Teaching

Force Science Certification, February 2020

/ hsoi

I participated in the Force Science Institute’s Force Science Certification course, February 17-21, 2020 in Austin, Texas.

From their website:

Individuals who successfully complete this program will be certified as Force Science Analysts. This designation attests that the holder has been trained to recognize and articulate important psychological, biological, and physiological factors that can influence human behavior and memory in force encounters and pursuit situations. Like persons trained in accident reconstruction, blood-spatter analysis, and other science-based disciplines, investigators certified in Force Science Analysis will be able to apply their grasp of human dynamics to interpret how and why a force confrontation evolved as it did. Students will also know how to mine the memories of those involved for relevant recollections. This information can be vital to authorities who ultimately must judge the encounter, such as administrators, internal affairs, chiefs, review board members, prosecutors, judges, and jurors.

For years, FSI courses were only available to people directly involved in law enforcement. But about 2 years ago, they opened it up to non-LEO. I’ve been wanting to take this course for a number of years, and am happy I was finally able to.

Basics

The course was held in the Doubletree Hotel conference room on the north side of Austin (hooray! I got to commute up and down I-35 for a week!). 8:30 to 5:30 for 4 days, and 8:30 to about 1:00 on the last day. There were 112 or so people in class. Overwhelmingly most were LEO, but I know at least 4 people were not: myself, my fellow KR Training instructor Tracy Thronburg, Marty Hayes (of Firearms Academy of Seattle, and Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network), and Andrew Branca (Law of Self Defense). I had no idea Marty was going to be there (Marty’s a friend), and no idea Andrew was either (first time meeting and speaking with him). From a quick scan of the room, most LEO were from Texas agencies, but there were others – I believe 1 attendee had flown in from Australia.

We were provided a large, printed/bound book, of all the lecture slides. That was a nice touch, making it easy to take notes as well as having a solid reference on your bookshelf for later. With 40 hours of drinking from the information firehose, there’s no way you can remember everything, so the bound notes book is a welcome touch for memory retention and future reference.

Each day was divided into topics. Some topics would receive a couple hours of treatment, such as how the brain works (to help us understand how memory works, how sensory perception works), how vision works. Some topics would receive multi-day coverage, such as biomechanics, although this was broken up to cover many sub-topics.

And yes, there is a (closed-book) test. We took it just before lunch on the 4th day. It covered all topics presented to that point, and yes it was a requirement for certification (all people in our class passed, but I am to understand there have been failures in prior classes).

Content

I appreciated the content provided. Yes, it was mostly provided from the perspective of law-enforcement, but that stands to reason. But as someone who trains private citizens, how applicable is this to me and my students?

Fairly well, actually.

What’s studied and presented is mostly about human beings. How we work, how we function, our capabilities, our limits. It doesn’t matter if you’re a police officer, a CEO, a farmer, a software developer – humans are human. Our senses, our brains, they only can do so much and work so fast.

You see how a lot of human performance research is based in sports performance. I think that also makes it great for helping people that might not understand (or want to understand) performance in a “use of force” context understand that this isn’t just “research to help cops find excuses to murder people”. No, this is just how people work, and this research is aimed to explain how people function in the context of use-of-force.  Certainly this information and research could be used to keep someone out of jail, or put someone in jail; it’s information, not agenda nor bias.

Some presented material was certainly specific to law enforcement, but it was still welcome to see that information and gain knowledge and insight into those aspects. Because still for my students, if they are involved in a use-of-force incident themselves, they will interact with law enforcement so having such insight is useful.

Filter

For me, I found the information going through two filters.

First, that of an instructor. As of this writing, I have about 850 hours of formal training in this realm and have been teaching at KR Training for about 11 years. A lot of this material isn’t new to me, but that’s fine. I always appreciate hearing such things again, because there’s always some new twist, some new detail, some new angle in the material and how it is presented that provides me with greater reinforcement, clarity, depth, and understanding of the topic. But for sure, a good deal of information was new.

