My MOC it is a changing

Sorry for the delay on getting the blog updated, but last week was a busy one. The good news is that at least now I have some new material (content wise at least, the jokes are still the same). I had the opportunity to teach a class using the new Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC), also known as Kona-H, and I thought that I might present my score card on the new courseware. Labs – B+ One of the things that I never really liked about the labs in earlier Microsoft courseware is that they reminded me of baking a cake; you follow the recipe exactly and a’ viola you have a nice warm DHCP server. Unfortunately, by the time the student finished the lab they were brain dead zombies and they had forgotten the ‘WHY’ of what they were doing. With the labs in the new courseware the student gets a scenario that explains the ‘WHY’ of what they are about to do in the lab and then gives them minimal direction on how to do the tasks (kind of like, “Create a DHCP server with a scope of …..”). Now I know this sounds odd, but I am a firm believer that if you struggle to get information, what you learn will stick with you longer. If the student needs some step by step direction on doing the labs, Microsoft provides those in the ‘Student Lab Answers’ section on the CD-Rom that is in the back of the courseware. They can look at some of the steps to get them on track and then go back to the regular lab directions. Content – D This is the area that I think that the new courseware really falls flat; instead of getting learning content associated with the image of the slide, the student basically gets the ‘high points’ of what the slide is covering. This may sound like enough information, but I have a number of students that follow along with the lecture in their book and make notes along the way. In the old courseware the student could just underline the information that coincided with the lecture that I gave and they only had to write in notes when I gave different ways to perform tasks that were outside the book. Now because there are only the ‘High Lights’ in the book, the student is forced to take more notes and miss more of the lecture. The only thing that prevents this section from being scored as an ‘F’ is the fact that on the student materials CD-Rom, there is an electronic version of the book that has more information than what is found in the printed material. My suggestion is to get a copy of Microsoft OneNote, copy the electronic book to OneNote (you can ‘print’ to OneNote and that copies all of the pages for you) and then use the electronic copy to take notes during class. Extra Stuff – C+ As mentioned above, the student materials CD-Rom contains a PDF of the more complete courseware and has a number of very good references to extra material that can make more sense than what is contained in the printed courseware. It also allows the student to search a lot faster for specific information once they get back to the office and away from the classroom. In conclusion, the new courseware has some nice features, but the way that the content is presented really hold it back from getting an overall good score. For all of the MCTs in the audience, the new courseware makes the preparation process a lot longer and harder when you are getting ready to teach a new class (suggestion, remember the OneNote trick I mentioned above, it makes you notes a little more dynamic).