marine73 wrote:
Create an in depth Instructors lesson plan, this should anticipate any questions that the students may have. Practice your presentation before giving it to your class, fine tune it with each presentation you give from the questions that you are asked. Your presentation should be smooth flowing and answer any questions before they are asked. If you are asked a question and don't know the answer, your response should be I don't know but will get an answer for you, and make sure your follow up with them. Be truthful with them.
Here is an example: I work for a major airline and in 2002 our engineering dept started looking at computer software for our maintenance documents for the technicians. They went to our in house education department and asked them to create a class, the ed department told them it would take a min. of 18 months to create a class. Engineering then asked if any of the DST (Designated Station Trainers) could develop a class and how long it would take. I was the second one to take up the challenge after the first one quit his job. I gave them a time frame of 30 days and that I would need complete and full access to the program. I had a workable lesson plan with training aids and hand outs within 20 days, however engineering was not ready to roll out the program to the people that would be using it. I took that time to keep refining the instructors manual, training aids, handouts and exercise book. My final product was The instructors manual was 400+ pages, The students manual was 200 pages and the exercise booklet had 20 exercises in it covering everything from the most basic to and in depth exercise that would be above what they would be authorized to do. What was unique about this is that I was the author of the training materials, the instructor and the tech support. I was the only instructor from 2002 to 2013 and it got to the point that engineering was coming to be for help. I was so familiar with the program that I could answer questions in my sleep and this did happen on a couple of occasions. And their were times that I did not have a solution right away and had to work on it.
Here is how I would approach this class:
Find out what the students are interested in doing ie snapshots, landscape, wildlife, portraits, etc
Decide on how much time you want to spend on teaching; i.e 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, a month etc.
Keep it simple
Keep the class time short. Do multiple sessions if necessary. Short class times keeps the interest level up
Have training aids for use in the class. Develop your own. This will be based on what they are wanting to learn
Have handouts for the students that will cover the topic in a condensed format/version
Develop exercise that would cover at least one of the topic in that days class session. This is like a homework assignment.
Have the students bring copies to the next class for critique. Pick the worst, the best and in between as examples of what to do and not do. Do not spend a lot of time on this before going into the next subject matter.
Have a period for questions and answer, or let them know that you will answer questions through out the class session or after class
Be willing to help them with any difficulties that they are having
Most of all go out there and have fun photographing the world as they see it
I hope this helps. Teaching a class is not as simple as people assume it to be, it takes a lot of prep work before getting into the classroom
Create an in depth Instructors lesson plan, this s... (
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That is what I am doing; developing a lesson plan. This class will only a few sessions and will not be anywhere as complex as what you did. I can, of course, use some of the general concepts you have described.
Thank you.