Looking for advice (Teaching)

[kfcSmitty]

Hi Everyone,

I recently started my first real job (Graduated and started 4 days later, go me!).

The job is doing Domino Development as well as some other little side tasks. So far I am loving it. One thing that has me concerned is that I need to teach some summer students called LTA's.

I believe I will be teaching them the basics of the following subjects:

i) HTML
ii) CSS
iii) Javascript
iv) Java (Procedural not OO)
v) Lotus Script (It's very similar to VBA)

and well lots of other stuff too.

In the first 'session' I am hoping to teach them the basics of HTML, CSS and possible some javascript. I was wondering if anyone had some advice for me on how to approach this.


Right now I have some examples (they're very basic, I can upload them if someone wants to see them) of forms, inline CSS, external CSS, divs, as well as I will go over w3c compliance with them so hopefully they won't run into as many browser issues.

I was going to get in to Javascript with them if all goes well, but I can just wing that.

As I am sure plenty of you have some experience instilling your experiences onto others, I was hoping someone could maybe think of other areas I should cover or what aspects I should focus on the most.


Thanks,


Smitty

[mendhak]

Are they proficient enough to be able to pick up JavaScript in the first session?

You should start by judging their proficiency. Base your lessons on that.

You could set the path of the class by following topics (but not examples) from W3Schools. Show them what some HTML can do. Then show them CSS. Do it the proper way. Use an external stylesheet from Day 1. Show them why it's useful by switching to a new stylesheet.

[kfcSmitty]

Thanks for the advice. Currently I have div's being shown as well as creating menus using CSS.

I started (and based the example on) with an external stylesheet, and used internal to show how you can override if you need to and basically just to show how to do it.

As for their proficiency: I have no idea. Unfortunately, during their hiring process I wasn't full time yet, so I wasn't able to be involved in their interviews. All I know is 2 of them are commerce students and have never been officially taught programming, and as far as I have been told, they haven't endeavoured to learn on their own.

[vbNeo]

I've found when learning, that what I find most important is not just to see something work, but to find out how/why it works, and be able to implement it myself.

As mendhak says, be careful not to loose your students because you want to introduce a lot to them in the first session. There's nothing worse than learning something, loosing some if it, and then learning some more further down the road.

[StrangerInBeijing]

If it were me, I would just base my lessons on the lessons in w3Schools.
Simple and take you from "know zit" to "dont know zit" in no time.

[mendhak]

You must mean, "don't know zit" to "know zit" in no time...

[StrangerInBeijing]

Dui bu qi, wo yingwen shuo de bu hao!
/* No comment */