Hi, I am Glen (Software) Smith, Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint and I love teaching.
SharePoint raises its own special challenges for a trainer, it is has massive breadth, and for a new student it can seem counterintuitive at times. In 5 days a trainer can help a lot to make this product accessible.
Tip 1. Add value with real life examples from your consulting experience.
The course as a Technical Specialist course concentrates on the “how”, leaving the following course (MOC 10231 ITPro) to concentrate on the “why”. However, grasping the “how” is made easier if one understands why certain technical decisions were made, and this task it made easier by anecdotes and even “horror stories” of what happens when best practices are ignored (naturally with names changed to protect the people involved!).
Tip 2.Teach for the future.
SharePoint is a living product and its documentation is not cast in stone. The course does an excellent job of navigating the MSDN/TechNet documentation even where contradictions exist. I was impressed how the High Availability part navigated thru some of the issues that I blogged about here:
http://software-smith.blogspot.com/2011/01/recipe-sharepoint-2010.html
Similarly I was impressed with the handling of Remote Blob storage, especially the explanation of the FILESTREAM provider being a simple provider not a high performance provider. That SharePoint backup of RBS using FILESTREAM does backup the blobs was also handled correctly, I have not often seen the correct information published! The SQL backup command also does so. The lab has a small bug that can be quickly fixed by renaming rbs.msi to rbs_x64.msi.
It is good to teach the students how to find the latest information, and use it when making decisions. Some students will rush thru the labs, others will take more time, making sure they completely understand each step. It is good to have extra challenges ready for the “speed kings” where they learn to find the answers on TechNet. This also helps others not to feel unduly pressured if they take longer. The faster the machines are for the labs, the better for the class.
Tip 3. Create a relaxed atmosphere.
Adding humor to the mix, helps create the relaxed atmosphere in which we learn best. Even mistakes in the course can be used to bring across teaching points, a technical publication of this breadth cannot entirely avoid mistakes. I could not resist a grin where it is stated that V1 and V2 of SharePoint had no command line interface, and that Stsadm was a new feature added in SharePoint 2007! The name alone betrays its heritage (2003) without having to bring back (repressed) memories of owsadmin from 2001.
Tip 4. Mind the Gaps.
The course is not designed to teach to the test, it is not an exam cram. There are naturally going to be gaps, you may want to point your students to the objectives for the exams, so that they cover these objectives completely in their exam preparation. It would be not possible in 5 days to cover everything they may need in real life so you may have to point your students at addition material (for example Content Management and Workflows). My personal wish would be for some of the topics in the last modules to be handled in more detail, but as my students can likely testify, I am quite happy to elaborate on the joys and pitfalls of Alternate Access Mappings without much prompting.
The course was not made as a delta for those who had SharePoint 2007 experience. This was a good decision, but naturally in a class where many have SharePoint 2007 experience; it will help if the instructor makes the differences clear.
Tip 5. Keep on learning.
Pretending to know everything about SharePoint is not a good idea. SharePoint Masters continually learn about the product, the MCM motto is “Know what you know, know what you don’t know, and never confuse the two.” I am learning every week and I learn from each class, the students have often different backgrounds and experience, and no two people will respond to the same information the same way.
Feel free to contact me “glen” at “software-smith.com” for consulting or training needs, or to peruse the following sites:
http://software-smith.blogspot.com/
www.software-smith.com
hi its very nice & useful
Just wanted to mention that I will be doing two deep dives into SharePoint at the MCT Summit in Stockholm at the end of June..
www.mctsummit.eu/Sessions.aspx
Stop by if you want to have a chat.
Glen (Software) Smith MCM MCT
very nice!
Good news. I was selected as Technical Reviewer for the B version of this course, and so could address some of the minor issues and mistakes mentioned in my blog post above. I hope all my corrections make it thru the editing process.