I found myself thinking about our curriculum, what we teach, how we teach it. I think about the questions students tend to ask and the way they are typically answered. I found myself both affirming much of what we already do as sound and good approaches, but also making adjustments to word choice or emphasis. For example, it was frequently stressed the importance of “if you expect to perform at X, you need to train at X”. Let me explain.

Let’s say I wanted to become a top-class swimmer, like Olympic gold medalist. Well, if I want to do that, I don’t think power walking on a treadmill will get me there – I have to swim. Extreme example, but I hope you’re following the reasoning. But I shouldn’t just swim, like the seniors doing “adult swim” laps at the YMCA. I need to swim hard. I need to swim in races against other people (which is implicitly a timer). I need that sort of pressure, to have my training mirror the environment, situation, context, everything of that moment of actual performance (the actual swim meet and race).

So if I expect to be able to perform in a gunfight, I need to have my training mirror the environment, situation, context, everything about that situation that one can safely mirror in training. This means pressure, this means training like scenarios/Force-on-Force. This sort of training will help me be better prepared and improve my chances of performing well.

This isn’t then so much a realization that we need to change what we do – we’re already teaching and promoting this (my boss-man Karl Rehn is one of the modern pioneers of force-on-force training). This is more to those who don’t think you need such training, that do things like poo-poo shot-timers, yet still think they are adequately training people for “that moment”. There’s science that says you’re doing it wrong.

The second filter? I won’t go into too much detail, but my personal incident of January 2015 served as another filter and perspective through the whole week. This is the sort of thing that, if you’re curious for my thoughts here, we can talk in person. It’s not bad, it’s just nuanced and I don’t think I can adequately convey in a blog post.

It’s not all rosy

Overall I was pleased with the course, but there were a few things I didn’t find optimal.

First, it’s just a LOT of information in a short period of time. There’s no way to remember it all. The book is nice, but it’s just the presentation slides and room for notes. And you will take notes, but the note-taking process divides your attention and you miss things. I wish there was a better way to manage the information density.

Second, it is death by PowerPoint. But at least the speakers were all dynamic, engaging, good story-tellers. They certainly captured and held the interest of the audience. But again, I’m not sure there’d be any other practical way to do accomplish the goal of this training.

Third, sometimes I wondered if this was about educating us on the material, or defending the validity of the work FSI does. Many times when Dr. Lewinski was speaking, he kept making a big point about who they did the research with (the researches, the Universities), what scientific journal – and the prestige of that journal – in which the research was published. That the FSI work was accepted by this court and that court and all these things. He would frequently sound like he was trying to convince us his word, his work, was all valid sound defensible science. Now I get it: there are a lot of critics of Dr. Lewinski and FSI’s work, so I’m sure his actions come from somewhere. But it just came across as too much. If you have to get this defensive, is the criticism valid? I mean, you have a room full of paying customers – I don’t expect this is an audience you need to convince. So it was curious and a little distracting. I think the point could have been made in a more subtle way, or by simply not bothering… because if in fact it is invalid, proper science will bear that out.

Should You Take This?

That depends.

FSI says:

This information can be vital to authorities who ultimately must judge the encounter, such as administrators, internal affairs, chiefs, review board members, prosecutors, judges, and jurors.

So if you fall into that category, it’s likely useful to you.

But how about folks in my realm: private citizens?

If you’re “just a private citizen”, I don’t see much need to take this class. If you have the money, the time, the desire, there’s certainly nothing wrong with taking it and I won’t stop you. I just would consider it something like a “grad school level elective” – far from critical to take, and your finite time/money may be better spent elsewhere. More firearms training, first aid training, improving your physical fitness, and things like that may serve you better.

If you’re someone like me, a trainer/instructor, my answer is… maybe.

It depends on what sort of instructor/trainer you would be.

