My first class was fun. The uncompensated prep time may prove to be a drag after a few weeks, but it is only two months. My students—six male and six female, with ages ranging from 30 to 60—all have little to no experience with web development. This is a good thing; no bad habits picked up during the Browser Wars. Standards compliance all the way, baby.
The facility is posh; twelve computers arranged in a flattened semicircle, a master computer with screen control software, and a 42-inch plasma screen up front. During class I pointed to a web page that I had mirrored up to the screen, and the cursor moved. “Hey, it’s a touch screen. Cool,” I blurted; my students chuckled.
I did have one major gripe, though. This is a class on web development using text editors, and Notepad was removed from the Start Menu of all of the lab’s computers (no Program Files access, of course). Figuring that there would be such hiccups, I had planned on saving the hands-on stuff for the next session anyway, so I lectured on the history of HTML; keeping properly structured content separate from presentation (CSS); and the basic elements of an XHTML document.
There were a few MEGO moments as I yammered on, but I think they all learned something.
Around 7:05 PM, some guy outside the classroom started giving me the hairy eyeball while glancing at his watch. After about seven minutes of this distraction, I interrupted my class to open the door and ask him what he wanted. It was the next instructor, who insisted that someone had told him that my class ends at 7:00, and he wanted me out of there so he could get ready for his class at 7:30. I told him that I would be done at 7:30, to which he curtly replied “That’s unfortunate.” I rebutted, “Your class is an hour and a half, right? So are my students any less deserving of their full hour and a half even though they also paid $75?”
I shut the door and apologized to my students.
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