Help Chumly teach 'lectrical!

I took a position teaching Apprentice Electricians at a local institution, as y'all might know.

I wish to move away from the usual blackboard / lectures / standing in front of the class fielding questions kind'a thing, as other instructors here are doing.

I would like to move towards a more interesting overall presentation using more of the senses:

- Blackboard
- Overhead projector
- Flip-charts
- 3D flatbed camera
- PowerPoint & Laptop & wifi fed to ceiling projector
- Music
- Handheld calculator integrated into the presentation
- Mobile printer to generate on-the-fly printouts of parts of the presentation
- Animation of machines, phasors & waveforms via Laptop to wifi to ceiling projector
- Student-held remote controllers for real-time quiz's
- Other stuff

The reason is that in addition to being an Electrician I am a Musician (I have had zero time to play since I started teaching) and I use a lot of high-tech toys in my one-man band. I want to bring that same level of interactive involvement to the students, and I want to use more of the student's five senses to increase the chances for learning. I understand the more senses you involve in the learning process the higher the retention may be.

I figure a decent portion of the presentation part of the lesson plan could end up on the hard drive of the laptop, in concert with a hand held calculator, hand outs, and the other stuff as mentioned above.

I don't mean that I would dismiss the traditional blackboard / lectures / standing in front of the class fielding questions etc but I want to expand on the usual stuff.

Surely this must have already been done with teaching Apprentice Electricians?

Alas, no one at this institution, nor anyone else I have heard of, has done such a thing in this context. I have hopes that some of the more forward thinking institutions may have instructors that have been successful at this.

Here is some of the stuff I teach:

LC resonance
Phasors and vectors
Single phase and three phase theory
Power factor
Electrical code
RLC circuits
Generators and motors
Motor control
Algebra and trigonometry
Inductance and capacitance
AC waveforms
Lighting and power
Transformers
Programmable logic controllers
RC and RL time constants
All sorts of laws from Kirchoff, Watt, Ohm, Faraday etc
Wiring methodology

I teach a lot of math, but it's at the trades level not university physics level, so it's more directly related to actual practices.

We don't get into quantum theory and chemistry etc, plus guys like Newton, although indirectly referenced, are not addressed much, if at all.

So instructors teaching physics / chemistry / atomic theory / complex electronics would have lesson plans not really adhering to where I need to be at the trades level, although some of their stuff would be applicable.

It would be cool if I did not need to filter through reams of PowerPoint data, Pdf files, Word files and Video files etc to extract what I need to teach.

I would appreciate some direct contact information that might help me on my way!

Here is a website from an instructor Socratic Electronics. He seems, from casual observation at least, to have some stuff in common with me, but I gather he is not teaching Apprentice Electricians, he is teaching university level electronics. I could be wrong on this; I've contacted him so we shall see.

In any case, if you good A2K people can hook me up, please let me know either on this thread or by PM.

Chow,

Chum