on feeling stupid as a bag of hammers

[rmd]

nothing makes me reconsider my abilities and knowledge like considering how to take some subject i think i know about and crushing it into a 8 or 10 session class suitable for high school students.

i'm thinking about putting together a class for the MIT High School Studies Program, but not sure what to do. i could easily do a "how the internet works" class, i guess.

i did teach a basic circuits class for the HSSP one-shot class "SPLASH" program back when i was in college, but i'd have to re-learn the details on much of that before i felt comfortable teaching it. i could teach something non-technical, but i'm not sure what.

definitely, there's something about trying to put together a class and explicitly teach people things that's down there with jobhunting as a thing that brings out my "i know nothing, i'm stupid as a bag of hammers" self-doubt.

must ponder how and why this is so...

Comments

[mangosteen]

Note: I apologize in advance for being a bit pedantic, but this is what has worked for me.

The only advice I can give you is the following:

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An extraterrestrial lands on earth.
They want to talk with you.
They speak fluent English, with reasonable knowledge of American idiom.
They ask you, "What is the Internet?"

Answer.

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Your answer will likely range all over the place, going off on wild tangents as you consciously connect various disciplines that come together when talking about what is a relatively simple-yet-complex communications system. Don't worry about it. Just give a full answer. Take notes on where you go with it. Only break it down into serialized chunks once you've seen where you've gone.