Giving teachers a lesson is sometimes a challenge

My second coaching session for the teachers in Gintota was quite a challenge for me. It was the second class with a group of 10 teachers and and we reviewed first the learnings of the last lesson. So far this was ok. But then I proceeded with a theory part which focused on binary computer language. After a few minutes nobody was concentrating anymore on the lesson and some started to complain that this lesson is not very useful for them.... Okay this did not work really..... Why the hell did I start with this boring binary stuff? It was obvious that nobody will like this topic. My students are school teachers and not computer nerds.... Actually the purpose was to emphasize that computers do not "think" in our language but use a binary system instead to calculate and  process all information. We experience human readable texts, pictures, videos and sounds but in reality all is just formed by bits and bytes. This is an important thing to know I thought, particularly because many computer basics are derived from this fact (bit, byte, ascii, ....). But the teachers were not so convinced about the importance of this fact....

The classroom where the teachers are coached during the theory parts of the lessons

Anyway, I explained the background again and promised that I will not touch again on this topic in future lessons. This seem to help :-). Everybody calmed down again. I explained how to work with Windows (Desktop screen, Start programs, minimise/restore/exit programs, etc.) by demonstrating the functions of Windows 7 with my own computer. Unfortunately the school does not have a project to beam the screen onto the wall so I used the built-in magnifier program of Windows so that everybody could see what I was demonstrating with my laptop. After further 15min I closed this part as well and we moved to the computer room where I asked them to do some practical typing exercises. This was really great fun for them and I think everyone enjoyed to exercise the typing program until the end of the 2 hour lesson. I think you can examine this in the following short video:

I also learned something from this lesson. Preparing a lesson for hours in advance is not as important as beeing flexible in your teaching and sensing the needs of your students during the lesson.