diff --git a/chapters/chap01.tex b/chapters/chap01.tex index 1896a51..6ce1dde 100644 --- a/chapters/chap01.tex +++ b/chapters/chap01.tex @@ -46,3 +46,6 @@ This works for some people. But some people don't learn just by watching; they n I learned early on (when I was student teaching, in fact) to just stand behind the person and guide them through all the steps I just demonstrated. That way, they were doing it, not me, and I could answer questions as we went. Of course, sometimes all they needed was that little boost of confidence or getting over a step they forgot, other times they needed a lot more direct instruction: ``Okay, now move your mouse so the cursor is over the file menu. Yep, that's it, now click and hold down the mouse button. Nope, not the right button, the left button. Now move your mouse down until it's over the `Print' option. Yep, there you go. Nope, you went too far, go back up a little bit. Yep, now you can let go of the mouse button.'' And then the print dialogue box would appear and we were good to go.\footnote{I have to admit, I'm reaching here. Back in the day, mice on PC's had two buttons, but if I recall correctly, you had to click and hold down the left button to open a menu and keep it open until you hovered over the menu item you wanted, and then had to let go of the button to select that item.} +The important thing here is that it is the \textit{student} who is going through the motions here: they are guiding the mouse, and clicking in all the right places. They are developing a bit of muscle memory as well, and for people who have never touched a mouse before and are not accustomed to seeing the movements of their hand mirrored on the screen, it takes a bit of practice; in general when you are doing a thing with your hands, you are looking at your hands because that's where the action is. + +Additionally, this should all occur in a low-risk or no-risk environment.\footnote{Again, this is another way that my company screws up this learning process, because the belief there is that ``they can practice on the job.'' But when they make a mistake on the job, and fixing that mistake involves rework and possibly an investigation, that involves cost and affects your metrics. It's hardly a low-risk environment.} In the early 90s I read a book about Resedit (Apple's way to modify things on the Macintosh at the time) and the author\footnote{For the longest time I thought it was David Pogue, but it doesn't look like he ever wrote a book on Resedit.} was going into an elementary classroom to do a lesson on this, and was surprised to find that the kids had already done just about everything he was going to show them. The reason why was a simple one: they were in a low-risk environment. They weren't worried about breaking anything\footnote{In those days, when you bought a computer, you were also buying a copy of the operating system on disk; if you screwed anything up really badly, you just reformatted and reinstalled. These days you buy a computer and rent the operating system. If you screw something up that you can't figure out on your own, you need to pay a professional to fix it for you. This is just one more reason to switch to Linux.}, their teacher hadn't been hovering over them warning them to not do this or not touch that. As a result, they learned far more on their own than this author had been intending to teach them. \ No newline at end of file