Advice for teaching an online course

[Tony Childs]

A certain technical training company has expressed interest in having me teach a 14-week online training course on the topic of "RESTful Java." They have asked me to prepare a 30-minute mini-lesson (via LiveMeeting) as part of an upcoming interview. I have the technical expertise, but it's been a few years since I've done any presentations and I have limited experience teaching.  However, I'm passionate about what I do and I like informing people about technology, so I really think I would be good at this. I know the members of the Java Posse are veteran technical presenters, as I'm sure are many of the members of this group.  So I'm shamelessly soliciting the advice of anyone who wishes to give it.  How would you advise a newbie presenter/teacher to prepare them for this interview?  What are some tips you would give said newbie? Also, if anyone wants to share their experiences teaching online courses such as this, I'd love to hear them.  Thanks in advance!

Best Regards,
Tony

http://www.stupidjavatricks.com

[Rob Wilson]

Prepeare... If you have dual screens, I would advise setting your main
display to 800x600 then have various materials loaded ready on your
other screen ready, i.e PowerPoint with slides, netbeans, browser
pages with resources, etc

try to include a good mix of defining a problem, discussing the
solutions (not just rest), whilst discussing show slides with diagrams
to illustrate what your saying (with images rather than txt on
screen), then do a hello world example to capture interest early...

Then I would pull up a slide to show the topics you plan to cover, I.e
security, blah blah

some people are visual learners, some need code, some prefer text,
some prefer coding at the same time.... Just concentrate on a
consistent style that's clean, delivers the points as clearly as
possible.

I am thinking about doing some online webinars myself, so I would be
interested in how you get on, good luck with the interview :-)

one obvious thing, watch out for 'erm's and regular filler words that
can be really annoying to a listener.

Rob

[Tony Childs]

Thanks Rob.  I was waiting to respond until I'd heard from a few people, but it looks like the Netbeans vs. Eclipse is taking all the bandwidth.  :)  I'll let you know how it goes.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group.
To post to this group, send email to java...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.

[Casper Bang]

Just want to add that parleys have several presentations about RESTful
architectures and even specific implementations, i.e. Sun's Paul
Sandoz talking about Jersey/JSR-311, so there might be some techniques
and segways you could borrow from there.

/Casper

On Dec 22, 7:09 pm, Tony Childs <alcdot...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Rob.  I was waiting to respond until I'd heard from a few people, but
> it looks like the Netbeans vs. Eclipse is taking all the bandwidth.  :)
>  I'll let you know how it goes.
>

> > javaposse+...@googlegroups.com<javaposse%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>

[Joe Sondow]

One way to learn how to do technical talks is to watch people do them
and try to emulate the parts you like. Seeing them live at meetups is
preferable. However if you're in a hurry there are many tech talks
with slides posted on youtube and other sites, including the 5-minute
lightning talks of the Java Posse Roundup at http://www.youtube.com/javaposse

[Tony Childs]

Great advice.  Thanks.  Another question occurred to me today.  Is there a good method (aside from practice) to target a certain timeframe in which to fit a presentation?  My intuition tells me that this might not lend itself to generalization since there are plenty of factors that might affect it (e.g. topic complexity, speaker's tempo, presence of demos, etc).  However, I'd be interested if anyone has any rules of thumb that you use to turn X amount of content (chapters, sections, etc) into a presentation of Y minutes.

Thanks again for the advice so far.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group.
To post to this group, send email to java...@googlegroups.com.

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+...@googlegroups.com.

[Joe Sondow]

I've seen time-constrained presenters use their iphone clock's
countdown program on a desk so they have a timer to glance at while
they talk. If the slides are numbered you can probably see how well
you're doing on time as you move through them. If good questions eat
up time, be willing to skip a few unimportant slides in the middle of
the talk. It's better than skipping all the slides at the end.

Since you're taking your presentation pretty seriously, you could
practice what you'll say for 4 or 5 slides and time yourself. This
should give you a ballpark figure of how long it takes you to discuss
one of your own slides.

