A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Bob, W7JNM. He said that he had assembled a group of people who wanted to take a Technician class and would I consider teaching an online class. Honestly, I was a little hesitant. One of the reasons was that I was pretty sure that I couldn’t teach it in a single day. Another was I didn’t know how well my style of teaching would translate to an online format.
Another possible “gotcha” would be arranging testing. I knew that the W5YI Group had started remote testing, but I wasn’t sure if they were doing group testing yet or not. Bob, however, took care of that in short order. He contacted the W5YI Group, who referred him to Al, WB5QNG, who contacted me and we worked out the arrangements.
With that out of the way, I decided to go ahead with the class. To break things up, I decided to try four, two-hour sessions, spread over two weeks. We met at 9pm EDT, 6pm PDT. My plan was to cover the following topics:
- Tuesday, June 9
- Electrical Principles
- Electronic Components and Circuit Diagrams
- Thursday, June 11
- Radio Wave Characteristics
- Antennas and Feed Lines
- Tuesday, June 16
- Amateur Radio Signals
- Electrical Safety
- Amateur Radio Practices and Station Setup
- Thursday, June 18
- Station Equipment
- Operating Practices
- Commission’s Rules
After the fourth class, the students were to go to the website where they would take the test.
This schedule worked out pretty well, except for the last class. I never did get to cover the rules and regulations. Fortunately, that didn’t deter the students.
One thing I was a bit leery of is how I would be able to do equations, like I do on the whiteboard in a face-to-face class. That turned out to be not as big an issue as I thought it would be. For the first class, I used the Zoom whiteboard, as shown below.
For subsequent sessions, I shared my screen with the class and used the Sketchbook drawing application. During the course of the class, I also upgraded from a small Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet to a larger Gaomon drawing tablet.
We started out with 11 on the initial class roster, but two never showed up, and a third dropped out after one class. The remaining 8 stuck with it until the end. Seven of the eight passed the test on Thursday evening. The eighth had a medical event and was unable to take the test. She’s planning to do it soon, though.
So, all in all, I’d say that this first class was a success. So much so, that I’m planning on doing it again in July. I already have a half dozen people on my mailing list. If you know of someone who might be interested in the class, have them sign up to get on my mailing list. I can foresee doing this once a month, actually.
Finally, I want to give a shout out to Don, KB2YSI. I thought about doing this on Google Meet instead of Zoom, because Zoom only allows free meetings to last 40 minutes, and I didn’t know if I wanted to pop for a paid account just yet. When I mentioned this on Twitter, Don stepped up and said that we could use his account. Thanks, Don! I probably will pay for my own account for the July class, but Don certainly got me started in the right direction.
Paul kw1L says
Congratulation Dan on educating and bring more people into the world of amateur radio.
Arne K5ARN says
My wife was one of the successful students! She had been thinking about studying for quite a while, but never got to it. I saw Dan’s blog and I showed her some of his online content. If you are interested you cannot find a better instructor than Dan KB6NU! Reluctantly she agreed to sign up. After the first lesson she was hooked. And I am impressed how much effort she put into the studying! The remote VE testing is very well organized, impressive! Her call sign was posted after less than 24 hours!