10BitWorks

Is anyone interested in sharing their skills/knowledge by offering a class at 10bitworks? If you’re interested in furthering your own skills by teaching and possibly having a small source of income on the side, read on.

I haven’t figured out the details and need feedback from you to help me do so. Here’s what I’m thinking so far:

1) You don’t have to be a member to teach a class but the class must be approved first.

2) Don’t feel like the class must revolve around electronics or software. A hackerspace is all about the DIY culture. For example, Houston’s hackerspace, Tx/Rx Labs, has an amazing class offering including bike repair, wilderness skills and first aid, bioinformatics, web site design, artistic techniques and materials, and welding in addition to their electronics offerings. The austin hackerspace, ATX, offers arduino and ham radio classes.

3) A wiki page can be created so we can keep track of the list of classes offered and relevant details. If a class similar to what you want to teach is already listed consider helping out with that class or come up with another class to teach.

4) Charging a fee is optional. The idea is to charge the students, not 10bitworks :) 10BitWorks won’t charge you for the space, we want to encourage classes being taught for as affordable as possible. If you decide to charge a fee I’d recommend a discount to your fellow 10bitworks members but just enough to cover your cost per student. For example, if the class you teach requires $5 worth of material per student then charge $7 for members and $10 for anyone else. That’s just an example. You can charge whatever you want. But make sure its worth it or else no one might attend.

5) The class can be regularly held, irregularly held, or be a one time deal. Its up to you. Try to not schedule classes at the same time. This will ensure that there is space for those not attending the class and allow students to take multiple classes. The class can be a series but be prepared to plan out your classes.

6) Currently, there is no partitioning wall in the shop. Its an open 1300sqft space. If we really, really need to we could hang up curtains or something.

Those are my thoughts so far as a starting point.

If you’re interested in talking about this further, reply to this thread and let’s get started!

Greg finished his KITT kit today. We are getting great feedback on these kits for the beginner’s soldering class. Thank you!

Feedback so far:

1) Pre-solder IC sockets so that students can handle the ICs while minimizing solder points. 2) LED placement: side by side and level looks amazing. Even though the circuit does not use any real fading there is a nice fade effect if they are side by side. 3) Leave room to bend LEDs at right-angle so that board can be placed flat in the hood of a toy car 4) Explain circuit as you go along: Solder 555 timer and then connect a single LED to it to demonstrate its function (blinky). Then solder decade counter, the first four diodes, and all six LEDs to show LEDs sweep one way. Then finish off the last four diodes to show sweep back and forth. 5) helpful to show circuit printed on board like in the Elenco kits and woudn’t mind if board were bigger than needed to reduce eye strain and beginner mistakes