If you’re someone who is content to have their NRA Instructor credentials so you can help teach Boy Scout merit badges, the FSI training doesn’t make a lot of sense. (and note: there’s NOTHING wrong with being an instructor like that). If you just like teaching basic/introductory/familiarization courses to new shooters, you might find some utility here, but again it’s probably not worth your time/trouble/expense. If you’re purely interested in competition/sports, you would probably do well to learn about human performance dynamics, but the context the FSI course presents it in isn’t the correct context for you.

This material is useful for someone like me: someone deeply and earnestly interested in helping people learn how to manage themselves and perform at a high-level in situations of self-defense.

If I extend the above analogy, I’d consider this grad-school level course work. If you don’t have your “undergrad” credentials (e.g. NRA Instructor, higher-level instructor such as Rangemaster certified, MAG certified, CSAT, etc.), that should come first. If you don’t have a few years teaching at least some hundred students, that should come first. The presentation is certainly one expecting you to have some idea and experience in the topic realm. But I also don’t think it’s critical to one’s success to attend… it’s just like getting a Masters degree: not vital, but does take you further, deeper, into topics.

I’m certainly happy to have taken it, and know it will help me be a better teacher.

I want to thank Dr. Lewinski for the work he does, and his team of researchers and lecturers for all that they’re doing to help bring better understanding to the world about this topic. It’s good and important work.

What is Good Enough?

/ hsoi

We all want to know…

What is good enough?

Am I smart enough?

Am I strong enough?

Am I capable enough?

Am I able to do what needs to be done? To achieve the thing I wish to achieve?

I can’t answer that for you.

And I’m not sure anyone really can provide a single concrete answer.

For me in my world – where I like to lift weights – what is “strong enough”? There are strength standards. And more thoughts. And other thoughts. And if you search around, you’ll find even more. But look at their bias. Do they consider sex/gender (because that matters)? Do they consider age? Do they consider capabilities (e.g., someone with one arm)?

It’s good to have some indications like these, because they help us understand what is at least possible. To go from zero to world records, that gives us the continuum of what’s possible in the realm of human capability. But we all know that world records are outliers, people with a particular gift to go along with work ethic and time invested. So still, along that continuum, where can we go?

I know a cop who is a large mammal – almost gorilla-like strength. His physical strength was a huge asset in his job. But then, he couldn’t run a foot pursuit worth a damn. He worked to be able to run well, but lost so much strength. Today he’s found a medium between the two. So do these standards consider context? do they consider situation and need?

My chief profession is a software developer. As an iOS developer, my world is narrow in a sense, but one can go quite deep within it. I see web developers, and the vast choice of technologies and approach one can take is staggering. How many languages, how many platforms, how deep, how broad – what makes one a top developer?

Or how about another part of my world, with defensive pistolcraft.  Karl and I may have spoken and written about “Top 10 Drills”, but when you think about it each one of those is a particular standard. And there are so many more. What makes this one a better standard? Which one really qualifies you as “good enough”?

I was teaching this past weekend, and this topic came up. What is “good enough”? What is “sufficient”? It doesn’t really matter the context in life, it’s a general topic that applies to anything.

And all I could think of as a good and acceptable rule?

Just be better today than you were yesterday.

In teaching, don’t criticize, condemn, or complain

/ hsoi / 20 Comments

In a recent class we had a scary incident.

A student got hot brass down his shirt and did the “hot-brass dance”. Unfortunately, in this version of the dance he turned 360º and muzzled everyone on the range.

Some of you aren’t going to like how I chose to handle the incident.

Thankfully one of my assistants was right on top of him, physically restraining him to stop and control the student – and his muzzle. It looked a little harsh when it happened, but it was the right response. Sorry you’re getting burned, but muzzling everyone cannot happen. Get that under control, then we can deal with the hot brass.

Yes, it sucked this happened in class. No, I’m not happy it happened on my watch. It was a scary moment for sure.

At the end of every class, we go around to each student and ask them to tell us one thing they learned. When I got to this particular student, I forgot his exact words but it was something to the effect of “no one likes having a muzzle pointed at them!”. We all had a bit of a chuckle (stressful situations can bring out odd humor), but everyone also realized the seriousness and gravity of what happened – most of all, the one student.

