I have thought for many years that it would be fun and interesting to teach a course. Several of my family are or were teachers. I’ve always been in some sort of leadership role in my career and feel that I could use those skills along with my web skills to help others.
Teaching in a more informal community education environment might be a good way to get my feet wet. I could start off by saying “Hi, my name is Vince Collins and this is my first time ever teaching a course. Let’s begin this journey together”. I think most students in that environment would accept that.
Why teach? Well, ultimately this is a personal thing I suppose but I see a few benefits. First I have the chance to give someone that “Ah Ha!” moment where they finally connect the dots on how to get up and running on the web. I remember that moment for me and it was a very cool experience. Secondly, I would get off my butt and out in the community more. I think a lot of us programmers could use that 
. Lastly, and maybe even most important, it could be a lot of fun.
So, back to the title…What should I teach?
I want a big win right away. I want to walk in and get people really jazzed. I want the subject to appeal to everyone from ages 18 – 80. Something that will make them feel empowered when they finish the course. The course could be just one evening or once a week for several weeks. I want to assume that the average student will know how to turn on their computer, surf the web, read and send email and turn off their computer and that’s about it.
I’d love to hear anyone’s comments and suggestions. Have you taught before or have been thinking about it? What have you taught and why. What worked and what didn’t?
Below are some ideas that I’m batting around.
Web Page Design
Day one: Setting up a free hosting account (any suggestions?)
Day two: Building your first webpage using HTML and a text editor.
Day three: Linking to other pages and using images.
Day four: Uploading your pages to your free hosting account and testing. Domain Names, how to search for availability. How to purchase and how to point to your hosted site.
Day five: Review, questions, and student show and tell.
Blogging: Why and How?
Day one: What is blogging? Why should you do it? Online examples. RSS Readers and the benefits of indexing only information that you want to read about.
Day two: Creating your first blog. I love WordPress so I’d probably suggest that so we could get into the actual functionality of it since it’s pretty extensive.
Day three: Using WordPress features part 1. Posts, Tags, Categories and Pages, Status (Published, Pending Review, Draft, Private), Multi-User Blog
Day four: Using WordPress features part 2. Manage (Posts, Pages, Uploads, Categories), Comments, Blogroll, Presentation, Users, Options, Upgrades
Day five: Review, questions, student show and tell
Web Development With ColdFusion*
* students must have working knowledge of HTML and FTP. Experience with a database such as MS Access, MySQL or SQL Server a plus but not necessary
Day one: What is ColdFusion? Online examples of sites using it. Simple overview of some of its capabilities. Downloading ColdFusion 8 Developer Edition and installing it.
Day two: Creating your first ColdFusion page. Building a header, a footer and a menu and using CFINCLUDE to put it all together.
Day three: More ColdFusion tags and how to use them.
Day four: Reading data from a database and displaying it in your web page. Creating a simple form to build an address book.
Day five: Review, questions, student show and tell.
From the moment I bought my new laptop I’ve been struggling with Vista. Not because it’s not intuitive, or I hate the way it looks, or because it is so different from previous versions, or it’s more expensive than other OS’s. I’ve been struggling because I bought a brand spankin’ new laptop and it’s sluggish.
Vince Collins
