Another RASC Weekly went out mentioning the Stellarium Training courses. That generated a flurry of new requests. Unfortunately I had to deflect everyone to the waiting list but it was fascinating to see another 15 or so people express interest.
Thanks for the referral!
(Some very curious form responses. Things to make you go, "Hmmm.")
In fact, we had been thinking about another date for the level 1 intro. So I pulled the trigger on that. Set a date and started pinging people from the waiting list... Growing waiting list.
I decided to take this one on. Given Ian a break. And give our candidate a chance to see another delivery style, for better or for worse.
Sent out the "prep your telescope mount" message for the level 2 participants signed up for my gig next week (a little late... oops!).
Sent out the "2 hours to go" message to the level 1 participants for this evening's course (lead by Ian B and audited by Al M).
Forwarded the event info to Al.
Received a cancellation for this course. Tried to pull someone from the waiting list but couldn't get a replacement. Oh well.
Built the new level 3 web page on the RASC Toronto Centre site. Woo! Exciting. Shared the news on the Stellarium "community" site.
Added another person to the advanced course waiting list. Nearly full already!
Refined the new boilerplate document some more... It's already proving useful.
Reached out to a past class participant struggling with searching by position. It is definitely fiddly. I found that to be the case when using the Slew telescope to window from the "Telescope Control" mount plug-in... The letters (in the RA) and symbols (in the Dec) must be included.
Minimum 18 keyboard and mouse actions; as many as 32!
Did a comparison to SkyTools. Wow. Never really thought about it but it's a boatload of steps there (including getting a chart showing).
And I learned one shouldn't hit the Spacebar. Ugh.
I also learned that you can paste in well-formed RA and Dec coords... That can be a big time-saver.
Noted a new symbol, a "target" reticule style pointer thing, in Stellarium. It appears the moment you access the Search by Position option. Captured it for the slide deck.
Debriefed with Ian after his teach.
Applied an update as per his suggestion to the intro slide deck. Add the "short" form for the course eval link. While in it, made a bunch of other edits. Consolidated changed by Ian. Also switched to a better font for the "cursive" notes in the deck, this for greater compatibility between Windows and Mac machines during delivery. And realised, that I should use a collaborative best practice so I added a Change Log slide to the end of the deck. Geez.
Uploaded my Stellarium Mobile Plus QRC draft to get Ian's eyes on it.
Liaised with Al but his ramp up process.
Processed the level 1 graduates and offered the last remaining spaces in the upcoming level 2 courses... Reviewed course evals. Invited interested parties to the Google Classroom.
Tidied up files in the instructor shared drive.
Woo! We've trained 60 people on Stellarium basics.
Re-wrote the business proposal...
No comments:
Post a Comment