My response to the student was straight from Dale Carnegie:

“And I know you won’t do that again.”

And I firmly believe that. He is a young man, and I am certain this incident is going to be a bright and vivid memory in his mind for the rest of his life. He was shocked, embarrassed, apologetic, and completely fathomed the gravity of his actions.

If you haven’t read Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, you should. What I did came right out of chapter one. This website summarized a story in that chapter:

Dale Carnegie knew that any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain—and most fools do—but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

Carnegie liked to tell the story of Bob Hoover, who was a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows. Hooper was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. Suddenly, both engines stopped in mid-flight on the aircraft that Hoover was flying. Using his skills and some deft maneuvering, he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged. Thankfully, neither Hoover nor the two passengers that were flying with him were hurt.

Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the WWII propeller plane he had been flying had been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.

Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his airplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well.

No one would’ve blamed Hoover for ripping into the mechanic for his carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”

Next time you’re prone to condemning someone, try to understand him or her instead. Try to figure out why the person did what he or she did. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance, and kindness. Remember…”To know all is to forgive all.”

I could have yelled at this young man, scolding him in front of everyone. I could have expelled him from class, or maybe allow him to continue to participate but with a fake/plastic gun.

I didn’t because it was not an act of malice. He had shown a solid aptitude and willingness to learn all day, and had progressed well. The dance was a horrible mistake.

What good would have come from criticizing, condemning, or complaining about his behavior? This is a beginner/intermediate-level class, where people admittedly don’t know and are coming precisely to learn and become better. We can not expect them to be “perfect” by the very definition of the class. And yes, that sometimes (tho thankfully rarely) means the classes have a high pucker-factor; you do all you can to mitigate it but you simply cannot eliminate it. I didn’t condone his behavior; I wanted to respond in a manner where he and the other students in class would take home the proper lessons and remember those for a lifetime – because if I handled it like an asshole, that’s all they would remember.

Claude Werner often speaks that instructors would gain a lot more spending a weekend in a Dale Carnegie course than another shooting class. I’ll say it in my best Morgan Freeman: “He’s right, you know”.

AAR: Use of Deadly Force Instructor, February 2018

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

From January 31, 2018 to February 4, 2018 I participated in the Use of Deadly Force Instructor class offered by the Massad Ayoob Group in conjunction with the Firearms Academy of Seattle, hosted by KR Training. The event was held at the Giddings (TX) Downtown Restaurant, which provided a large and comfortable meeting room, as well as most excellent lunch (and coffee/drinks) catering throughout the event.

About the course, from the MAG website:

Taught personally by Massad Ayoob, this one week 40+ hour course of instruction is offered by the Massad Ayoob Group in conjunction with The Firearms Academy of Seattle, Inc. to teach and certify self-defense firearms instructors in the complicated and nuanced discipline of teaching the legalities of use of deadly force in self-defense. Teaching how to shoot is the easy part. Much tougher is teaching people when and when not to use force, including deadly force, in self defense. In addition to learning what to teach and how to present it, students will also learn how to take their expertise to court, to both serve as a material witness for their students, and perhaps an expert witness in other self-defense court cases. Course content includes:

Justifying use of deadly force in self-defense
Use of non-lethal force in self defense
Understanding the affirmative defense of self-defense
Physiological phenomenon involved in deadly force incidents
Criminal law and self-defense
Dynamics of violent encounters
Mock courtroom exercise
Issues from actual self-defense cases (case studies)
Classroom presentation

Students will be expected to prepare for this class by researching their own state’s laws on use of deadly force, along with their own state’s case law, and bring this material to class. Additionally, students should be prepared for instruction to go into the early evening if necessary on some days, in order to cover the vast array of material which needs to be covered.

Pre-requisites: Instructor credentials or membership in the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, Inc.

As you can see, it’s quite an in-depth and intensive class. Officially, the class is 40 hours of instruction, but I reckon we totaled about 50 hours due to extended discussions, Q&A, and a large number of student presentations (I believe the student headcount was 32).

