One of the students from my Philly 512 class gave me permission to post her cool YouTube video. She's from Tulsa, OK; and is a ice skater when she's not programming. Anyway, after our class was over, she was able to stay the weekend to enjoy as much of Philadelphia as possible, took a bunch of pictures and put 'em all together in this YouTube video set to music. You'll see me in two slides: in the class picture, and at Reading Terminal Market where we had our first authentic Philly cheese steak (but don't blink or you'll miss me!) Hope you enjoy these beautiful pictures of Philly as much as I did.
I am back from teaching Course 512 in Philadelphia. I had a great time. Since Learning Tree doesn't have an Ed Center in Philly, I got to setup a remote classroom with laptops in the Congress room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, located in downtown. It was a terrific spot to have a class, with plenty of places to have lunch and dinner. And yes, I ate a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich from Rick's Original Philly Steak restaurant located at Reading Terminal Market (and it was absolutely delicious!) But the best part of the trip was the people I got to know, particularly my students for the week.
We had fun all week; and though everyone worked hard on the exercises all week, there was no stress. I even had time to show them a little bit of AJAX and SSRS. What made this class special was how they enjoyed the experience and each other; having a class like this makes it easy to enjoy the teaching experience as well. This was also the first time I ever had a group picture taken at the end of class. This is a picture of me and my class standing in front of a mural by the poolside (that's me in the orange shirt and black tie striking the nice pose in the back.)
I want to thank the Philly 512 for a wonderful first ever trip to Philadelphia, for the great hospitality that they showed me, and for being the greatest class ever. I wish them all the best of luck in their ASP.NET endeavors and in their development careers.
You all get an A! :-)
When I began my IT career back in 1992, I started out as a computer instructor for Computer Tutors USA teaching introductory classes in Windows 3.1, Microsoft Office, WordPerfect, dBase, and many more titles. I taught for 4 years; by that time I was teaching advanced courses, including advanced Access database programming. Those skills springboarded my career as a web developer.
Beginning in February 2007, I was excited to make my return to the classroom for Learning Tree International. I am a part-time instructor (which most of us are) teaching Course 512 - Developing ASP.NET Web Applications: Hands-On. Teaching this class every 2 months or so has been a great way for me to keep my ASP.NET skills sharp, because I always learn something new and am able to sharpen my saw by reviewing techniques that I normally don't use. The added bonus is meeting other aspiring ASP.NET developers and discussing the problems that they face; and if I'm lucky, I hopeful that I can give them a hand with whatever their goals they have for the course.
This gig also gives me the opportunity to visit places I've never been, and my next stop will be another first ... Philadelphia (yo, Adrian!!) I'll be there the week of June 23th, and this time I won't be in one of Learning Tree's education centers; this time I get to teach out of hotel, setting up laptops the day before - just like I used to for Computer Tutors. The only difference is that I don't have to worry about delivering all the hardware, someone else will be meeting there with that - so it should be a much better experience than back in the day.
And now that I've started my blog, I'll give you a recap of what I learn from this class (and all of my classes.) By the way, Learning Tree is always looking for expert IT specialists in all fields (not just programming) as well as business and project management. Let me know if you interested and can break away from your day job at least 4 weeks a year, and I'll put you in touch.