Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 56, Reply E, by Dan Keller:
From: dsk (Daniel S. Keller) dan@keller.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 96 14:50:20 PDT
Of course, you expected a response from me on this one, didn't you? The issues you raise are central to my career! > From: uunet!HP-PaloAlto-om4.om.hp.com!JOE_PODOLSKY > Date: Fri, 31 May 96 16:43:49 -0700 > > How often do we sit quietly in presentations (which are, of > course, learning situations) where the environments are all > these - NOT! - ? Worse yet, how often do we _give_ > presentations like these? Right on! Joe, sometime this summer I'll be running my train-the-trainer course (actually entitled "Techniques of Instruction", two days long) and I bet you'd get a lot out of it. I'd be honored if you would attend as my guest. I'll keep you posted. > Cleary focuses her article mostly on schools, but the lessons > are for all of us. Well, I hope the schools are paying attention! I remember, shortly after finishing grad school, taking AT&T's train-the-trainer program (from which I've borrowed heavily for my own). I was astonished at how much of what it takes to achieve the goals you and Cleary describe are simple techniques that can themselves be taught and learned. With the experience of dozing in lecture halls fresh in my mind, I had to wonder that any college or university wouldn't insist that its professors master these techniques. How much more productive could have been the professors' time and mine! Fortunately, in the corporate world, we are less encumbered by the baggage of tradition; what's broken can often be fixed. > So, how does all this apply to us IT folks? A few obvious > answers. We should think about this any time we're giving a > presentation or class. Given that our expectations are > appropriately raised, we might even (gently) suggest these ideas > to the teachers of classes we attend ourselves. We might (even > more gently) try to get these ideas into our kids' schools. Right on! Again! (Isn't this something Hudi's working on?)