Class Content

I cannot go into detail about the class content: you need to come to class yourself. But there are a few things I can say.

Class started with Massad teaching solo; Marty arrived later with Mas and Marty co-teaching the last three days.

If you have previously taking LFI-1, MAG-20 (classroom), or MAG-40, a fair portion of the material will be redundant. I have MAG-20 classroom and MAG-40 certificates, so for me there was redundant material. Sometimes it made it hard to sit through class, but I actually appreciated it. Why? Because redundancy fosters learning. Let me repeat that: redundancy fosters learning. To hear this material again was a good thing. As well, when you hear the material in MAG-20/40, you’re hearing it from the perspective – both as it’s being taught and as you are consuming the information – of the student. When you hear that material in this DFI content, it is being presented and you are consuming it as that of an instructor. The context shift makes a difference in the material, how it’s presented, and how you consume it; so it’s actually a good thing to hear the information again.

After Marty’s arrival, content of the course shifted from use of force knowledge and information to more about courtroom matters. Issues of defense, of concept articulation, of expert witnesses, and how court and trial proceedings work.

The highlight event was the moot court exercise. The intent of the exercise is to show what a trial can be like (if you’ve never had exposure to one), how proceedings work, how direct and cross happen, and then how you – as a possible material or expert witness – will operate. Due to the fact we only had one day for the exercise, the ground was laid by watching an interesting movie that left a lot of questions. We treated this as evidence, because in a real trial all of that information could come out but it would take 2 weeks to do so; since we didn’t have 2 weeks, this was a fair device for the exercise.

We had only one actual lawyer in class, so he played the judge. Marty prosecuted, Mas defended. Particular students were tapped to play certain characters. Other students directly participated as expert witnesses, generally playing themselves. For example, Marty used me as an expert witness, and I played myself as an expert on martial arts, firearms, and weapon disarms. (Aside: during cross, Mas posed a hypothetical to me – which was a little personal and stunned me that he would “go there”, but was brilliant in delivery, execution, and context; it made his point so well, and it demonstrated Mas’ keen senses and abilities. Bravo, sir!). The remaining students were on the jury, and after much deliberation? We resulted in a hung jury (we were told in past classes that juries have found both guilty and not guilty – so it’s far from a canned experience!).

Every student in class was required to give a 5-10 minute presentation on a topic, which was assigned by Marty prior to class. This allowed each student to demonstrate presentation ability (it’s an Instructor class, after all), but it also provided each of us with 30-some solid articles and references directly relevant to use of force, expert witness knowledge, court proceedings, case law, and other topics to really expand the information provided by this class. I believe Karl will be posting student presentations (of those who wish to do so) over at the KR Training blog in the coming weeks.

If you’ve been to one of Mas’ classes before, you know a portion of the material is provided by watching videos – which provides consistent, documented, and easily reproducible content. But then there was a great deal of live lecture, presentation, Q&A, and discussion as well; this is why class would run later.

My Take-Home

I thought the class was fantastic.

There’s a huge amount of information provided on the issues of deadly force, and how I, as an instructor, not only have to work to convey such matters to my students, but then how as an instructor I may be called to be a material witness or could offer my services as an expert witness. I know of no other program that provides this vital information.

While the lecture was good, the moot court exercise was great. Asking some other students, and they too felt the moot court was the best and most valuable portion of the class.

I think it’s important to consider the prospective students of this class: people who instruct in the use of deadly force. You don’t need to be a prior MAG graduate. In fact, I got the impression a fair number of students were folks who just taught things like their state CCW course or maybe the NRA basic courses as a side-gig. Consequently, they may never have had the exposure to the courtroom, to trials, to other things Mas teaches. This class is a great resource for breaking that ground and being able to do so through the eyes of instruction.

