Conducted yet another Fix-A-Pic Workshop today for 25 lecturers from the college. This session wasn’t planned initially, but was opened because the first session was full within half day after being opened to all staffs for registration, which was a shocker for me. Most of the staffs attending today were those that missed the boat, so to say.

The previous session had plenty of hiccups, so this time around I was much well prepared. Made sure that all the tutorial files are available in the computers (to my horror, the last round, all my files were deleted!), made sure that the print-outs are sufficient, made sure that presentation is running ok on Keynotes. Being paranoid, I waited at the lab earlier an hour, just to make sure everything is running ok.

I skimmed through the list of names that registered for this workshop at the Teaching and Learning centre yesterday. Majority in the name list are staffs from Taylor’s University College, so I guess this will be a great opportunity to meet people.

The lecturers were rather punctual. As always, some being surprised that I am the trainer the trainer for the day. I used to be nervous with the fact that people may perceive me as being too young to teach (and we’re not talking about teaching students, but very experienced lecturers here!). Anyhow, the teaching load for the past few semesters was a good experience and the few workshops conducted for staffs earlier did give me a boost of confidence. I know I can do this.

To keep long story short, I did my thing - gave the lecturers some eye-candy to get them excited (somehow, the fact that Photoshop can remove wrinkles and pimples really excites them), explained the tools to them, showed them the things that they can do and allow them to work with photos on the spot. The lecturers were really eager and attentive learners and I can’t ask for a better audience than this. I had a lot of running around to do, having the need to assist lecturers in trouble whilst editing the photos. At times, the lecturers were so excited that they can’t stop editing their photos - I had to pull everyone back to attention before moving on to the next topic. This was all great fun, as they did resemble my students during their Introduction to Computer Graphics class!

And my earlier assumption was correct, I did get to meet quite a few people, talked to them and got to know them better. My only regret was I only had 15 minutes of tea break to do so and all conversations were kept rather short.

The workshop wrapped up after 3 long (but seemingly short) hours. Lecturers looked happy with what they learned today and started enquiring about the intermediate level (which I suppose will be held next year). Some even asked if it’s possible to sit through my Introduction to Computer Graphics class the whole semester. Others offered to be my helper the next workshop. And me? I couldn’t be any happier!

Now, let’s just hope the lecturers actually practice with the software…