Teaching the same subject over and over again, can become boring. That is why I sometimes need to get my head in order before I start my first class of the session.

So many experience levels exist that I hadn't thought about. The teacher or the nurse may not have had as much exposure to everyday computer use as, say, an office worker. When you then add the possible computer operating systems, tablet computers and smartphones, you can see that I have to be quick on my feet.

While I do have a teaching outline, I have found that letting the needs of the students dictate where I take the class, and I sometimes have to research answers; something that takes me out of the normal day.

I have added some new classes this semester, one about Power Point. This free class will gauge interest for future presentations. The other class is about Blogging--surprise, surprise.

Keep on Keeping on

There are so many devices on the market now that it is sometimes difficult to hold a training session with the general title "Tablets".

I have found that with a variety of products, and within that a variety of operating systems and their versions, I have had to be much more specific about my training classes.

Starting in September, I will focus on Android devices and see how that filtering works.

Meanwhile, I am teaching a seminar "Introduction to Lumosity", and 1 3-hour course on Blogging. Internet Basics will be back for 1 class time.

I will also be doing a short seminar on Smartphones, and 1 on Google (with all of the options available in THAT group)!

Should be fun!

Confirming the dates for my next set of courses at The Parkside Centre here in Sudbury. Looks like a start date of Oct. 22nd. This time we will try to match folks with minimal internet experience into one group. I will let you know how this experiment turns out.

Yesterday I had a student return after a short absence. He was gung ho to continue, but kept telling me that his wife was much better at this than he was.

I know that his eyesight is poor, so he is always trying to read the screen on his computer with glasses, and then the handouts without. His real issue is one of confidence.

Hopefully I can give him a small amount of homework to boost his confidence level.

Many of my students are members of an Older Adults Centre, where folks can join as early as 55 years old.

This is great, because there are always new ideas coming into the centre. The down side of all of this is that sometimes health prevents members from continuing, or in fact they die.

I just experienced this with a man who was on the Board of Directors with me, and had become a friend. Last week he asked me to set aside a few hours to teach him how to use iPad that he had just purchased.

I found out yesterday that he passed away early yesterday morning and now I won't get a chance to watch him experience something new. I'm a bit sad today.

Learning while teaching

I have been listening to seminars that relate to the Art of Teaching. There are lots of suggestions, and I'm trying to incorporate as many improvements as possible.

My goal is to enable the class to experiment on the computer, without fear of 'breaking it'.