While for sure the class was biased towards firearms (tho there’s no shooting in the class: it’s 100% classroom), this is the sort of class that ANYONE teaching “self-defense” should take. Do you teach women’s self-defense courses? even those that are just about awareness, palm strikes to the chin, and knee to the groin — there’s still use of force matters to be aware of. Pepper spray classes? Traditional martial arts? If you are in the business of teaching self-defense, under whatever mantle, you need this knowledge. As I think about it, it generally seems that only firearms folk cover such legal matters, but it really needs to be anyone teaching self-defense.

Any criticisms of the event? I think the only thing that actually bothered me during class was at times Q&A could go off the rails. Some questions felt like personal questions that should have been asked during break vs. taking up class (and everyone’s) time. And sometimes it just ran long. On the one hand, it’s understandable because the topic is interesting, engaging, broad, and deep – so it’s very easy to “get into it”. On the other, when you’ve been sitting in a chair for days, drinking from the firehose, sometimes you just need the firehose to be shut off for a little bit and get to break sooner rather than later. Again, I don’t necessarily fault folks here (I’m guilty of time management issues myself), but if I had to mention anything that I didn’t like, it was that. But it’s a minor thing.

One other thing I liked about the event? The non-classroom stuff. I made a few new friends, got to meet Dr. H. Anthony Semone, PhD (Google him), and spend some informal time with Marty Hayes. If you know some of my past, I am thankful for some things Marty has done. We’ve spoken here and there (including recording an episode of the Polite Society Podcast mere days before this event), so it was great to finally meet him in person, have supper a few times, and sip some bourbon together. Oh, and I got to introduce him to Buc-ee’s. We’ve got a small world, and our industry here is even smaller – events like this, to meet and work with like-minded folks, are precious.

Mas and Marty don’t teach this class that often. So when it becomes available, make the effort to take it. It’s some of the most important training you can receive.

KR Training 2017-04-22 – BP2/DPS1 Quick Hits

/ hsoi

Saturday April 22, 2017 was another fantastic day at KR Training. On tap: Basic Pistol 2 (our Defensive Pistol Skills Essentials) and Defensive Pistol Skills 1. These are two of the core – and arguably most important – classes we teach. It’s here that students go from casual plinking at the range to starting to acquire the skills and understand the realities involved in using a handgun for self-defense.

We had a good turnout, with over a dozen students in the morning, and over half staying for the afternoon class. For those all-day students it’s a long day, but one packed with learning and growth.

A bit of an interesting day too, as the weather took a “pleasant” turn. Instead of the warm weather we’ve been having, a cold front blew through just as class was starting. Sure 60º–ish all day isn’t that cold, but the wind was strong and bitterly cold; not all students were prepared for it. I can’t totally blame folks, but now instead of my usual “wear sunscreen” I’m going to have to start suggesting to people to ensure to always bring clothing/gear to mind the weather – even if it doesn’t make logical sense, because days like today apparently do happen. 😉

As well, I was the Lead Instructor for this day. Karl was off at the annual A Girl and A Gun Conference, so I held down the fort. I had capable assistants in Larry, Brett, and Justin. We had a mix of students: young and old, male and female – we ran the gamut. Again, I always like to point out demographics because there are people who think they know who and what gun owners are, but really have no clue.

John Daub, instructing students on the range during KR Training’s Basic Pistol 2 class.

As for some quick take-homes:

  • Trigger press. Remember? Prreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssss. Apply smooth pressure. Yes the pressure will and must increase, but keep it smooth (not sudden).
  • Grip should be strong (“Homer choking Bart”), and consistent. When you are holding the gun in the ready position, be gripping HARD – don’t tighten up when you get the gun out and in response to pressing the trigger.
  • Going fast is important, but not at the expense of accuracy. At this stage I’d rather you work on good mechanics, establishing good technique, and working to get acceptable hits. Speed will come.

One other thing.

For some, it can be a hard day. Not even so much on the skills and direct learning aspects, but what you go through, what you put yourself through. There can be a lot of emotions, a lot of discomfort. These two classes are filled with novel experiences, and sometimes uncomfortable experiences.

But guess what?

You made it through.

You are more aware.

