Teaching a computer workshop is quite challenging. Students expect you to know a lot of things and be able to pass on knowledge in the most effective way. If you are not prepared, you will catch yourself stammering and losing most, if not all, of your students during the talk. If you are a first-time computer workshop teacher, don’t get discouraged. The following tips will help you effectively teach a computer workshop.
•Know your topic. In most cases, the workshop organizer will assign your topic. You will only need to organize the content of your lesson and give hard and soft copies to the workshop organizer. In other cases, the organizer will allow you to choose your own lesson. When picking a lesson, remember to consider the skill level of the participants. If they are beginners, you have to focus on basic topics such as PowerPoint and Excel. If your participants are advanced computer users, teach something about web designing and software designing.
•Make sure each participant has a computer unit. Computer lessons are mostly mastered through hands-on practice, so it is very important that each of your participants has access to a computer. If the workshop organizer can’t provide computer units, ask them instead to instruct the participants to bring their own laptops.
•Make a demonstration. Make sure to do a demo if your topic involves a step-by-step procedure. If, for example, you are discussing how to make a PowerPoint presentation, show your students how to choose a background design, make animations, or insert a video. Connect your own laptop or computer to a big screen, so all the students can see the procedure. Also, don’t forget to give the students some techniques or strategies in completing the task in a quicker and more effective way.
•Take note of your pace. Remember that computer lessons are usually very challenging, which is why you need to discuss your topic at a slow pace. Before moving to your next point, make sure the students are following you. If not, they won’t be able to understand your next point and the other points after that. Encourage them to ask and to clarify points.
•Give an exercise after the discussion. The exercise will help you gauge if the students understood the lesson well. Take note of the difficulty level of the exercise. It should be easy and can be completed in, at the most, five minutes. For example, if you discussed web designing, ask the participants to make a basic layout for the homepage of an online school.
•Provide handouts. Handouts can be distributed before or after your discussion. These should have the outline of the lesson and all the points you mentioned during your talk. Additional resources should also be included. List down, for example, computer books, magazines, and websites.
Teaching a computer workshop, or any workshop for that matter, is nerve-wracking. But try to keep your calm. Usually, though, you will feel nervous only at the beginning. Midway through the talk, you will most likely regain your composure.
