Monday, January 20, 2020

I have learned a few things about teaching technology

We taught a 3 hour, hands on, class today. 12 people with a mixture of iPhones and Android devices learned how to take a good picture with their phone and then how to make it better by editing with Google photos and Snapseed.
It went great!
I was surprised.

I have specific sample photos to demonstrate editing features of Google Photo and Snapseed. It works great for showing off the features in the best light, and I figured a hands-on class needed to give them the sample photos, but it's hard to do. First you have to figure a way to transfer the photos to the students. Then you have to work with the dates so the photos show up at the top of their photos. I just decided to ignore the samples for this class and people used their own photos and had a great time. One person even said, "I think my photo is an award winner now - Snapseed is great!"


  • You can throw a lot at people, I've learned that building blocks are over-rated.
  • Just need simple, bullet style notes
  • Give them time to play/discover on their own, no need for detailed exercises
Here's the handout for this class. It took 3 hours with a 10-15 minute break.

Friday, January 17, 2020

My first RV Rally

I'm not talking about my first rally of the year, I'm talking about my first rally ever, where I was an attendee. I didn't come to the rally to work. 
Our very first RV rally ever was the Great North American RV Rally in Hutchinson, Kansas in the summer of 2004. We were there as employees of Coach Connect and we operated the WiFi hotspot for other RVers. We could do that because we had a Datastorm Internet Satellite dish. Since then we've worked at all the major RV rallies by FMCA, Escapees, Good Sam, and many others, plus small rallies as well. Well over 100 rallies over our 16 years of RVing.
We're slowing down our schedule a bit these days, so when we found that it had been over 2 months since our camper had been on the road, we signed up for a Roadtrek get together in O'Leno state park. https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/oleno-state-park
our Roadtrekothers' Roadtreks
Being sociable
Going for a walk in the woods.
So that's what a rally is all about. Who knew?