You are stronger.

You are more capable.

And that smile on your face tells me, it was a good day.

Thank you for coming out and training with us. Thank you for putting your faith and trust in us, to help you learn and grow in such an important aspect of your life.

Practice well. Train hard. We’ll see you out on the range.

Beyond the 1% – ProArms Podcast

/ hsoi

My bossman, Karl Rehn of KR Training, was interviewed for Episode 98 of the ProArms Podcast.

It was about his presentation, “Beyond the One Percent” (8 part series starts here).

Give it a listen!

 

The importance of managing time in the classroom

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

The other day I spent a very long day sitting in the Texas Concealed Handgun Instructor certification renewal class. It was a very long day (class officially started at 8:00 AM and I didn’t leave until 7:00 PM). There were a few things that stood out to me about the class, but one thing in particular.

Classroom time management.

When you have a particular set of material that you must cover, you must be aware of how you present that material in a manner that is not only effective but also sensitive to time constraints.

There are a few big time killers.

First, anecdotes. There’s no question anecdotes aid learning. It gives real-world perspective to what is being taught, and the impact of the story can  aid in retention of the material. But anecdotes must be used sparingly. If every bullet-point on the slide is accompanied by a story, everything will drag out. Furthermore, a heavy amount of stories lessens the impact of those stories, both from overload and the restlessness of the audience with “Oh boy, another war story”. Sometimes as well, it expends further time because now others want to chime in with their stories. And the time-wasting grows.

What can make this worse is when you have multiple instructors (e.g. co-teaching) and everyone feels a need to chime in. Yes, we all like to make our pet points, yes we all have things to say. But all instructors must be mindful of keeping on time and on track, and sometimes that means shutting up. This isn’t to say the other instructors must remain in silence, but that the entire teaching team must have their watches synchronized and do their part in keeping the classroom on track and on time.

Second, and this isn’t so much a time-killer as a morale one, but setting time-expectations. When you start off saying this next section should only take 20 minutes to do, then it winds up taking 45 — because of so many anecdotes — people are going to be annoyed. When the invitation says class should be done by 6:00 PM then you start going on about how we’re going to run over because time’s being wasted, but then you’re the one wasting the time? Um… doesn’t sit well with folks.

Furthermore, when you know Q&A is an important part of the reason for holding the classroom session, then there’s almost no time alloted for Q&A because all the time was used up by stories and other time-wasters, that’s a problem — especially when you set the expectation that part of the reason we’re there is to have open lines of communication between the students and instructors.

Third, underpromise and overdeliver. This goes back to the time issues. If you say “this is going to take 20 minutes” then you take 45, people are going to be upset. When you say we’ll be out by 6PM then we’re not out until 7PM, people are going to be upset. Instead, you should say it’ll take 45 and deliver it in 30, or that we’ll be out by 6PM but we’re actually done by 5. Be more realistic in setting your expectations, overestimate a little bit, and that way if you run up to that time then at worst you did what you said; if you still go over, hopefully then it won’t be by much; and if you go under, everyone will love you.

Finally, realize that it’s your classroom. You are the one in charge. If you set rules for classroom procedure, you need to follow and enforce those rules. Furthermore, you should not chastise the students for being the time-wasters, because if the students are wasting time it’s only because you are the one allowing them to waste the time. If you set rules that questions should be held until a particular point of the presentation, you should not be acknowledging hands raised at other times during the presentation (other than perhaps to say “I see you, we’ll take questions at the end”… do that a few times and everyone will get it and things will flow better). But of course, you must ensure to allot and then preserve that Q&A time — it cannot be sacrificed because you failed in other areas of time management. If the classroom fails to run smoothly and on time, it’s not the fault of the students, it’s the fault of the instructor.

I do understand how this goes. I have to run classrooms, I assist in classrooms. I’ve been there, done that. I know I have my own things to work on, and that’s probably why these things stood out to me because these are things I see in myself and my own classrooms. Things we’ve worked on, things we still need to improve upon. I don’t say this to be ugly to the instructors of my CHL-I class, but rather as feedback from one instructor to another on how we can all work to make our classrooms better, more productive, and more conducive to successful learning.

