmap and vector graphics files. Yes, the comments were about the quality of the files, not about the difference in the graphics produced. If you don’t know what you are talking about, it’s probably best not to throw the terminology around.

If you are being paid big bucks to teach a workshop, don’t print lessons out of the software company’s tutorials as your materials. This person actually did it without crediting the source.

Beware of HOW you talk about teaching techniques. There is a lot of difference in telling what you do in your classroom and in saying, “Never accept a project from a student the first time it is submitted. There is always room for improvement.” Sounds like this could be a time killer in the classroom.

I’m sorry, but I haven’t found a whole lot positive to say about the two six-hours sessions where I sat under this teacher’s instruction.

The team provided a brief introduction period and proceeded with the lesson because they had firm expectations about the time needed to complete the lessons. They obviously wanted to make every minute count.

The team was obviously accustomed to working together. Katie did most of the lecture, and Peter worked with students as needed. If several people had a similar problem, then he interjected some comments to the entire group. Katie occasionally pitched in with diagnosing problems when Peter couldn’t get to everyone, so there was no rushed feeling of “The show must go on, whether you learn anything or not.”

The materials were well-prepared using simple graphic objects that could be loaded from a file or created very quickly. The emphasis remained on learning animation and web mastering techniques.

The tasks were organized into smaller subtasks that could be taught in fairly predictable segments of time, so the wait time for everyone to get together again was never excessive. There was also never a long period of down time while helping people, The help was provided immediately when it was needed, so everyone kept up well. There was a wide diversity of experience and ability in the room, so no prior knowledge was assumed. Instruction was paced for the students not capable of working quickly, so no one was lost. Help was always available since there was an extra pair of hands to diagnose problems and catch folks up.

At the start of the day, it was clearly stated that there were some topics in the handout that time would probably not allow to be covered. When things went well, we were able to cover more material than expected, not less. That makes a big psychological difference.

Having more material prepared than you have time for is a good strategy, provided the optional topics are for enrichment. You don’t want to end a workshop or class with students thinking they didn’t get all that they need to work effectively because vital information was not presented.

Do you notice that I wrote more on negative issues than on positive ones? Let that be a good lesson for our own classrooms. We are typically more aware of things that disappoint or irritate us than of things that please us. Our students are just like us. Establishing a supportive classroom atmosphere where the students expect to work consistently is one of the best things we can do to guarantee them a good education.

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