Also check out Slideshare to get a feel for interesting slide decks.
http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?lang=en&q=java&sort=views

On Dec 29, 11:01 pm, Tony Childs <alcdot...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Great advice.  Thanks.  Another question occurred to me today.  Is there a
> good method (aside from practice) to target a certain timeframe in which to
> fit a presentation?  My intuition tells me that this might not lend itself
> to generalization since there are plenty of factors that might affect it
> (e.g. topic complexity, speaker's tempo, presence of demos, etc).  However,
> I'd be interested if anyone has any rules of thumb that you use to turn X
> amount of content (chapters, sections, etc) into a presentation of Y
> minutes.
>
> Thanks again for the advice so far.
>

> On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Joe Sondow <joeson...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > One way to learn how to do technical talks is to watch people do them
> > and try to emulate the parts you like. Seeing them live at meetups is
> > preferable. However if you're in a hurry there are many tech talks
> > with slides posted on youtube and other sites, including the 5-minute
> > lightning talks of the Java Posse Roundup at
> >http://www.youtube.com/javaposse
>
> > --
>
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "The Java Posse" group.
> > To post to this group, send email to java...@googlegroups.com.
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > javaposse+...@googlegroups.com<javaposse%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>

[Graham Allan]

Disclaimer: I've never really given a public talk so I can't speak from
experience, but the following advice was given at one I attended.

The talk was on general Agile approaches outside of technology, and a central
point of the talk focussed on the pyramid technique. Perhaps if you're worried
about timing you may want to bring an aspect of that into your talk. The idea
being that the talk is ordered in most to least important points. That way if
you run out of time, you have already been over the focal points of your talk,
if you have extra time you could always have summary slides to reiterate or
take questions.

You may find it more fruitful to think in terms of making sure you get the
important parts in, rather fitting everything into X minutes. But as I said,
this was advice I heard, which I haven't had a chance to try.

Hope it all goes well for you.

~ Graham

[Steven Herod]

30 minutes is only long enough to get across a broad concept or
probably, explore in detail, one specific area.

You have to decide if your slides will just simply emphasis your
words... or can they exist without your words. If so, they will be a
lot more detailed, and that can take away from your presentation.

The best presentations have a bit of passion and opinion in them.
And think about the narrative... what's story are you trying to tell.

[Robert Casto]

Dont forget that they will be reviewing you more than the slides. If you rely on them too much, that will look bad, like you are using them as a crutch. Whatever you have on those slides, you should have it memorized almost and use them to help people follow your lines of thought. Having 2 sets of slides, one you present with and one you give to those who ask helps you avoid the appearance of being a slide reader.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group.
To post to this group, send email to java...@googlegroups.com.

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.

--
Robert Casto
www.IWantFreeShipping.com
Find Amazon Filler Items easily!

[Rob Wilson]

If you wanted to practice, then you could get a 30 day trial of
mywebinar (or whatever it is called) and then invite us to watch and
provide feedback at the end?

Rob

On Dec 30, 9:27 am, Joe Sondow <joeson...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've seen time-constrained presenters use their iphone clock's
> countdown program on a desk so they have a timer to glance at while
> they talk. If the slides are numbered you can probably see how well
> you're doing on time as you move through them. If good questions eat
> up time, be willing to skip a few unimportant slides in the middle of
> the talk. It's better than skipping all the slides at the end.
>
> Since you're taking your presentation pretty seriously, you could
> practice what you'll say for 4 or 5 slides and time yourself. This
> should give you a ballpark figure of how long it takes you to discuss
> one of your own slides.
>

> Also check out Slideshare to get a feel for interesting slide decks.http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?lang=en&q=java&sort=views

>
> On Dec 29, 11:01 pm, Tony Childs <alcdot...@gmail.com> wrote:> Great advice.  Thanks.  Another question occurred to me today.  Is there a
> > good method (aside from practice) to target a certain timeframe in which to
> > fit a presentation?  My intuition tells me that this might not lend itself
> > to generalization since there are plenty of factors that might affect it
> > (e.g. topic complexity, speaker's tempo, presence of demos, etc).  However,
> > I'd be interested if anyone has any rules of thumb that you use to turn X
> > amount of content (chapters, sections, etc) into a presentation of Y
> > minutes.
>
> > Thanks again for the advice so far.
>
> > On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Joe Sondow <joeson...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > One way to learn how to do technical talks is to watch people do them
> > > and try to emulate the parts you like. Seeing them live at meetups is
> > > preferable. However if you're in a hurry there are many tech talks
> > > with slides posted on youtube and other sites, including the 5-minute
> > > lightning talks of the Java Posse Roundup at
> > >http://www.youtube.com/javaposse
>
> > > --
>
> > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > > "The Java Posse" group.
> > > To post to this group, send email to java...@googlegroups.com.
> > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > > javaposse+...@googlegroups.com<javaposse%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups .com>

[Tony Childs]

Thanks everyone for the advice.  I got the teaching gig.  I learned some lessons from the interview/presentation.  Unlike an in-person lecture/talk, online trainings require a higher level of interactivity to keep participants interested. This is complicated when you can't see anyone and people don't respond to questions.  This can be improved by using the web conference software to also allow people to respond via text.  If that doesn't work you can also randomly query specific participants.

To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+...@googlegroups.com.