Lone Star Medics – Field & Tactical Medicine Conference 2014

/ hsoi

Lone Star Medics is hosting a Field & Tactical Medicine Conference in Dallas, Texas on March 29-30, 2014.

Alas, I won’t be able to attend, but I wish I could. The lineup of presenters is impressive, and there’s no such thing as having too much knowledge about first aid and medicine.

 

More stuff for learning to program

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

A few days ago I wrote about Scratch, a nifty way to help my kids learn how to program.

I forgot a couple other things I found.

Stencyl. This looks neat. It I haven’t used it, but from what I read it looks like it follows the same sort of drag and drop “block” programming structure and logic that Scratch does. But it can be used to actually make iOS and Android products that you can actually ship and sell. So maybe after Scratch, this would be something to try. It would take the knowledge they had before, but now they have to actually make something polished and ship. A good “bridge” between the two worlds, so to speak.

There’s also GameSalad, which is made right here in Austin.

I still would want them to learn “real” languages (e.g. Objective-C, C++, Python, Ruby, Java, JavaScript, and maybe even new funky languages like Scala). Who knows. I think tho it needs to start with a desire to do it, and to really gain a love for it. If things like Scratch or Stencyl take off for them, then we’ll go there.

Who knows. 🙂

 

Learning to program

/ hsoi / 12 Comments

Youngest walks up to me about a month ago and asks how you program (write software for computers).

Oh joy! 🙂

Now I’ve talked about learning to program before and even a second time. I always come back to Karel the Robot as a great way to learn how to program. Why? Because you get to learn the constructs of programming without being burden by the constructs of programming. You can learn about loops and conditionals and variables and logic and flow, but you don’t have to spend 3 hours debugging a problem to find out it was because you misplaced a comma. And it doesn’t matter if you really do anything useful or not at this stage, in terms of gaining some employable skill (no job listings for Karel knowledge); once you learn how to program, then languages are just languages and toolsets are just toolsets.

Back when I looked at the LEGO Heavy Weapons book, No Starch Press offered other books to me to review. I asked about the Python for Kids book because it looked like it might be a great way to start the kids into programming. They sent me a copy, but I have yet to go through it. Mostly inertia on my part. Daughter asked me about it, but just a passing interest. And I must admit, while I think the book is well done for what it is, I still think it’s not a perfect start because there’s issues of language that get in the way. You have to get bogged down by syntax of Python. It’s not horrible of course, but I know things can be simpler. I think this book would make a good “phase 2”.

When Youngest asked me again, I went looking around. I found Scratch from MIT.

I think I’ve found what I’ve been looking for.

Youngest and I played around with this for a bit, doing the tutorial. I saw how Scratch gave you all the language, all the logic, even some advanced things like variables, lists, and inter-object messaging. It’s actually pretty cool. I liked the way you just drag and drop to make logic go. It also is able to give you direct feedback, which I think is good for capturing a child’s interest in the topic. I encouraged Youngest to “just try it”. What would happen if? Just try it and see! The environment is very forgiving, but even still, you can make mistakes and have to learn to debug.

I also really dig that all Scratch projects are “open source”. You can look at what others have done, and then you can look at the “source code” to see how they did it. I was able to find a simple game on the site, then show everyone how they made it happen and how neat that was.

So I’m working on this with Youngest. I told him a simple project he could start with would be reinventing comics. We all love Pearls Before Swine and I told him he could start by taking a simple Pearls comic (maybe just Pig and Rat talking to each other) and recreating it in Scratch. It’s a simple project, simple goals, but challenging enough to get your feet wet with.

And we joke… with Youngest programming… Daughter creating artwork and music… Oldest creating artwork, music, and overall design work… they all like to make movies, do voice work. Oh geez… I’ve got an in-house dev shop now!

Man, I wonder how far this ball will roll. 🙂